Linda Fay Phillips Holland

MATTIE STEVENS: —and then what I’d like you to do is give me your name, spell it, tell me where you live, where you were born, your age—and you can give me your birthdate; you don’t have to tell me your age if you don’t want to. And tell me anything you want to about yourself, and talk about a good introduction on you. Talk about growing up, your religious life, your school life, work. Just give me a full-blown you, you know, good bio on ya. And then give me the name of the midwife that you deal with, and how many children she delivered, and just talk anything 00:01:00you know about that person, okay, when you started using them, where she lived, what counties she served, during what years, that kind of thing. Today is March 15th, and we’re at the Smith Robertson Museum. I’m Mattie Stevens. I will be doing the interview with Ms. Linda Fay Holland. Good morning, Ms. Holland.

LINDAY FAY PHILLIPS HOLLAND: Good morning.

MS: Okay. Go ahead and introduce yourself and just tell us about you.

LFPH: My name is Linda Fay Phillips Holland. I’m originally from the Mississippi Delta, Drew, Mississippi, but I lived in Leflore County. I was raised on a farm in what we call now the country, with six sisters and two brothers, 00:02:00my mother and father. And my grandfather lived down the road from us, as I said previously, in a rural area. I now reside in Crystal Springs, Mississippi. I moved here, in the Hinds County area, in 1979.

Okay, schooling was [inaudible] school for elementary, 00:03:00and then high school was Amanda Elzy. I graduated from Leflore High School in Itta Bena, Mississippi, some college from Valley State University, and I have a degree from Belhaven University, a bachelor’s in social services. I now resides in Crystal Springs, Mississippi; moved there in 1991. I am married to Leon Holland. We was married in 1974. I have four children. Two 00:04:00were born by midwife and two were born in the hospital. The midwife name was Sadie Walters, Mrs. Sadie Walters, which she’s now deceased. She worked out of Leflore County.

I was very young when I had my first child, didn’t know anything about having children or anything, but my first child was born by midwife. I had gone to a doctor and he had said that I was physically able to have the child at home instead of having it at the hospital. Because then, I was young and I lived with my mother. We didn’t 00:05:00have any insurance or anything, so I did attend the clinics for doctor use with Ms. Walters. I actually don’t know how many children she delivered, but I know she delivered all of ’em. She delivered some of my mother’s, some of my siblings’. And also, I forgot the other midwife’s name that delivered my son, my second child, but she delivered him. That was in 1974, my last delivery with a midwife.

I can tell you this 00:06:00about midwife delivery: I’d rather have midwife delivery than hospital delivery, if you wanted to compare the two, because it was easier for me to have a midwife delivery than a hospital. I don’t know if it’s because I was younger at the time or the situation, but it was easier for me, because in the hospital, you had to just lay there, and with midwife delivery, you could get up and move around, which it wasn’t as bad. And for myself, I would always be on the move until my baby came. And I wasn’t in labor that long. I’ve heard people say 00:07:00that—well, when I was younger, with my first baby, they would say, “Oh, it’s gonna hurt,” the girls at the school and everything, but, actually, it didn’t hurt as bad as I thought it was gonna hurt. As a matter fact, it hurt worse in the hospital. The shot that they give you for pain, I never wanted it, and I’ve never taken it out of the four children I’ve had. But I think it’s easier—for me it was—it’s easier to just have a regular delivery than them boosting delivery as they do today. And back then, it was only $50 to have a midwife delivery. And with my other two children, my last two children, I 00:08:00actually don’t remember how much it cost, but I know it was more than $50. And the midwife for both the first two were only $50, which is way less than it is now. I’m 62 years old now, and I’m stumbling because I have to stop and reflect on the memory.

MS: That’s quite all right.

