Child Brides
Without Prejudice
We were sold a bill of goods. We were looking for the fantasy, the fairy tale. The White Knight on the white horse charging in to rescue us. We were the Pricesses who had saved our virginity for marriage to the right man. We did all the right things but the reality didn't fit the fairy tale we had been told of as girls. We were child brides, child Mothers, living in Suburban Melbourne in the early 70's, bored, unfulfilled and definitely too young to be married.
I was 17 when I married, almost 18. I was married in Campbelltown, Sydney on the 4th of July 1970. American Independence Day. I don't know what I expected of marriage, that somehow I would be entering a fairy tale, the happily ever after. I was 4 months pregnant and the baby had already started kicking a few days before. My eager hubby to be came up the night before the weddding from Melbourne. I put his hand to my belly and told him the baby was kicking. He was aroused immediately just by my nearness.
The next day we were married in front of 36 friends and family. A lot of whom had made the long journey up from Melbourne. My parents had insisted that I be married from Campbelltown where they were living. My Mother said if I didn't want to marry they could arrange for an abortion. I didn't want one, and I wasn't sure I even wanted to be married, but in those days you had to. The decision was taken out of my hands by him and his Mum and my Mum and Dad. I was too young, too young! But I had to go ahead with it, make it work, somehow.
The honeymoon was a nightmare as we had no money and a car, the old XP station wagon that blew a clutch, on the way back to Melbourne from Newcastle. Newcastle where we stayed one night as that was all we could afford on borrowed money from my Brother In Law, Winn. We both had gastro and vomited out of the doors as we meandered very slowly back to Melbourne. Arriving to a cold flat in the middle of a winter that year, where it snowed in the streets of Melbourne for the first time in memory. Broke, cold and sick.
I quit my job after the man at the grocery store I worked in noticed my burgeoning belly. Stayed home and waited for the baby to be born. Once I answered the door in my dressing Gown and the sales man at the door asked if my Mum was home ! I said no and shut the door. The Westgate bridge went down that year, collapsed killing many. I remember the days as being hot and long towards the November when the baby was due. We lived in a top floor flat in Murrumbeena. No escape from the heat there and my feet. legs and hands started to swell.
I was enormous. Looking not unlike a boat in full sail. The Doctor was concerned that my blood pressure had started to rise in the weeks before the baby was due and put me on fluid tablets and told me to rest. Rest was all I did and I thought I would go mad with the boredom and heat. But finally I went in to labour after going over my due date and a wonderful baby was born to me, and I named her Deborah. She was so little and so was I, a baby myself and when she cried, I cried. I found the enormous responsibilty overwhelming.
I had to walk everywhere with baby as I didn't drive and had no pram for 6 weeks. A lady down the road felt sorry for me and asked if it was Ok that she loaned me a pram. Mum and Dad were supposed to buy us one, but it didn't happen. I felt a bit humiliated borrowing an old pram for a new baby, but carrying her in the heat was distressing for her and me, so I gladly took up the kind ladies offer. I was alone with the baby day in and day out. The only relief coming when my brother George and my hubby arrived home from work.
I was so alone at that time, the TV , the only thing I had for company, Days Of Our Lives had started then and I can remember thinking, was this my future? Was this all I was going to be doing with my life? Watching soaps and caring for a baby.?? All my friends I had met through work were still working. There was no one to talk to, it was just me and a baby and Days Of Our Lives. We were so poor Bob had to take on a second job and for food we relied on George's board money which was $8 a week.
I would shop on a Friday and as my one and only treat would allow myself to buy a plain hamburger and a can of coke and it cost 23 cents for the two. I would wheel Debbie home in the pram and put her down and eat my treat in front of Days Of Our Lives. Sausage meat was the cheapest meat then and George ever now can not eat it as we had it so much then. The first time my husband was violent was at that time. He and George got into an argument, a physical one and I stuck up for George and received a blow to the side of my head.
