Sage-femme

by Kara Maia Spencer

Published in Midwifery Today, Summer 2006 

My great-grandmother, Jane Pépin, was a traditional midwife in St. Norbert, Québec in the early 1900’s. She became the village midwife to the women in her community, due to her vast experience with pregnancy and birth. In nineteen years, she birthed fifteen children. She gave birth thirteen times; the last four children were sets of twins.

Jane Pépin married Ludger Pépin, her third cousin, in 1894. She was twenty years old and he was twenty-eight. Ludger’s first wife, Lucia Thibeault, had died eight months earlier after giving birth to stillborn twins. Jane joined Ludger at his farmstead and raised the three living children from his first marriage.

Throughout her marriage to Ludger, Jane was frequently pregnant and caring for newborns. She gave birth at home, on the farmstead to all her children. She also assisted in the births of her grandchildren, her relatives, and to the local women in the village. The Pépins were Catholic, believed in raising large families, and birth control was not available or condoned.

When Jane Pépin was pregnant for the last time, she was forty years old and already caring for two-year old twins, a five year old, fourteen older children, and her aging in-laws. On July 25^th, 1915, Jane Pépin woke up as usual at 5 a.m., went out to the barn and milked 30 cows. She then walked back to the farmhouse and gave birth to twins at 9 a.m., a boy and a girl, the girl was my grandmother. Jane was soon up again preparing food for the family and completing daily tasks on the farm.

Three generations of the Pépin family lived on the farm. There was a two-story farmhouse in which everyone slept. Downstairs there was three bedrooms, one for the older girls, one for Jane and Ludger, and one for Ludger’s parents. Upstairs there was a large room with beds lined up on either side, where all the other children slept. The children slept fully dressed, for they did not have many extra clothes and it was cold most of the year in Québec.

The whole family worked on the farm which provided their entire sustenance. Animal husbandry provided them with transportation, by cart or sleigh, clothes, and food. They grew many plants and vegetables for food and goods. They lived off the land, and all the children had jobs to do, working every day, from morning to evening.

My grandmother, Rolande, recalls that they would bake several pies at once, for there were so many people eating. The front porch of the farmhouse had five rocking chairs on it, and they would fight over who got to sit where. Being the youngest, my grandmother’s daily job was to peel mountains of potatoes for the family meals.

When my grandmother was five, the family left the farm in Quebec and three generations immigrated to the coastal town of Sanford, Maine. My great-grandfather bought an apartment house, where the family all moved into. Jane ceased practicing midwifery when the family moved to the United States. This may have been due to her health, the proximity of a new hospital, and the political climate against midwives at the time.

My grandmother, Rolande, gave birth in the Sanford hospital in the 1940’s, under twilight sleep to twins. When she was pregnant and caring for newborns, Jane was living with her and was widowed and unwell. Jane repeatedly cried when she heard that my grandmother had twins, presumably because it was not something she would wish upon anyone. She was very ill and tired at this point, for she had worked incredibly hard all of her life. My grandmother stills lives across the street from where that apartment house once stood, in the white house she has lived in for over 60 years.

Traditional midwifery was decreed illegal in Canada in 1866, thus my great-grandmother was technically an outlaw by birthing at home and serving the childbearing women in her community. Though midwifery was illegal, many midwives still continued to serve women in rural and remote communities through the early 1900’s. My great-grandmother learned the art of midwifery through experience attending births, giving birth, and through the oral tradition of women’s healing arts. She may have apprenticed with other women in the community in her younger years.

It was due to necessity and tradition that Jane gave birth at home and was a midwife to her community. With the relentless demands of running a farm, while being pregnant and caring for newborns, there was no money or time to travel to a distant hospital for birth. She was the last in her lineage to be midwife, for before her, her female relatives had all giving birth at home and assisted each other. She was a sage-femme, the French word for midwife, literally a “wise woman”.

When I was pregnant with my son in the year 2000, I was empowered to choose how I wanted to give birth, and create my family. I was able to make informed decisions regarding my birth choices. My son was born at home in the dawn of the new millennium, with two licensed homebirth midwives in attendance. I had an ecstatic non-medicated birth. He was the first family member to be born at home in 85 years, the first since his great-grandma was born on the farm in Quebec.