LFPH: And plus, I have what they call chemo brain. So since then, I realize that I’d rather have all four of my children again, even in midwife delivery, than 00:09:00to go through what I had. Bone cancer is more painful than having a child, to me. But I’d rather have all my children than to have bone pain. If I had to do it over again, I would choose having babies. [Laughs.] But the midwife would take me with her to the clinic. I was monitored. And I know even today, a lot of girls, young girls, don’t go to the clinic. They don’t go to the doctor. A lot of ’em, you don’t even know they’re pregnant until the baby comes. So the reason why I don’t know, because they have all this new technology now. And I 00:10:00wouldn’t encourage anyone to have a midwife delivery now unless they have been monitored by a doctor and they were physically able to, because there are so many things that’s happening with delivery now that you’d never know what kind of complications that you would run into.

Because even my daughters, the first child that I had, have two children, and both were delivered at the hospital, and they were normal deliveries, vaginal delivery, but my last two daughters had to have C-sections. So I wouldn’t advise, if you haven’t been monitored during your pregnancy, for you to have a midwife delivery 00:11:00unless you, as I said, have been goin’ to the doctor and monitoring with a doctor and a midwife on a regular basis while you were pregnant, during your pregnancy. The second midwife, I can’t remember her name.

F1: Eleanor Bluitt [sp?].

LFPH: Eleanor Bluitt, that was her name.

MS: Last name?

LFPH: Bluitt.

MS: Bluitt, B-

F1: —L-U-I-T-T.

MS: Okay.

LFPH: But Mrs. Bluitt was the same. You know, I’ve heard people say, “Well, you’ve gotta get the hot water.” I think the hot water is just for sanitary purposes, when they got ready to clean the baby up and to clean you up, or maybe sterile the— MS: Utensils? 00:12:00LFPH: —the utensils that they use. Because the midwife will always come in with her black bag, just like the doctor in those days did. So I think the hot water was just to sterile her equipment and what they were gonna use with you. But I guess they had a boiling hot stove while the baby was coming that it would stay warm enough, or hot enough, to do those things. But as far as sterilization is concerned, they would have, like, old, white sheets or white cloth. And to sterilize them, especially—’cause I did tear one time, that midwife delivery. They would burn them, you know, with an iron, just set the iron on the— MS: And scorched.

LFPH: —cloth and scorch it, right, and then they would apply 00:13:00it to you. And one other thing I remember about midwife delivery: you know, now after you have a baby, you have trouble with constipation sometime. And I remember my mom giving me mineral oil, and so I had to drink almost the whole bottle, at least half of the bottle, of mineral oil, which wasn’t so bad because it didn’t have a taste, but it’s just the goin’ down, you know, slidin’ down, and the feeling in your mouth. But it worked then. I mean, they didn’t give you a whole lotta different type of pills and medicine. It was just natural stuff that they used in those days.

MS: Would the midwife give you the pills, or your mother?

LFPH: No. No pills. My mother gave me the mineral oil.

MS: Okay, and all of this was before delivery.

LFPH: No, it was after delivery.

MS: After. Oh, okay.

LFPH: After delivery she 00:14:00would give me—because I had no trouble during my pregnancy, but after the baby came, I would have constipation problems. But she would give me that mineral oil, and I would drink that, and it made it move. But I breastfed all of my children, even the ones that were born in the hospital. I breastfed my first child, I know, for most of the time. And we didn’t have formula then, so after the breastfeeding, I started giving her pet milk. It was half, you know, milk, half water. And now, they have this formula 00:15:00that they give the babies that I never liked, because when I had the babies, the hospital babies, that’s what they were on, you know, after I stopped breastfeeding, because this— My third child, I started working.

I worked for Bell South for 25 years, and I retired from them. I had to do an early retirement because of an illness, but I retired from them. So I had two babies in the hospital, because then I had insurance, and that’s probably the only reason I had them in the hospital is because of the insurance, because otherwise, as I said, it was easier for me to have a midwife delivery. But I 00:16:00always stayed active, and, except for the first child, I didn’t know what it felt like. So I kept getting up that night, just kept getting up. I know I’m going back and forth, but I kept getting up. And I thought that I was having a bowel movement. My back was hurting and I kept pushing, ’cause when I pushed, it felt better. And so all of a sudden, I guess my water broke. Nobody had told me about the water. And I guess what they called it then was the plug. I saw that, and I said, “Well, oh my goodness. What is goin’ on?” So one of my younger sisters got up and she says, “Girl, you are in labor.” And I was like, “What?” Didn’t know what labor 00:17:00was. She said, “You’re getting ready to have that baby.” So she went and woke my mama up, and Mama went and got the midwife. And by the time the midwife got there, I was almost at—the baby was coming. But the delivery was so fast that I didn’t actually remember what transpired because it went so fast.