I was crying my eyes out and said I was leaving and bumped Debbie down the stairs in the pram and walked all the way to my Sister In Laws house, Pauline. She was sharing a flat with two girlfriends in Huntingdale. It took me an hour to walk there and I was crying all the way. But when I arrived I couldn't tell them what had happened, just couldn't. They all seemed so young and carefree. wondering about what to wear to go out that night and where. They were all laughing and having a great time and here was me with a baby.
The girls all made a big fuss of Debbie and as far as they were concerned I had the perfect life. Marriage and a baby to boot, how wonderful. ! I couldn't tell them the pretty picture wasn't what it was cracked up to be. I walked back home with Debbie, slowly, not wanting to go back but I had to. I had nowhere else to go and no one to tell. My parents hadn't wanted me to marry and I could hardly say it was a failure without giving it a go. I had no money, no job, no licence.
He was glad to see me home but from then on, once I had gone back, the violence and the control would escalate. I didn't realise then I was caught in a trap, didn't know how it was going to end in the worst possible way. Didn't know anything. Men didn't hit women in my world. I had no concept of what had just happened, no reference to men hitting women. Had never seen it, never known it. My Dad was a gentle man and the boys in my family were never ever allowed to hit my Sister Jackie and I. Boys didn't hit girls.
I had been left with loads of stretch marks all over my belly and I hated looking at my post baby figure. I was breast feeding and I hated it. My nipples were sore and cracked and bleeding in the end so I put Debbie on the bottle and promptly got pregnant again. I couldn't believe it. So soon! I went to work at KFC nights and weekends when Debbie was 6 weeks old and continued to work until I was 7 months pregnant with Yvette. Only stopping when my belly showed too much in the lovely red and white uniform that KFC provided.
I kept my weight down that pregnancy as I still had baby weight on from Debbie and the Doctor was very strict about me gaining weight. He had been concerned about my blood pressure the last time and made sure I barely gained any weight. The only thing I found worked was to eat hard boiled aggs on crispbread for breakfast and lunch on crispbreads. Then sleep in the afternoons when Debbie napped so I wouldn't feel hungry. I came home with Yvette weighing the same weight I was on my wedding Day, 8st 4 lbs. or 52.6 kilos in metric.
I felt fantastic at that weight and everything that had never fitted me , suddenly fitted me and I was rapt. I had been pregnant almost two years and threw all of my maternity clothes out. I had new underwear and bikinis and jeans and tops, dresses. Bob had just started working for himself and we had money at last. We had moved from the flat to an old Half House in Oakleigh. I still didn't drive and begged my husband to pay for lessons for me. He certainly didn't want to but I talked him around. I was still young enough then to be wheedling and persuasive.
We went up to the Farm that Xmas when Yvette was a month old and Debbie just over 1 year. I had brought Yvette home on Deb's first birthday. George came up and had no money and I gave him some of the money Bob's Mum had paid me for Bob doing some work for her. We owed it to George, anyway. He left and my Hubby came in from the hay baling and I told him. He dragged me up to the bedroom and belted me across the head time and time again and his Mum broke in and told him,
"Don't you dare hit her", he stopped. Ashamed to be caught out.
The next day I vomited after eating just an egg for breakfast and had started bleeding again. After Yvette's birth it just wouldn't stop so I was put in Hospital that day for a D and C and stayed a few days until I was better and allowed out. My Mother in Law and Sister In Law had to take care of the babies and it had been the first time I had been without them for 15 months. I slept all the time and felt really weepy and sad.
George had moved with us into the old house in Oakleigh and had a girlfriend, now. We had a party for his 21st at the house and my Sister Jackie and Winn her hubby came down from Sydney. She had a one year old little girl who was walking and Deb who was 2 months older wasn't. Yvette was only about 8 weeks old and Jackie was shocked at my neglect of her. I was soooo tired all the time and at night would put the baby in the bathroom at the end of the long hall. So I couldn't hear her.
Jackie woke up the first night and went in and Yvette was lying there screaming her lungs out, wet and uncovered. She told me off and I couldn't tell her how tired I was. Just couldn't. I know now looking back that I had post natal depression and pretty severely.
