My son was 17 on New Year's Eve but I was still wiped out with a virus and awful side effects of treatment, I should write a retrospective post for him to keep it fair, should they ever read this.
But today it's my eldest, though third born, baby's 19th birthday today. My labour and her delivery weren't the easiest. She was 12 days late and my waters broke with a loud pop just as my husband Rob was setting off for work. We'd rented a pager since he was a gardener and not available by phone (no mobiles back then kids). Typical, never got to use it!
Labour apparently didn't start properly for 5 hours then stopped, was accelerated painfully with drugs. I got knackered, she got distressed and the scissors came out (if you don't know chaps please don't ask). Two hours of pushing later out came my beautiful 9lb 2.5 oz little girl. Looking around inquisitively, finger in her rosebud mouth. I lost a lot of blood and was touch and go for a while over a transfusion and was so ill I didn't even have strength to wash my face or brush my teeth, they even had to wake me when she cried so I could feed her. They wouldn't move me from the delivery room, it was another 12 hours before I got to the ward.
We spent another night at Pilgrim then about a week in the Johnson maternity wing in Spalding, it's not there now :-(
I had to take her back to a cold, damp, mouldy, static caravan. The council decided to modernise the remaining tenanted of 12 houses over christmas. I had to pack our entire house up 8 months pregnant, most of it went into storage obviously. Then move back into the house with a month old baby. They had a snagging list as long as me, electrician just wandered in my living room while I was breastfeeding, as if it was still a work site. I was not happy. I made them re-sand every splintery door frame and restain them. There's no way my baby was getting splinters from their shoddy work, neither were we doing it for the huge rent rise. She slept 8 hours at a month. I woke before her and panicked and made Rob check her, convinced she'd died or something serious at the least. After losing her brothers I couldn't bear it again. By 2 months she slept 12 hours. She was a giggly, happy, clever, joy of a child to love and impossibly I love her even more as an adult.
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3 comments:
Beautiful words...T x
For a beautiful person. People say she looks like me, though she has all the improved bits to her figure, height and face from her dad's side. I read through all their primary school reports and she's always described as I saw her, lovely words from teachers about her personality. Same for my son, who was a deep thinker even as a small boy, best at science. It was a lovely read last night and I went to sleep with a smile on my face!
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