Patti Pella: "Someone knows your life story": Narrative 11 of the Marathon maternity oral history project. Interview date: August 22, 2008.
I’m Patti Pella. I’m 41. Grace is 9, Thomas is 7, James is 3, and Michael is 1. All of them were born here. When we drive past this hospital, a piece of our family is here. I mean, they were born here, it just connects us to the community. My kids are growing up in a community with people that were the first people in the world that they saw. It’s pretty magical. It just feels like our family’s embedded in Marathon and someone knows your life story. To be honest, we were nervous about having a baby in a small community. The family doc laid it all out. There was no pressure at all. It was, “Here’s all the information you need to know. It’s your decision. We’ll support you however we can.” The idea of flying out if there was an emergency: I didn’t look favourably upon that. I wanted to be rolled to another room, not flown to another town. I didn’t know what to expect in terms of pain. We couldn’t have epidurals, you know, very little in terms of pain. You hear of someone who had a particularly painful and uncomfortable delivery and then someone who had an epidural who says, “Well, I just kind of lay there and it came out.” So you think, if it was particularly painful, I couldn’t get an epidural here. I felt a bit guilty saying to [our doctor in Marathon] that we were seeing another practitioner, but they were totally supportive of that. They sent notes back and forth and everything, and I felt cared for in both places. Another thing for me, too, was family. My family is in Thunder Bay, so being accessible to immediate family to celebrate with us, that came into play as well. I was vice-principal, my husband was teaching at the time, so we used [my pregnancy] as a teaching resource with our classes. The kids were really involved. I still have the laminated pregnancy calendar we blew up and put in class. You could put in your due date and it would generate a calendar so you know when the fetus is developing. It says arm buds or eyes or whatever is forming at the time. The kids were totally fascinated. They would feel the baby move and stuff like that. I had an open-door policy, the parents knew me, so I felt quite comfortable, and a lot of the kids were having brothers and sisters and were curious about what was happening, so, it was a lot of fun.