Childbirth 1965


We decided to complete the family while husband was still in the Navy so I pregnant in less than a year after Laurin’s birth. Again no health issues, but husband was to go on his first 6 month cruise. This meant I would be alone in the house. A neighbor showed up at the neighbor across the street, gun in hand because their dog was barking. Pregnancy hormones kicked in and I refused to stay in that house alone. We had to sell and I moved temporarily into an apartment just outside the base. We sold the house basically for what we owed. It had been in foreclosure, and we hadn’t paid much down on the loan. It was an easy sale; basically they took over our payments.
After he left and I stayed in the apartment until closer to the time the baby was due. I chose to go home to my parent’s to have the baby, as there were so many horror stories coming out of the Navy hospital in San Diego. If the husband was deployed the Navy allowed the wife to go home to have the baby and the Navy still paid for this. I traveled up once a month. Never let doctors tell you that babies are unable to maintain sustained movement. Apparently the position of my driving cramped his style.  He kicked me for a solid hour at the beginning of  the drives. That and the stomach flu that my toddler and I had simultaneously were the main events of the pregnancy. We were not supposed to gain much weight in those days and my doctor was overjoyed that I had lost a couple of pounds, I was not amused.
For the last couple of months, I moved to my parent’s house. They stored the furniture in their garage. Testing time; hard to return home as an adult.
This time I had a trio of doctors, so one of them would be available and known to me when the big day arrived. I started having labor pains as I was helping my father do the dinner dishes. I would go over and write down the time and come back. My mother was getting the Laurin, then nineteen months old,  ready for bed. She was more agile that the very pregnant mom. My father asked what I was doing. I told him timing contractions and he wanted my mother to drive me to the hospital right then, so off we went.
We were put in a room and every so often a nurse would come in to check my progress, or lack thereof. She said I couldn’t be in labor I was having too much. All of a sudden I felt something gush out and rang the bell. She lifted the sheet, shooed my mother out and rushed me into the delivery room.
My mother was trying to be cool. She found a magazine. Got out a cigarette and tamped it down and had just lit it when the nurse appeared. “It’s a boy, and is he a big moose,” she said. I had gone from half dilated making slow progress to having a baby in 20 minutes.
Since hubby was deployed into a potential war zone, the Red Cross was designated to deliver the messages, The next day I decided to write a letter, just in case they didn’t do their job. Good thing, as my letter got there first. So much for the Red Cross idea.

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