When Baby Comes Home
Without Prejudice
I was just turned 18 when I brought my first baby home.
Lulled by the Hospital routine, I was convinced I would fine with a new born baby.
I was young, fit, enthusiastic and had the best thing in the world, a longed for baby.
My husband at the time picked me up and dropped me and baby at home in our top floor flat in Murrumbeena.
And then went back to work.
The baby didn't stop crying all day and by the time my then husband and boarder brother came home I was sobbing too.
I had changed baby, fed baby with sore nipples, winded baby and still she would not stop crying.
The " boys" had tidied the flat in anticipation of our triumphant homecoming, baby and I.
But I found the dirty washing hidden in my brothers wardrobe, tons of it and we had no washing machine. That washing haunted me all day. We could afford neither washing machine nor laundromat and the thought of all that work was enough to tip me over into a depression I had never known before.
But more than the washing depressing me was the thought that for the next twenty years I was responsible for this kid. The kid that would not shut up.
That feeling was overwhelming. This was not an adopted cat or dog, this was a little human being. And I couldn't park this kid anywhere. Forget about it.
Every breath she took was up to me.
Every happiness, injury, feed, bath was up to me.
In the Hospital I had been cosseted and protected. Babies were kept in the nursery. Her first bath was in a clinical clean environment. I was surrounded by nurses who were casual and practiced.
The thought of her first bath at home filled me with fear. What if the water was too hot and I scalded her ?
Cloth nappies and protective sheets piled up as she wet and puked and I had then to wash them by hand in the bath.
I was overwhelmed with responsibility and fear.
The flat was hot and airless. The temperature climbed to 100 degrees in the shade and there was no shade except for Venetian blinds that I had taken down and cleaned in a pre baby frenzy before her birth.
I will never forget the pre baby cleaning frenzy I went into beforehand.
My then husband would come home to no dinner and ask where the bin was, now . Moving furniture around had become my new passion and I did it in the boiling hot weather tirelessly.
I moved the kitchen furniture around, the lounge room, heavily pregnant and I just didn't care.
The Sunday before baby was born on the Wednesday, 3 whole days late, we had all gone to Elwood beach. I felt like a whale. Lumbering along in the only dress that still fitted me. I was not used to my body being so out of shape, it felt alien to me and striated purple marks decorated my naked thighs and belly a shame to me under my old dress.
I had been eight stone four and five months pregnant when I married at 17, proud of my body and fitness. I had skinny legs and arms and that body was what I was used to, always enjoying swimming and running or walking.
Suddenly I had big fat swollen ankles and feet and my blood pressure soared every day I went over, as I waited for the birth of my longed for baby.
The Doctor, a little Jewish heart Specialist told me to rest and take the fluid pills he prescribed.
I had put on three stone in weight and he was alarmed at the weight gain and my fat swollen fingers and feet. Neuralgia had set in down the side of my face causing great pain in my jaw and yet I stayed upright, feeling guilty if I sat down.
When I had a " show " a bloody plug of mucous on my distended knickers, plopping out from my body I was thrilled. I said nothing to anyone as that night we had to go meet my Dad at the Airport. I told my Dad rather shyly I thought I was in labour.
He was picking up a car and driving back to Sydney and hugged me and wished me well.
On the way home we were nearly killed in a traffic accident, a driver running a red light but I was calm.
I changed into my child bride dressing gown and readied myself for Hospital.
I was excited that things had begun. The mild contractions were literally nothing and I thought that was it. They wouldn't get worse, would they ?
What a naive little child I was.
At eleven o'clock I entered Oakleigh District Hospital, sixty beds maximum and they had already reached maximum. I was packed into the labour ward beside a Greek Woman who screamed all night until the Nurses told her off.
They told her there was a child next to her, me, and I wasn't carrying on.
They shaved me and gave me an enema and perched on top of a stainless steel bed pan which was as cold as ice I had never been more embarrassed in my life. The old nurse did draw a curtain around me as I shat into the bowl and satisfied with my bodies offerings she took the bedpan away and left the room.
Immediately I realised I needed to either vomit or shit so I eased my self off the bed and found a toilet. I vomited into a bucket as my body let go diaorrhea from the other end and the Nurse knocked on the locked door and asked if I was alright.
