Celia - it's a girl - think pink 1976

It's been less than two days but know, just know I'm pregnant. I have my son Toby, living a reasonably comfortable life in a rented modern bungalow on the Chalvedon Estate in Pitsea, Essex. And we have lots of friends and my parents have moved just up the road so life is very sweet.


And so happy to be having another baby. I'm never more happy than when pregnant, such a fantastic state of mind, so calm and at peace with the world. I've never had any sickness with either pregnancy maybe because I don't treat it like an illness. Don't agree with unnecessary caesarian sections or epidurals. Why have a baby at all if you're not prepared to put in the effort? So little in respect of what you're creating.


Iknow everything about childbirth now (yeah right), having been through it before so am less religious with exercises and breathing techniques. I'm also a lot more tired than in the last pregnancy but put that down to having an energetic little boy to look after. I'm already quite a size, much bigger than last time and carrying differently so suspect I may be having a girl which would be perfect.
I still have to keep having blood tests every week, which is irksome and reminded of this by my doctor every time I have to go to get them done. Dismayed to find I'll have to be in hospital for a fortnight again after giving birth, this is terrible as don't want to leave my son at such a sensitive time, concerned he may feel jealousy towards this new interloper in the family.

The hospital ask if I'd like to know the sex of my baby but say no, prefer to wait. Determined not to go in until the very last moment this time, as the waiting about in delivery rooms is irksome. On what turns out to be the last ante-natal hospital visit they tell me I've started labour. And not to drive. This I ignore. I drive to Bill's mother to see my son, she is looking after him, then get back in the old Rover and drive quite calmly to a chemist in Pitsea to get the necessary toiletries for my hospital stay. She is appalled and tried to physically stop me but am adamant.

I have already spent a frantic couple of weeks 'nesting' getting our home ready for our new arrival. Bill rings the hospital and tells them I'm getting pains every 2 minutes. 'Bring her in' with added urgency 'now'. As soon as I get to the hospital the pains stop. This is so maddening. So both of us are getting a bit fractitious with the hanging about. In the morning I'm given an enema to speed things along. It works.

Next thing I know I'm in the delivery room. Bill is getting anxious, he's got an appointment with the bank manager at 2pm and can I hurry up. I tell him to fuck off. Thankfully he doesn't.

The kind young female doctor is leaning over me smiling, saying that she won't have to cut me. This is great news.

The baby's head appears, with the umbilical cord wrapped around it. Bill later tells me her face is a frightening blueish-purple. He leans over me wanting to throw up aware of the seriousness. All of a sudden I'm aware of a terrible, searing pain as she's pulled out of me very quickly. I tear from base to apex. I remember making some sort of deep, gurgling scream. My baby is rushed off to a ventilator and for what seemed like an eternity we didn't hear her cry. It was only a minute but my God, when she did cry it was the most joyous sound in the world, a miracle, such an overwhelming relief.

It's a girl, which for a while seemed secondary to the fact that she was just alive. She's put in my welcoming arms and I float on air. It's been an ordeal but it's over now, thank goodness. Bill, elated, goes off to his appointment.

I'm in a side room a few hours later. There are two male figures hanging around outside the glazed door. She looks down at me as she's stitching me up and questions irately 'which one IS your husband, Mrs Gibson?' Bill and Bob have come back. They are politely shown out.

They come back later, I'm in the ward now, tucked up and stitched up, with my precious miracle, beautiful baby by my side. I can't stop looking at her, it's a girl, it's a girl. I cry with the wonder and joy of her. She's 10lbs in weight, the biggest baby born that week. And picked for the baby bathing demonstration, which always causes jealousy and resentment amongst the other mothers.

I get on the scales at the hospital a few days later, tell them the scales are wrong. It's showing 12stone. Can't be right, I've had the baby now, all the water's have gone. Feel quite belligerent about it. Will be determined to get back to a size 10 when I get home.

Nan, my mother-in-law, brings my son Toby to me and his new sister in the ward. So looking forward to seeing him again. But as they approach my bed he turns his head away, clinging on to her. I'm absolutely devastated by this painful rejection. When they've gone cry inconsolably for hours. I'm stuck in the hospital for another week and a half and they refuse to let me go. Desperate to get home and get my son back.

Bill and Bob visit again, they show me a folder, 'look' they say, 'it's a new job, in Ilford'. 'Look' I say, not too interested at the time in the contract 'you've got a daughter'.


We finally get to leave and so excited to be going home with my new family addition. Though mindful I have some work to do with Toby, making sure he's not excluded.


The first thing I notice is footprints on the ceiling and up the walls. 'How did they get there' I ask Bill. It was him and Bob celebrating apparently. I laugh. But never did find out how they got there.


At around this time, John Wells, a friend of ours, has a business that's gone bust: it's called Bionic Plumbing. But he still has a full-page advertisement in Yellow Pages for 24-hour emergency plumbing, it is the first of it's kind and a money spinner. The ad has cost a fortune and a pity to waste it so we have the number transferred to our home numbers.