But with the second one, I remember having a gush with the water breaking. That was my son. I only have one son and three daughters. But I don’t know if it’s girl or boy, but with the girls the water breaking was a slow leak, and with him it just gushed out. [Laughs.] But that 00:18:00was an experience that mostly I remember about the differences between a boy and a girl, because all my children came real fast, so I didn’t have any trouble with any of my deliveries, neither at the hospital except for I didn’t like the waiting, because with the third child, when I went to the hospital, I kept telling people, to different ones, “Take me to the hospital. I’m in labor.” “No, you’re not. You’re too calm to be in labor.” So no one believed that I was having a baby, so I would walk around. I didn’t know anything then about calling 9-1-1 for an ambulance. So finally, I got my mother-in-law 00:19:00to take me to the hospital after my water broke. And so that was the only reason she took me, because I had to show her that my water broke.

And by the time I got to the hospital, I remember the nurse saying, “Well, we’re gonna have to put you in a room and prep you before we take you to delivery.” And I looked at her. I said, “Prep me?” She said, “Yeah, you know, we have to remove all the hair around.” I said, “You don’t have time to do that.” “Yes, ma’am, we have to do that before I take you to delivery.” And I said, “Okay.” So I just gapped open [laughter] and said, “Okay, go ahead.” She had the little tray in her hand, and she dropped the tray and went to screaming worse than I was. I’m just laying there. I said, “Well, I told you that the baby’s coming,” ’cause she’d seen the head when I, you know— And 00:20:00she ran and she screamed and got the— And all I remember then was lights going down the hall, the lights up in the top of the ceiling. Then they rushed me in the delivery room, and by the time they got me in the delivery room, there the baby—all they had to do was pull the hands out and the baby was there. So that’s mostly what I remember the difference between the hospitals and the midwife deliveries.

MS: That is beautiful. That is beautiful. So, now, when you had the delivery by the midwives, somebody had to go get ’em, or were they always near?

LFPH: No. No, I would always wake up my mom, ’cause mostly my children was born early, except the last two. But the midwife deliveries, they were born, like, midmorning, you know, four, five o’clock in the morning. And first 00:21:00time, my sister woke up my mom, and my daddy had to go and get the midwife, and the second time my mom sent him to get the midwife.

MS: How did he travel at that time?

LFPH: Then, he had an old—I think was it an old Ford car, or old Ford truck, or something like that?

MS: ’Cause sometimes the midwives had to be picked up by wagon or by mule or something. [Laughs.] LFPH: Right, right. Well, that was in the ’60s, so we had an old—I think it was a ’50-some Ford, yeah. So— MS: Okay, okay. Is there anything else you wanna tell me, anything you wanna share?

LFPH: Well, no. I can’t— MS: You mentioned your work. What kind of work did you say you did?

LFPH: I worked for Bell — MS: Oh, telephone, okay.

LFPH: Yeah, Bell 00:22:00South, as a telephone operator for 25 years, yes, which was a job that I really—I loved. I loved working there. It was— I even dream sometimes now that I’m still working, ’cause I wake up and say, “Oh, I’m late,” but— [Laughter.] MS: How long has it been since you retired?

LFPH: It has been 18 years since I retired.

MS: Oh, great, great, okay. And you’re 62 you said?

LFPH: Sixty-two, yes.

MS: Okay, very good, very good. All right. Now, you didn’t indicate anything about religious activities. How about —?

LFPH: Well, we went to a Baptist church. I wouldn’t say— I don’t like to say whether I’m Baptist or whatever, but we went to a Baptist church. But I can say that I follow the Christian—I 00:23:00call myself a Christian. But that was the church I grew up in, a Baptist church.

MS: Okay. Do you remember if the midwife lived in the community and attended church, or was a prominent person in your community?