We were sold a bill of goods. We were looking for the fantasy, the fairy tale. The White Knight on the white horse charging in to rescue us. We were the Pricesses who had saved our virginity for marriage to the right man. We did all the right things but the reality didn't fit the fairy tale we had been told of as girls. We were child brides, child Mothers, living in Suburban Melbourne in the early 70's, bored, unfulfilled and definitely too young to be married.
I was 17 when I married, almost 18. I was married in Campbelltown, Sydney on the 4th of July 1970. American Independence Day. I don't know what I expected of marriage, that somehow I would be entering a fairy tale, the happily ever after. I was 4 months pregnant and the baby had already started kicking a few days before. My eager hubby to be came up the night before the weddding from Melbourne. I put his hand to my belly and told him the baby was kicking. He was aroused immediately just by my nearness.
The next day we were married in front of 36 friends and family. A lot of whom had made the long journey up from Melbourne. My parents had insisted that I be married from Campbelltown where they were living. My Mother said if I didn't want to marry they could arrange for an abortion. I didn't want one, and I wasn't sure I even wanted to be married, but in those days you had to. The decision was taken out of my hands by him and his Mum and my Mum and Dad. I was too young, too young! But I had to go ahead with it, make it work, somehow.
The honeymoon was a nightmare as we had no money and a car, the old XP station wagon that blew a clutch, on the way back to Melbourne from Newcastle. Newcastle where we stayed one night as that was all we could afford on borrowed money from my Brother In Law, Winn. We both had gastro and vomited out of the doors as we meandered very slowly back to Melbourne. Arriving to a cold flat in the middle of a winter that year, where it snowed in the streets of Melbourne for the first time in memory. Broke, cold and sick.
I quit my job after the man at the grocery store I worked in noticed my burgeoning belly. Stayed home and waited for the baby to be born. Once I answered the door in my dressing Gown and the sales man at the door asked if my Mum was home ! I said no and shut the door. The Westgate bridge went down that year, collapsed killing many. I remember the days as being hot and long towards the November when the baby was due. We lived in a top floor flat in Murrumbeena. No escape from the heat there and my feet. legs and hands started to swell.
I was enormous. Looking not unlike a boat in full sail. The Doctor was concerned that my blood pressure had started to rise in the weeks before the baby was due and put me on fluid tablets and told me to rest. Rest was all I did and I thought I would go mad with the boredom and heat. But finally I went in to labour after going over my due date and a wonderful baby was born to me, and I named her Deborah. She was so little and so was I, a baby myself and when she cried, I cried. I found the enormous responsibilty overwhelming.
I had to walk everywhere with baby as I didn't drive and had no pram for 6 weeks. A lady down the road felt sorry for me and asked if it was Ok that she loaned me a pram. Mum and Dad were supposed to buy us one, but it didn't happen. I felt a bit humiliated borrowing an old pram for a new baby, but carrying her in the heat was distressing for her and me, so I gladly took up the kind ladies offer. I was alone with the baby day in and day out. The only relief coming when my brother George and my hubby arrived home from work.
I was so alone at that time, the TV , the only thing I had for company, Days Of Our Lives had started then and I can remember thinking, was this my future? Was this all I was going to be doing with my life? Watching soaps and caring for a baby.?? All my friends I had met through work were still working. There was no one to talk to, it was just me and a baby and Days Of Our Lives. We were so poor Bob had to take on a second job and for food we relied on George's board money which was $8 a week.
I would shop on a Friday and as my one and only treat would allow myself to buy a plain hamburger and a can of coke and it cost 23 cents for the two. I would wheel Debbie home in the pram and put her down and eat my treat in front of Days Of Our Lives. Sausage meat was the cheapest meat then and George ever now can not eat it as we had it so much then. The first time my husband was violent was at that time. He and George got into an argument, a physical one and I stuck up for George and received a blow to the side of my head.
