The life of 70-year-old Chang Su-yu (張素玉) marks a significant chapter in the nation’s history of midwifery. Starting in the profession when she was 16, Chang is now the nation’s oldest active midwife and has delivered more than 3,000 babies.
A vocational high school graduate, Chang passed the general examination for midwifery and started her long career. Back then, Chang acted more like an apprentice, tagging along with an experienced midwife to watch and learn on the job. Chang said she would ride a bicycle and go along with her supervising midwife from village to village to help deliver babies, rain or shine.
One day, Chang was asked to deliver the baby by herself.
“I was nervous and scared and felt goosebumps on my scalp,” she said. “I forgot to check if it was a boy or girl, but I never forgot the heavy feeling of holding the child in my hands.”
The first baby she delivered is now 54 years old. Chang established her own clinic in 1973. She recalled delivering babies from three women within 30 minutes. In those days, the clinic could expect between 20 and 30 babies a month, she said.
Without the assistance of ultrasounds or fetal monitors, Chang said she could determine the gender of babies by listening to the heartbeats.
“The heartbeats of boys sounded powerful yet slow, and the hearts beat about 135 times per minute,” she said. “A girl’s heartbeat, on the other hand, is gentle and fast. Their hearts beat about 140 times per minute.”
She said that she could listen to the baby’s heartbeats a couple of times and come to a pretty accurate prediction of its gender.
Not all the deliveries went successfully. Chang remembered delivering a baby with an exposed intestine. She had to cover the baby with a disinfected swab and quickly sent it to hospital. It was a pleasant surprise, she said, when years later a man showed up at her clinic and introduced himself as “the baby with an exposed intestine.”
Another surprise had a romantic twist. Chang said she had not met the fiance of her second son until it was time for the two families to arrange for the wedding. When the two families met, the wife’s mother recognized Chang right away as the midwife who helped deliver her daughter some 20 years before.
Recounting her experiences in the midwife profession, Chang said first-time mothers generally have to endure 16 hours of labor. Those expecting their second or third child may endure 10 hours. The midwives, she said, have to stand by their clients’ sides during this time. The task gets more challenging now as she gets older, but she will hang on until the end, she said.
Chang said she planned to donate an old obstetric delivery bed and some of the old tools she used to deliver babies to any organization that would display them at an exhibition.
Meanwhile, Chiang Hsien-hou (姜謝好), the nation’s oldest retired midwife, is now 96 years-old. Chiang became a midwife when she was 24. She delivered more than 20,000 babies over the past 50 years.
One of the babies she delivered was former vice president Annette Lu (呂秀蓮). Aside from Lu, Chiang also delivered other members of the Lu family, including Lu’s brother’s five children.
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