LFPH: She went to church but she didn’t go to the same church that I went to. But she did go to church.

MS: Okay. Was she one of those leaders in the community? Sometime they are.

LFPH: As far as a leader in the community— F1: She had that snowball stand too.

LFPH: Oh, yes, she did. She had a snowball stand out of what we called town, which was in Drew, Mississippi, ’cause that was the closest town we lived in. We lived in Leflore County but Drew was the closest town to us. And she did run a 00:24:00snowball stand. She sold snowballs. So she was a business-like lady, what they would call an entrepreneur.

MS: I bet she sold snowballs to babies she delivered. [Laughs.] LFPH: Yes, a whole lotta babies that she delivered. Yes, she did, yeah.

MS: You don’t have any idea of—you couldn’t estimate how many she had delivered, I know.

LFPH: Oh, no, but I can say it was a lot of ’em.

MS: A lot of ’em, okay.

LFPH: Right, right.

MS: And that’s Leflore County?

LFPH: Leflore County. She was the midwife in Leflore County. Now, Ms. Bluitt, Eleanor Bluitt, was the midwife out of Sunflower County. But at the time, I think— MS: They all—yes.

LFPH: —that I had my second child, Ms. Walters were—I believe she’d gotten sick, so— At least I know she wasn’t dead. I believe that’s what happened if I remember correctly. 00:25:00She’d gotten sick and she wasn’t delivering anymore, but Ms. Bluitt delivered my second child. And the reason I couldn’t hardly remember her name, because I didn’t see Ms. Bluitt until I had the baby. I wasn’t seeing her like I was seeing Ms. Walters back and forth, because, as I said previously, I would ride to the clinic with Ms. Walters because she would go. I don’t know what she went to the clinic for. I know she’d attend the clinic all the time, you know, probably training or whatever they were doin’ in those days. But with Ms. Bluitt, I had moved. I was Valley State, and I moved to Greenwood, and I had gotten married.

So I 00:26:00knew it was close of the time to have my baby, and I told my husband to take me to my mama’s because it was about that time. So I packed my little brown suitcase. And then, you know, you didn’t have too many clothes, [laughs] so I went home. And about the second day at home, I went into labor. And we didn’t have a telephone at the time, so there was no way that I could call him and tell him. And it was like three or four days before he came back. [Laughter.] And when he got back, my mama says, “Go in and see your son.” And he looked at her and he said, “What?” She said, “Your son is here.” And, I mean, he was really surprised, ’cause— 00:27:00But I had a book, and my sisters and brothers used to—well, they still tease me about it. I ordered some books one time. You know how the stuff used to come in the mail? So I ordered these books on sex, and one of ’em had the babies, and how the baby is conceived, because I really didn’t know. So I would read these books. I wasn’t a reader. Now, all the rest of my sisters and things were readers. I wasn’t a reader, but I would read those books. So, I told her, I says—I got the book, and I counted the days, because I forgot how many days you carry a child. So I wasn’t, as they say, just sexually active. So I knew when 00:28:00I got pregnant, because it was only one time, and I counted the days from that day until the day I had my baby, and I said, “Well, I know about the time I got pregnant.” That’s how I knew that I would be having that baby within the next two or three days. I still have those books as a matter of fact.

MS: You need to share ’em with some of your grands. [Laughs.] LFPH: Well, I do. I’ve shared them with my daughters. And my younger brother, now, he is a reader. He knew more about having babies than I was and he was only—what—five or six years old. [Laughs.] He 00:29:00loved to read. Even though he wasn’t reading at the time, but he was looking at the pictures, because the book has pictures in it to show you everything. And I would read and study. Because, you know, then, most of the time even your parents didn’t tell you anything because they figured you didn’t need to know these things. Why? I don’t know. So when I talk to my grandchildren now, I just be for real with ’em, and they be saying, “Grandma, I don’t wanna hear that,” you know, and things like that. And I tell ’em about sex and all that stuff, and what boys do to you to make you say yes, and, “I don’t wanna hear that,” and I keep talkin’. I just keep talkin’. They even get up and walk out the room on me, [laughter] but I don’t fail to 00:30:00tell ’em, because I feel like all children should know. Because, as a matter of fact, these children know more than we ever—they know probably more than I know now.

