E's comment

E commented today that he or she would like to hear more about our waiting five years for our first baby. It was a tragedy occurring monthly. There was always hope that this was going to be THE month when it would happen. And every month such a huge disappointment. And it was something you suffered alone with your husband. Friends and family soon became bored with your problems. If you have read this blog from the beginning I am sure I told the story of me as a child telling people 'I am going to America and I am going to have eighteen children.' I really loved babies and children any age. I used to borrow two wonderful girls from good friends. I taught them how to knit and how to sew and we baked bread together. I had no car, so we got on the bus and rode downtown to shop or to eat lunch and I prayed that they would not call me Aunt G aloud so I could pretend they were mine. Sort of sick.

Tommy, as we came to call our MD, found that the walls of my ovum were too impenetrable and some one discovered how to over- come that. Finally Tommy told us that I was pregnant and not to tell our friends until it became evident. The reason he said 'is because when you have so much trouble conceiving there might be trouble later on and it makes it so much harder if everyone knows that you lost a baby.' That did not fill me with security but, never-the-less, the news elated us.

We left the doctor's office in San Francisco and drove to The Burlingame Country Club where we were expected for cocktails. S promised not to breathe a word of our good news to any one. Nobody had told us that drinking was not good for the fetus. So I was standing in one area with a drink in my hand, talking so someone, and looked in another area and there was S surrounded by all my best friends. Everybody was pounding him on the back and hugging him etc. It was evident that he could not keep that secret. I had absolutely no problem until the labor began.

It was early Tuesday morning. My labor pains were ten minutes apart as we drove North to the hospital. Tommy saw me and said you are not ready for me yet. So he went to his office and promised to be back whenever the nurses needed him. The pains were tolerable and the promise that they lasted only so long made it more so. Tommy returned when his office hours were over and he had the nurse check to see how much I had dilated. She said 'not an inch' Tommy said I will give you something to stop the contractions and then you can go home and we will begin all over again.

So we went home and I had a great sleep and next morning we returned to the hospital. Hours and hours of labor pains and no dilating. Finally Friday it had to happen. Tommy and S decided they would go to the movies (something like Seven faces West) and when they returned nothing had happened except for my labor pains and so they delivered me surgically. I had a spinal anesthesia, and I will never forget the feeling when the pains stopped. Nor the first meeting with our son who was the most beautiful baby I had ever seen.