" No" I moaned and managed to unlock the door.
She helped me back on to the bed and left me again and I cried in fear at the pains that were gripping me.
I watched the big clock on the wall edge minute by minute through a Red Sea of wracking pain. I no longer heard the Greek lady as she still screamed. It felt like her voice was coming from very far away.
Nine am came and went, then 10 am and at lunch time Doctor Martin came in and explained I was getting nowhere and told me he was giving me a procedure called an epidural. I had never heard of it but by this time didn't care.
I lay as still as I could. A felt like a big fat animal, as I was rolled on to my side, like a cow I had become.
Suddenly there was sensation and no pain.
I pushed her out, this alien little being from my body and he had given me an episiotomy that I felt and stitched me up which I also felt, every stitch hurt and burned. I had never felt such pain on my most delicate area.
She was a big baby for a first. 7 lb ten ounces and she had fluid and so did I.
But she was beautiful.
The good thing was they then took her away until the next day and I could eat and rest. I felt like I could eat a huge steak dinner.
The Greek lady still hadn't given birth but I was placed in a four bed dormitory far away from her so I could no longer hear her screaming.
I slep that night in my clean lawn nightie with its delicate smocking stretched across my swollen breasts barely contained in my cotton maternity bra, the hooks and eyes down the front and packed with nursing pads.
Between my legs was a maternity pad that was as large as a towel.
They brought my baby the next morning after my breakfast and they brought me the wrong one.
" That not my baby " I said.
I remember the look the old nurse gave me as if I was nuts.
" My baby had a suntanned face " I said.
Debbie as she was to become had a little jaundice at birth and the colour made her look suntanned.
The bemused nurse indulged me and unwrapped the baby and right enough it was the wrong baby. She then returned to the Nursery and handed me the right one.
Dr Martin called in to do the circumcision and I informed him I had had a female not a male.
He laughed as did I.
The first time I was allowed out of bed I almost fainted but was determined to make it to a toilet.
I was not comfortable with cold bedpans, shy as I was. And I needed a shower and to wash my sweaty hair.
To be continued............
I was just turned 18 when I brought my first baby home.
Lulled by the Hospital routine, I was convinced I would fine with a new born baby.
I was young, fit, enthusiastic and had the best thing in the world, a longed for baby.
My husband at the time picked me up and dropped me and baby at home in our top floor flat in Murrumbeena.
And then went back to work.
The baby didn't stop crying all day and by the time my then husband and boarder brother came home I was sobbing too.
I had changed baby, fed baby with sore nipples, winded baby and still she would not stop crying.
The " boys" had tidied the flat in anticipation of our triumphant homecoming, baby and I.
But I found the dirty washing hidden in my brothers wardrobe, tons of it and we had no washing machine. That washing haunted me all day. We could afford neither washing machine nor laundromat and the thought of all that work was enough to tip me over into a depression I had never known before.
But more than the washing depressing me was the thought that for the next twenty years I was responsible for this kid. The kid that would not shut up.
That feeling was overwhelming. This was not an adopted cat or dog, this was a little human being. And I couldn't park this kid anywhere. Forget about it.
Every breath she took was up to me.
Every happiness, injury, feed, bath was up to me.
In the Hospital I had been cosseted and protected. Babies were kept in the nursery. Her first bath was in a clinical clean environment. I was surrounded by nurses who were casual and practiced.
The thought of her first bath at home filled me with fear. What if the water was too hot and I scalded her ?
Cloth nappies and protective sheets piled up as she wet and puked and I had then to wash them by hand in the bath.
I was overwhelmed with responsibility and fear.
The flat was hot and airless. The temperature climbed to 100 degrees in the shade and there was no shade except for Venetian blinds that I had taken down and cleaned in a pre baby frenzy before her birth.
I will never forget the pre baby cleaning frenzy I went into beforehand.
My then husband would come home to no dinner and ask where the bin was, now . Moving furniture around had become my new passion and I did it in the boiling hot weather tirelessly.
I moved the kitchen furniture around, the lounge room, heavily pregnant and I just didn't care.
