Toby my wonderful son 1973 - 74

I looked in disbelief. There was no mistake, it was positive. I or rather we were going to have a baby. The reaction from everyone else was less than predictable too, they ranged from 'what you?' accompanied by raucous laughter to 'you'll never look after it properly' which didn't sound like the greatest vote of confidence in my mothering capabilities.


 It's 1973. Two years since we married. So all those detractors about why we'd married so quickly, speculating I was pregnant were proved right. Perhaps I was carrying an elephant.
Now my lifestyle had to change, and I wanted it to. No more booze or fags. Or partying. I would work til the end of the pregnancy. I was a window dresser which involved a lot of heavy lifting and climbing ladders. But I was supremely fit. And very slim. 23" waist and 34" hip.
My boss Ted, like nothing more than to follow close behind me shouting 'come along Miss Nightingale' so people overhearing would think I was an unmarried. He also liked to give me furniture windows. Which in retrospect was slightly sick but I knew he was upset I would be leaving. And the other women staff did gather round me like braying geese so he re-thought that option.


Knew I had to learn to drive, if I was to have any sort of independence after the baby was born, plus it would be fun to take him out to the beach and parks. I failed the first test, I was six months pregnant. So reapplied for a second one and retook it a month later . The instructor looked a little perturbed at my big tummy and – naughty I know - did play up to that. Every little manoeuvre was accompanied by exaggerated groans of effort. He decided it would be too strenuous for me to reverse - am still crap at reversing - likewise the emergency stop. He had just become a grandfather, so addressed me in a smiling avuncular way as he told me I'd passed. Was so elated.
Bill said he knew I'd pass on the second test and had left our car near the station so I could drive it back to work. Remember feeling really strange driving, not having a passenger beside me, advising. And also euphoric. Just me and my boy, listening to Roxy Music and Pink Floyd, doing hand-brake turns and speeding.
Bill had a business dinner and asked if I wanted to go. It was in London. Rules Restaurant. One of the oldest. I'd been several times and love its nursery and very traditional English gamey food. It's rightly famous, in Maiden Lane off Fleet Street,  filled with Spy cartoons and the legacy of hundreds of years of hacks and politicians. It's like a gentleman's club. Very atmospheric. The walls patinated by generations of expensive Havana cigar smoke. But not geared to women in an advanced stage of pregnancy. The waiters were wonderful, running around plumping cushions behind my back and making a general fuss. I had one half pint milk stout - that must have jarred with the impressive sommeliere -  that lasted all evening and 2 fags. The next table to us had the wonderfully camp Russell Harty holding forth amongst his coven of tv cronies. Periodically they looked over to us as we laughed loudly during the course of the evening. A great night out and my last one for some time.

