1952 U.S, explodes first hydrogen bomb in pacific.
1953. Eliz 11 crowned.
My labor started around 6:30 on a Saturday morning, just after Hal had left for work. I lay on my side in bed, watching Monsieur le Pussy Cat’s paws darting in and out beneath the crack under the bedroom door.
I got up and wandered down the hall to the kitchen to make a peanut butter sandwich and a cup of tea and found the cramps interesting.
“Why do women make such a fuss about little twinges like this? “ I asked the cat.
I called my sister-in- law, Dodie, who was excited and said my brother Bob would drive me to the hospital when it was time.
“Uh, Dodie, we live only three blocks from the hospital. I’m sure we could walk.”
Dodie wouldn’t hear of it and phoned Bob at work, many miles away, to tell him to stay close to the phone.
I called Hal and told him to stay where he was and said I’d call if the twinges were closer together than the present eight- or- so minutes.
Dodie called for regular updates and then each time called Bob, who had to rush from one end of the warehouse to the phone to find out nothing had changed.
In the early afternoon, the spacing was a more regular four minutes but those were no longer twinges and I stopped thinking about peanut butter sandwiches.
When Hal got home at three thirty, I was making a serious attempt to break the fireplace mantel in two.
“Call Dodie, “ I gasped.
Bob made amazing time and reached our place quickly for the one- minute drive to the hospital but despite the haste the baby took his time.
Mark was born ten hours later, just after one o’clock on Sunday morning. Although the contractions ran together, my labor hadn’t progressed. A student nurse sat with me and we listened to a couple of screaming women down the hall.
I wondered how they managed the extra energy.
I was given a complete anaesthetic for the forceps delivery and didn’t see my baby for several hours.
I was too naive to ask why the use of forceps and I'm guessing he was in posterior position, as were most of my other babies.
When the nurse brought him in the next morning I couldn’t believe I was a mother. There was this squirming seven pound one ounce little stranger who had found room inside me for all that time. He had enormous owl eyes and the nurses spotted signs of red hair resembling a halo on his seemingly bald head. He looked perfectly content to be on the outside at last and I fell instantly and permanently in love.
I can’t remember why but I chose not to breastfeed. No one in the hospital ever made me feel guilty about my choice, although most mothers did breastfeed. My mother-in law considered it her duty to comment that if she hadn’t breastfed she wouldn’t have felt like a real mother and I refrained from snapping back, “Motherhood does not depend on the mammary glands.”
That was the only negative moment.
We had after all, the pressure cooker. I mixed the Dextra Maltose and water, bottled it, stuck the nipples inside the cap-covered bottle and cooked the whole thing for, I think, about seven minutes. Yes, there were times when I forgot I had used the last bottle and had to mix up a new batch at three in the morning.
We were parents.