I was crying my eyes out and said I was leaving and bumped Debbie down the stairs in the pram and walked all the way to my Sister In Laws house, Pauline. She was sharing a flat with two girlfriends in Huntingdale. It took me an hour to walk there and I was crying all the way. But when I arrived I couldn't tell them what had happened, just couldn't. They all seemed so young and carefree. wondering about what to wear to go out that night and where. They were all laughing and having a great time and here was me with a baby.
The girls all made a big fuss of Debbie and as far as they were concerned I had the perfect life. Marriage and a baby to boot, how wonderful. ! I couldn't tell them the pretty picture wasn't what it was cracked up to be. I walked back home with Debbie, slowly, not wanting to go back but I had to. I had nowhere else to go and no one to tell. My parents hadn't wanted me to marry and I could hardly say it was a failure without giving it a go. I had no money, no job, no licence.
He was glad to see me home but from then on, once I had gone back, the violence and the control would escalate. I didn't realise then I was caught in a trap, didn't know how it was going to end in the worst possible way. Didn't know anything. Men didn't hit women in my world. I had no concept of what had just happened, no reference to men hitting women. Had never seen it, never known it. My Dad was a gentle man and the boys in my family were never ever allowed to hit my Sister Jackie and I. Boys didn't hit girls.
I had been left with loads of stretch marks all over my belly and I hated looking at my post baby figure. I was breast feeding and I hated it. My nipples were sore and cracked and bleeding in the end so I put Debbie on the bottle and promptly got pregnant again. I couldn't believe it. So soon! I went to work at KFC nights and weekends when Debbie was 6 weeks old and continued to work until I was 7 months pregnant with Yvette. Only stopping when my belly showed too much in the lovely red and white uniform that KFC provided.
I kept my weight down that pregnancy as I still had baby weight on from Debbie and the Doctor was very strict about me gaining weight. He had been concerned about my blood pressure the last time and made sure I barely gained any weight. The only thing I found worked was to eat hard boiled aggs on crispbread for breakfast and lunch on crispbreads. Then sleep in the afternoons when Debbie napped so I wouldn't feel hungry. I came home with Yvette weighing the same weight I was on my wedding Day, 8st 4 lbs. or 52.6 kilos in metric.
I felt fantastic at that weight and everything that had never fitted me , suddenly fitted me and I was rapt. I had been pregnant almost two years and threw all of my maternity clothes out. I had new underwear and bikinis and jeans and tops, dresses. Bob had just started working for himself and we had money at last. We had moved from the flat to an old Half House in Oakleigh. I still didn't drive and begged my husband to pay for lessons for me. He certainly didn't want to but I talked him around. I was still young enough then to be wheedling and persuasive.
We went up to the Farm that Xmas when Yvette was a month old and Debbie just over 1 year. I had brought Yvette home on Deb's first birthday. George came up and had no money and I gave him some of the money Bob's Mum had paid me for Bob doing some work for her. We owed it to George, anyway. He left and my Hubby came in from the hay baling and I told him. He dragged me up to the bedroom and belted me across the head time and time again and his Mum broke in and told him,
"Don't you dare hit her", he stopped. Ashamed to be caught out.
The next day I vomited after eating just an egg for breakfast and had started bleeding again. After Yvette's birth it just wouldn't stop so I was put in Hospital that day for a D and C and stayed a few days until I was better and allowed out. My Mother in Law and Sister In Law had to take care of the babies and it had been the first time I had been without them for 15 months. I slept all the time and felt really weepy and sad.
George had moved with us into the old house in Oakleigh and had a girlfriend, now. We had a party for his 21st at the house and my Sister Jackie and Winn her hubby came down from Sydney. She had a one year old little girl who was walking and Deb who was 2 months older wasn't. Yvette was only about 8 weeks old and Jackie was shocked at my neglect of her. I was soooo tired all the time and at night would put the baby in the bathroom at the end of the long hall. So I couldn't hear her.
Jackie woke up the first night and went in and Yvette was lying there screaming her lungs out, wet and uncovered. She told me off and I couldn't tell her how tired I was. Just couldn't. I know now looking back that I had post natal depression and pretty severely.
