h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Ta for the link Sho, will have a nose around a bit later on.

Hello girls!
WARNING! LONG POST ALERT!
I meant to read this journal weeks go but I've not been online much due to my running around after Andrew 24/7 and moving house preparations...

What a beautiful if tiring experience for you, LSF!
Did you friend ask you to be Godmother, after all that?
There's something about shring a birth, that connects you spiritually I think.

My experiences range from to with my births, unlike Sho, I always wanted children, from being a little girl playing with dolls & dolls houses, I couldn't wait to have babies of my own.
I married at 19 and wanted to come off the Pill straight away {} but my hubby was much more practical and said we ought to wait a few years & pay up the mortgage {it was only £3,500 our first house, in 1974} so we paid it up in 1976 and my best friend had her first baby & I started ngging him so I came off the Pill. I never got another period, I fell straight away.
At 7 months I got up in the middle of the night to go to the loo, but I felt something running down my legs, I thought I'd peed myself but it was my waters, so I woke hubby and he drove me to hospital, who promptly sent me in an ambulance to the maternity home. They sent him home, and told me to go to sleep {after padding me with maternity sanitary towels}. At 10am, shift change, they wheeled me to a private room and stuck a drip in my arm, not even telling me what it was for, but I remember a wonderful nurse coming and sitting with me and holding my hand. I kept asking for them to send for my hubby as I was really frightened, I hadn't even started my pre-natal classes.
When the drip had emptied, someone else came in & examined me, including an internal.
Then they set up another drip and tiold me to "get a move on" as the shifts were about to change again {it was 5pm by then}.

At 5.30, I got the urge to push & all I remember is the nurse at my side, holding my hand and telling me everything would be alright, and then I heard the door shut.....and my firstborn son was gone, I never even got a glimpse. I looked at the nurse and asked her if the baby was dead and she nodded. I asked her if it was a boy, {I'd felt it was} and she nodded again and she cried. I asked her if she would go call my husband and she left, only then did I cry.

I will never get over the way I was treated that day, if it wasn't for the nurse holding my hand I'd have gone mad.
My hubby arrived at 6pm but I was numb with grief and pain, he didn't even want to talk about it, he wasn't there, he didn't feel it.
We never did talk about it.
I only found out years later that the hospital had asked him if we wanted the baby's body for burial, but he refused, he said I couldn't take a funeral, so my baby was buried in an unmarked grave with an old lady who had died that day.

1977 was a bad year, 3 months later Elvis died and that night, Laura was conceived.
She was born on May 13th, 1978, hubby stayed with me for this one, and aprt from a slight tear requiring 2 stitches which the midwife said was "not worth waking a doctor for" - she stitched me up herself, with no anesthetic, and when I screamed, she told me to be quiet, because "there's mothers and babies asleep!" and even hubby shushed me, when I screamed again when she did the second stitch.


But when I was finally handed my gorgeous daughter, I thought I'd died nd gone to Heaven, I was so happy, I wouldn't swop that feeling for any other memory in my whole life, at last I was complete, I ws a Mum! There she was, her little button nose and gorgeous blue eyes, looking up at me, and she grasped my finger and I never felt such an overwhelming bond or such a rush of love......

18 months later I had Helen - she was half a pound heavier but no tear this time, I practically bounced off the bed and ate a hearty lunch, I ws a much more confident mother this time around and Hfh was a happy, contented baby. She arrived at lunchtime and has been hungry ever since!

I had a miscarriage in 1982, but the month I'd have been due, I fell for Allan, I felt my first contraction at 2.20am and hubs rushed me to the maternity home, strange how he panicked, when with both girls labours he'd been so calm, but Allan was born at 3.15am, when I arrived at the maternity hospital I was already 9cm dilated and the midwife couldn't get her gloves on fast enough, she ended up throwing them against the wall as I was already pushing....as soon as I'd climbed on the table! No time for gas & air even, totally pain-free and painless. One more push and there he was, all 8lbs 7ozs of him! My biggest, fastest, baby - he's over 6' tall now, blond hair, blue eyes.

10 years later, and with another partner, I had Andrew.
The only baby of mine to go overdue, they decided as I was an "elderly primiv" that they should start me off.
When the midwife stuck a drip in the back of my hand {it was only saline, not medication} I started getting fearsome pains, like I was being ripped asunder inside, but although I was offered pethedine {which I'd only had with Laura, and she was born asleep, and slept for 24 hours solid} I refused & tried to cope with gas and air.
I as expeting another delivery like Alln's, and I couldn't be more wrong.
Another midwife came in & gave me a message that my sister had phoned and I asked her if she could ring her back and ask her to come in, and be with me {Andrew's dad was working} so it seemed like just a few minutes later when the door opened and in walked my sister in cap and gown and I was never more grateful to see anyone in my whole life.....she sat with me, held my hand, encouraged me, stroked my forehead, told me how well I was doing {this was her first birth-witness, yet she instinctively did everything right} and when he was born, I was so exhausted she held him first and she said he winked at her. I asked her to be his Godmother.

I wanted to be with Laura when she gave birth to Liam but the labour was quick and easy and they didn't call for me.

I hope I get to be a birth witness, my sister says it was better than giving birth!

I apologize for the long post, but once I started

Caerwynn, "One of my tasks was to bag up the placentas to send to one of the large cosmetic houses"
Now I'm asking, as well!!!!!!!!

Thanks for sharing your birth experiences AGB.

I haven't been asked to be godmother (I'm not a Christian), but I do feel like there is a much stronger friendship between us now - I feel blessed to have shared such a miracle.