Unassisted Childbirth in the 1960's

The articles on this page were originally printed in newspapers in the 1960's. To read articles from the 1950's click here. More recent articles about unassisted birth can be found here.

Girl Delivers Own Baby
Teenage Mother Prefers Solitude

TITUSVILLE, Fla., 1960 (AP) - A teenage mother who had her first baby alone - just as her mother did for seven of her children - wants to have the remainder of her brood the same way.

Mrs. Mary Winn Anderson, 17, gave birth to a baby girl - as yet unweighed - all alone in a dark room at 8:45 Monday night. She said she was frightened but she kept telling herself to relax as her mother told her.

Her mother, Mrs. Ellerbe W. Carter Sr., had Mary Winn and one other child in a hospital but the other seven she delivered herself. She said she just relaxed and took a drink of whiskey. Mrs. Carter has received nation-wide recognition and fame for her ideas on natural childbirth.

Her daughter said she passed up the drink. Less than an hour after the birth of Julia Linn, the young mother walked from her bedroom to a telephone in her home to relate her experience.

"I want to have the rest of my children exactly the same way," the shy mother told a newspaper reporter yesterday. I don't know how many but I don't want any more for a while. I feel just fine but a little bit tired. I slept well last night. Mother stayed up with the baby last night. I just wanted to be alone. I didn't want anybody else around. I went into the room and turned out the light. That's the way I want to do it with the rest."

Her husband is 20-year-old James Anderson, an employee at the Cape Canaveral missile test center.

The young mother is a brunette, stands 5 feet 4 inches and weighs about 120 pounds.

Mary Winn Anderson

 

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Note from Laura - The following year, Mary Winn had this to say about her unassisted birth (from The Wellborn Wag, Winter, 1961) :

Pat (my mother) has been after me for over a year to write the story of Julie's birth, but I'm at a frightful loss to know what part of it would interest Wag readers. It just seemed silly to me to consider getting up, dressing, and running madly about to go somewhere else for Julie's birth when our house was to be her home. After all, Julie was then as now our main business in life. Why should we have had strangers receive her?

It was wonderful that first night - not just the ecstasy of that Heavenly first hour of Julie's life, but afterwards too. Jim in the rocking chair holding Julie and talking to her in his quiet way - gravely telling her that Cape Canaveral would have to missile along without him the next day, that he was going shopping for her instead. I knew he loved her as much as I, and that he would keep her safe if I should sleep. As for our fabulous trip to Hollywood, of course it was WAY OUT. I loved it. And I'm grateful, but wasn't that the craziest? I mean all that fuss about me over something even our household pets usually accomplish alone. I mean after all, who are the real oddballs?

I guess this isn't much of a story, but to Jim and me the important thing is not how she got here, but that Julie is Julie and that she IS HERE!

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Note from Laura - In May of 2001, nearly forty years after this birth story appeared in the paper, I received a letter from Mary Winn. She ran across this page by accident and was thrilled to learn that anyone had any interest in her birth story. She told me she had a second unassisted birth in the 1960's. Here is her brief description:

My husband was not on board with unassisted childbirth. To this day, he believes I endangered lives. Well, I guess he's entitled. I consider it probably the most outstanding thing I did in my life. When I went into labor with my second one, I waited to call him until I knew it would be too late to move me to the hospital. (Pat was there with me.) When Jim came home from work, I got him to sit down on the bed. I laid myself over him, and each time he tried to move, I bit his leg. Ha. Although he loved Pat, he offered to buy her a ticket on a slow boat to China. Thirty minutes after the birth, we had the neighbors in and drank champagne.

 

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In the Ladies Home Journal of April 1962 (p. 5), there was a letter to the editor by Natalie Sandell, in which she described her do-it-yourself homebirth. She concluded with the following paragraph:

To those who ask if I plan to follow this procedure with future babies, I can only reply, "If you were shown a fleeting glimpse of paradise, wouldn't you want another look?"

Natalie did go back for another glimpse, five times. She wrote about one of her unassisted births in the Summer 1977 issue of The New Nativity:

Baby #5, Robert William, Jr. - a perfect pregnancy and birth. I finished papering and painting a room at 5 PM, put away work supplies, froze 12 chickens, made dinner for the family, etc., went upstairs to take a shower at 6:30 and Robert was born at 6:50. Unspeakable joy for all of us to welcome a healthy, 7 pound, 3 ounce little son and brother. The girls and Bob danced around the room, everyone laughing and crying.

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Mom Delivers Own Twins
Doctor? Pooh! She has Done it Before

WAUKEGAN, Ill., Oct. 5, 1961 - Two baby girls were doing fine in Waukegan's St. Teresa's hospital after their mother, a registered nurse, gave birth to them unattended in her home Wednesday night. It was the second time in less than two years that Mrs. Kathleen Werenski, 39, of 2424 Grand Avenue, Gurnee, gave birth unattended. A son, John Anthony, was born in April of last year. Yesterday's twins weighing each a few ounces less than five pounds, were taken to the hospital and placed in incubators, but their mother is at home where according to her husband, Ted, she is walking "on air," and sees no reason for calling a doctor.

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'Fine' After 5th Baby - Alone!

PORT ANGELES, Wash., April 20, 1969 (UPI) - Mrs. Harry Reynolds, 31, was up and about feeling "just fine" Saturday just two days after she delivered her fifth child at home all alone.

I just got tired of seeing hospital rates go up every time you turn around," she said.

Mrs. Reynolds, whose fourth child came at a hospital-doctor cost of $352, said she had read books on baby care.

"There were instructions on what to do in case you had your baby at home," she said. "It's really not that hard. I had no trouble at all."

Her husband, a logger, was at work when the event occurred. Her four other children were watching televison.

My husband was happy with the result when he came home, but he thinks I'm a nut for not going to the hospital," Mrs. Reynolds said. "But I'm one of those hard-headed kind and when I decide to do something, I do it."

The "result" was a boy weighing more than nine pounds.