While a young Queen Elizabeth assumed the British throne, Australia sent troops to Korea and Melbourne hosted the Olympics, Sister Hazel Woolston was coping with the baby boom at Crown Street Women's Hospital. Her recollection of the decade when free milk for school children was introduced nation-wide and Salk vaccine ended the scourge of poliomyelitis, is of being permanently busy.
Trained at Royal Brisbane Hospital in the late '30s, Hazel started her 27-year stint at Crown Street in 1947, a time that coincided with the first waves of post-war migration.
During the '50s about 5000 or 6000 births annually was the norm and the hospital's resources were stretched to the limit. "It was a very rushed place, but we never turned anybody away," she recalls. "There were always four or five trolleys in the corridors and often they were occupied by women waiting for a bed in the post-natal wards. At peak periods, they stayed there for days, but somehow, everyone worked very hard and we managed.
We had interpreters and social workers and there was a telephone interpreter service to complete consent forms for anesthetics and Caesars. However, many deliveries were conducted devoid of English and we became adept at managing the age-old process under such limitations."
While there was never a shortage of babies, Asian infants were something of a rarity and Hazel says many nurses vied for the privilege of bathing a Chinese baby. "They were so delicate and beautiful and everyone wanted to look after them," she adds. "We would occasionally do deals with the students to be given the opportunity."
When asked about dramatic moments during the decade, Hazel describes deliveries in cars outside the hospital and the night the power went out as standout memories. "Power failures had been common during the war, and they had a generator to cope with them then," she explains. "But it wasn't in service the night I remember when everything went off.
Fortunately, we weren't that busy and I don't think we actually had a delivery during the blackout, but everything else had to be done with torches and I did a round of the hospital using a baby's laryngoscope, so I didn't take better lights away from where they were needed. Of course, the incubators weren't working so the nurses rushed to their accommodation to get their hot water bottles to keep the babies warm. It was a very serious situation, but somehow, we coped."
The prohibition of fathers from the labour ward was at odds with the thinking in Europe at the time and Hazel recalls feeling great sympathy for women being alone during a long and difficult labour.
When she was in charge of the private section of the labour ward, she often sought the doctor's permission to let the father attend. "They always agreed, of course," she says. "But 1 never did it without the mother's permission because many people believed it was women's business and that men had no right to be there.
The average Australian husband usually couldn't get away fast enough, but the change in thinking gradually overtook them and now of course, it's the norm to have the father at the birth."