Bill and his friend Bob Starling leave their well-paid London jobs and take an office in Phoenix House in South Benfleet. They start up a plumbing business. The first thing they do is go out and buy a couple of jags, then sit in their offices in their pin-striped suits and smoke cigars. Think they've used Bodie and Doyle as a business model, skidding around in vans all day long. They take on as secretary a friend of mine called Pat. She has a weight problem and very sympathetic as she explained it's glandular apparently. Her size doesn't deter her from making and wearing outrageous outfits and she's also witty and very personable. I like her very much. She's a good friend.


Bob tells me that's bollocks, she's just a greedy fat cow. Her 'glandular problem' is due in part to the close proximity of the Wimpy bar. He watches in disgust as she wolfs down several burgers for breakfast followed by a couple of doughnuts.


The business seems to be doing quite well, they take on plumbers and buy several vans. The yellow pages ad produces masses of work. The phone is going non-stop, all through the night, sometimes breast-feeding, taking down customer details at the same time. Life is more stressful this time around, my milk dries up after a month so have to put Celia on the bottle.


Pat and I religiously follow the Mao clinic diet. I lose 3 stone in six months, she loses 5lbs. Maybe Bob's right.


Life is lovely now I have my son back and Celia my little girl is adorable. Such a good baby, with a lovely happy disposition. And my mother is overjoyed it's a girl. The jealousy I'd anticipated from Toby didn't materialize thankfully. We spent many happy hours in the park or walking for hours, putting Toby on the seat on the Silver Cross pram. Now I had a bungalow using the pram was much easier. I'd walk for miles, load the pram shopping tray with the weekly supermarket food shop in Basildon town centre, then walk back eating much of it as we walked. The weight must have been staggering. But I was young and fit and it was good for Toby and Celia to get plenty of fresh air.


Bill and I settled on Celia for a name. I envisaged a tall, willowy blonde when she grew up. I knew she would be tall because her body and legs were both very long and that pleased me. And two icons of the '60's had the same name. Celia Birtwell the artist and Celia Hammond the model. My joy was compounded many years later while researching my family history, to find my grandmother's middle name was Celia too.


Celia's a delightful baby, with an engaging though quite demanding personality. She made everyone laugh with her gurgling throaty chuckle. And loved her food. The excitement when I approached with food was always demonstrated with fast twirling chubby fists, outstretched legs kicking wildly, practically forcing herself out of her high-chair.


Back in the seventies we all tried to raise our babies the textbook way but there were interlopers such as both the Mums who would sneak goodies through. When I was pregnant much fuss was starting to be made about mothers smoking during pregnancy. I smoked slightly more than I did when carrying Toby and was warned I would have a small baby. I have to say in retrospect I wouldn't have wanted to give birth to a baby any bigger.


I would eagerly forage for pretty remnants and trimmings in Pitsea market to make Celia pretty dresses, catsuits and matching hats. When I wasn't sewing I would be thrashing away on the knitting machine. I made everything, even the pram bedding and coverlets and their bedding. So although we didn't have much money both Toby and Celia were stylishly dressed. Though Mum was slightly disapproving of some of the fashion colours I used. I would pick up secondhand Fisher Price toys and do them up and paint murals on their walls. I am truly in heaven and love dressing Celia up and she loves it too, endlessly posing. She was always a natural.


I look back on those times when they were little, as being some of the happiest of my life, just the three of us. We never had any money to spend but it didn't matter. We didn't see much of Bill, he was always working and went out for beers in the evening quite a lot as well. They kept borrowing more and more from the very friendly bank manager, there were quite a few boozy lunches. And got involved in buying 'snatch-back' cars from a finance company. As the plumbing jobs seemed to dry up, men were laid off and they were doing quite a lot of the work themselves.


Occasionally we would go to a jazz night at the Elms in Leigh. This particular night George Melly was performing. A great favourite of mine I'd read his book so was looking forward to his show. Jim Cringle, a friend of ours had his LP and wanted him to autograph it. But he was too shy to approach him so asked me to. I'll never forget it, he was wearing a huge fedora hat and a very loud striped suit with an equally outrageously printed kipper tie which was all the rage then. As I nervously proffered the LP, he theatrically gasped 'my dear, of course' giving me a huge lecherous smile, pulling me towards him and kissing me. How flattered and surprised I felt at the time. One of the men there worked for the finance company we were in trouble with and had hoped to get some info to find out if they knew it was Bill and Bob who owed them money for the car fiasco. We all got very drunk that night back at Jim's but don't remember too much joy in our research.


We started getting complaints that the work wasn't done right, leaks etc. And bills were being left unpaid including the rent and rates on the office. We fell behind with the rent on our house. And out of favour with the 'once friendly' bank manager, who called in the overdraft. Bill and Bob were forced to close the business. Bob and Kath lost their house because of it. It was just awful. Plus the finance company were after us, these people were thugs and not good to fall out with.


Bob and Kath took an overseas posting in Muscat, Oman. For years afterwards I would feel bad about Kath losing her home. She also had two children and had been very happy with her life. Tony Prince, a friend of Bob's, got Bill a posting in Bahrain. Running the Salmanyia Medical Centre.


The only way out of the deep trouble we were in was to get out of the country.