But a lot of times then, older people failed to tell children, even teenagers. You grew up dumb thinking stork bring babies and wherever, whatever old wives’ tale that they would tell about having babies and sex and all that kind of stuff. They didn’t tell you, so you would end up pregnant at a very young age if you didn’t know any better. And then I didn’t know any better, and I was married at—what—18? Yeah, I was married at 18 when I had my second child, so I 00:31:00still didn’t know anything. [Laughter.] I started reading those books more ’cause I did—I carried them with me, and I started reading, and that’s how I knew the number of days. Because at first, when I ordered the books as a child, I was just getting ’em for the pictures, ’cause I wasn’t reading ’em the first time, but I was looking at the pictures and everything. When I used to give my daughters the book to read, they would say, “I don’t wanna read that book. I don’t want that book.” But then later on, you would catch them reading it, see. But they didn’t wanna read it in front of me, and then— MS: Embarrassed.

LFPH: —I would see ’em reading it, and then I would tell ’em about it. And I can say that they didn’t get pregnant at a young age. ’Cause my oldest daughter was in college when she had her first child, and 00:32:00the rest of ’em was grown. They was in their 20s when they had their first child. So I can say they did know when they conceived.

But with my first one, I didn’t know anything. [Laughter.] I didn’t even know what pregnancy was. So that was an experience. ’Cause after I had my baby, it was like, you know, I have a live doll. By us being six girls, we didn’t have dolls and things. I mean, we didn’t have a lot of toys. The dolls we had was what we called the tea weeds [ph], and we would pull ’em up by the root and it was a bush, and we would turn it upside down. We would wash the dirt out the root, and we would plant [ph] the root, and that would be the hair. And 00:33:00it had on, like, a can-can dress. And that was what we played with as dolls. So after I had my first baby, it was like having my little live doll. And I would sit there and hold her and stare at her.

And, you know, you hear people talk about— I can’t see how anybody would mistreat a child, or even leave a child somewhere. I mean, it’s the attachment that you have this child, and the miraculous way that a child comes into this world, that, you know, when you have that baby, and you look at that baby, and you know that you couldn’t have done this by yourself. It’d have to be something miraculous that 00:34:00happened. I know now they give you these shots and things and put you into labor, but it’s not the same, ’cause a lotta time when they put you into labor, you stay in labor two or three days. And I’d be like, Lord, I wouldn’t wanna stay in labor two or three days. And then if it don’t come when they think it oughta come, they take it out of you.

So I just wish my daughters, the other two, could’ve had a regular delivery, and it would be—it’s a difference. It’s actually a difference, when your body goes through that process that Almighty God has made woman for. But now they have all this new technology and stuff. I don’t oppose technology, but I think they rush things a lot of times 00:35:00when we use all the new ways of—especially when the baby don’t come, unless there’s some kind of difficult or the baby just is not turned the right way or something like that. I can see them goin’ in and taking the baby. But just because they want that baby to come now because they say, “Well, it’s time for you to have it.” Did they count the days like I did? No. They just say, “It’s time,” and they ready to cut it out, because I don’t know if it’s more money for the doctor or whatever it is, but it’s just some processes today as far as having children that I just don’t care for. So, yeah, it’s an experience.

MS: Very good. I love it. Anything else, [laughs] anything come to mind?

LFPH: No, not right now.

F1: You never told her how old you was.

LFPH: That’s not in the picture [ph].

F1: Oh, 00:36:00 okay.

MS: What was that?

F1: I said she didn’t tell you how old she was.

MS: Yes, she did, 62.

F1: I’m talking about when she had the baby.

MS: When she had her first baby?

LFPH: I don’t need to. [Stephens laughs.] I said I was young. That’s enough.

MS: Okay. All right. Is that all you want—is there anything else that pops in your mind that you wanna share?

LFPH: No, it’s impossible [ph].

MS: Okay. Well, I sure thank you. This has been enlightening. [END OF INTERVIEW]