The Sunday before baby was born on the Wednesday, 3 whole days late, we had all gone to Elwood beach. I felt like a whale. Lumbering along in the only dress that still fitted me. I was not used to my body being so out of shape, it felt alien to me and striated purple marks decorated my naked thighs and belly a shame to me under my old dress.
I had been eight stone four and five months pregnant when I married at 17, proud of my body and fitness. I had skinny legs and arms and that body was what I was used to, always enjoying swimming and running or walking.
Suddenly I had big fat swollen ankles and feet and my blood pressure soared every day I went over, as I waited for the birth of my longed for baby.
The Doctor, a little Jewish heart Specialist told me to rest and take the fluid pills he prescribed.
I had put on three stone in weight and he was alarmed at the weight gain and my fat swollen fingers and feet. Neuralgia had set in down the side of my face causing great pain in my jaw and yet I stayed upright, feeling guilty if I sat down.
When I had a " show " a bloody plug of mucous on my distended knickers, plopping out from my body I was thrilled. I said nothing to anyone as that night we had to go meet my Dad at the Airport. I told my Dad rather shyly I thought I was in labour.
He was picking up a car and driving back to Sydney and hugged me and wished me well.
On the way home we were nearly killed in a traffic accident, a driver running a red light but I was calm.
I changed into my child bride dressing gown and readied myself for Hospital.
I was excited that things had begun. The mild contractions were literally nothing and I thought that was it. They wouldn't get worse, would they ?
What a naive little child I was.
At eleven o'clock I entered Oakleigh District Hospital, sixty beds maximum and they had already reached maximum. I was packed into the labour ward beside a Greek Woman who screamed all night until the Nurses told her off.
They told her there was a child next to her, me, and I wasn't carrying on.
They shaved me and gave me an enema and perched on top of a stainless steel bed pan which was as cold as ice I had never been more embarrassed in my life. The old nurse did draw a curtain around me as I shat into the bowl and satisfied with my bodies offerings she took the bedpan away and left the room.
Immediately I realised I needed to either vomit or shit so I eased my self off the bed and found a toilet. I vomited into a bucket as my body let go diaorrhea from the other end and the Nurse knocked on the locked door and asked if I was alright.
" No" I moaned and managed to unlock the door.
She helped me back on to the bed and left me again and I cried in fear at the pains that were gripping me.
I watched the big clock on the wall edge minute by minute through a Red Sea of wracking pain. I no longer heard the Greek lady as she still screamed. It felt like her voice was coming from very far away.
Nine am came and went, then 10 am and at lunch time Doctor Martin came in and explained I was getting nowhere and told me he was giving me a procedure called an epidural. I had never heard of it but by this time didn't care.
I lay as still as I could. A felt like a big fat animal, as I was rolled on to my side, like a cow I had become.
Suddenly there was sensation and no pain.
I pushed her out, this alien little being from my body and he had given me an episiotomy that I felt and stitched me up which I also felt, every stitch hurt and burned. I had never felt such pain on my most delicate area.
She was a big baby for a first. 7 lb ten ounces and she had fluid and so did I.
But she was beautiful.
The good thing was they then took her away until the next day and I could eat and rest. I felt like I could eat a huge steak dinner.
The Greek lady still hadn't given birth but I was placed in a four bed dormitory far away from her so I could no longer hear her screaming.
I slep that night in my clean lawn nightie with its delicate smocking stretched across my swollen breasts barely contained in my cotton maternity bra, the hooks and eyes down the front and packed with nursing pads.
Between my legs was a maternity pad that was as large as a towel.
They brought my baby the next morning after my breakfast and they brought me the wrong one.
" That not my baby " I said.
I remember the look the old nurse gave me as if I was nuts.
" My baby had a suntanned face " I said.
Debbie as she was to become had a little jaundice at birth and the colour made her look suntanned.
The bemused nurse indulged me and unwrapped the baby and right enough it was the wrong baby. She then returned to the Nursery and handed me the right one.
Dr Martin called in to do the circumcision and I informed him I had had a female not a male.
He laughed as did I.
The first time I was allowed out of bed I almost fainted but was determined to make it to a toilet.
I was not comfortable with cold bedpans, shy as I was. And I needed a shower and to wash my sweaty hair.
To be continued............