Blood tests showed I had a rare blood group which involved weekly blood tests. I had a lot of anti-bodies in my blood apparently which wasn't a problem until the birth, when the baby became independent of mine. Then my anti-bodies would fight with his. With grim prognosis of jaundice, anaemia and the like. I had to undergo amniocentesis at eight months simultaneously with ultrasound scan. As I lay on the trolley in the examination room at Orsett Hospital I was aware of a crowd forming around me. They were all consultants who had come from other hospitals. I was a guinea pig. I watched in some alarm as a huge needle was put into the highest point of my belly. The skin was stretched so tight I was convinced I would burst like a balloon and fly out of the window.
Watching the needle going into the area where my precious cargo was sleeping was unsettling to say the least.
I'd been told not to come alone, it was a 15 mile drive and not to drive back. My mother came with me. I drove an old Rover. With no power steering, it was like driving a tank. Heaving on the wheel to turn the car dug into my stomach and used to joke that my baby would come out with a groove in their head.
I felt a little faint after the procedure but drove back. Going back home the pretty country way, detouring up a narrow winding lane just a car width. Halfway up the steep incline the car broke down. Uncertain what to do I told mum to stay in the car and I would get out, hoping someone would come along, see our predicament and stop to help.
A car appeared and felt a pang of relief, a man was driving, he edged past, looking on with vague curiosity and carried on driving. Five minutes later a woman pulled up and said we looked as though we needed help. She looked very concerned. Her car was a two-door and I laughed as Mum jumped in the front seat. The woman looked slightly taken aback at this. I had to gently explain to Mum that she would have to sit in the back this once as I might have a bit of trouble bending double.
The results were all good. I was determined to have a natural childbirth which was a new concept from America. I read copiously about something called psychoprophylaxis – the art of relaxation. I religiously exercised every day after work.
My grandmother had died in childbirth of something called Eclampsia. So it played on my mind. The horror stories from my mother didn't help 'I was in labour for three days with you, I thought I was going to die, you had such a big head'. And now painful it was. No-one could explain the pain to me. I wanted to know what it was like. Was it a sharp pain or dull? I would know for myself soon enough.
I went into labour, when the contractions were every 2 minutes we knew to ring the hospital. It was just 200 yards away which was useful. We were both nervous. Bill was with me in the delivery room. I didn't use the gas and air or pethidine, the drug of choice. It is exactly as it says on the box, labour, a lot of hard work but nothing in comparison to the unmitigated joy of the ultimate creation.
Toby sprang out and bounced onto the delivery table. The midwife picked him up by his legs and declared' what a clean baby'. Bill said when she turned him round his back was streaked with shit. We laughed. And then this massive euphoria hit. Nothing could prepare me, despite all my extensive research and preparation, for what happens the magical moment my baby was placed in my arms. I was allowed to hold him for a few minutes then he was taken away to the special baby unit for two days. He was placed in a Perspex box. The staff then monitored him for difficulties.
That was hard.
Toby was the last baby to be born that week of a record number of baby boomers. He was born pub opening time 7pm. I had to stay in hospital for two weeks which was very frustrating. I wanted to take my beautiful baby boy home.
The night of the birth I was put into a side room waiting to be stitched up after the episiotomy. The doctor finally came to me at 11pm. He must have assumed I'd had some painkillers as he started to stitch me up and I nearly hit the roof. I remember him slapping my bottom telling me not to make a fuss and remarking on my tan.
The doctor was nicknamed the Green God. He was undisputedly gorgeous. Tall, with a shock of reddish gold curls and a very handsome face. During the stay many of the girls fell in love with him. Quite extraordinary but then the hormones are shooting off the Richter scale so maybe understandable.
I felt quite old in the maternity ward, must have been one of the oldest in there. The girl in the next bed was 16 years old; she'd just had her third baby. Social service workers sat round her bed like vultures. We were all in a state of near hysteria trying to cope with our new life forms and the hormones. But I can't ever remember laughing so much, the girls were all terrific fun. And when it was time to leave there were many highly emotional farewells.
First stop was Mum, I was so excited to introduce her new and first grandchild. But wasn't prepared for her reaction when I said 'isn't he beautiful' her response was 'every mothers duckling's a swan' I felt crushed. Oh well. Maybe it was a sex thing, Mum didn't like boys and made no secret of it.
Next, excitedly but also a little apprehensively back to our little flat with our new baby, this was a first floor old people's flat. Though it bore no resemblance inside, I had painted broad coloured stripes running diagonally across the ceiling and down the walls. Our friends commented that it was like a London Underground map. I'd bought two secondhand rocking chairs, very fiftie's in design. I paid £4 for the pair and picked them up in a black cab. The fare was more than the chairs. I repainted the wooden frames mauve and reupholstered them in mauve and pink striped fabric. I loved them. Ted, my old boss, had made a huge, square coffee table to my design, in our studio. This was mirrored. So we'd made it very stylish with a lot of effort and very little cash.
There was a front door but it went straight onto the stairs, which were at a right-angle so was impossible to get any sort of pram in and up the stairs. I'd bought a coach built pram, it was secondhand - new one's were outrageously expensive - a Silver Cross, chocolate brown, it was my pride and joy. But I couldn't leave the pram outside the flat and the only storage we had was a tiny brick built coal shed. So had to lift the body off the chrome sprung chassis and keep it in the car.
We were only in the flat six months and given the option of a couple of houses as we now had a family. The first two were awful, in rough areas. We turned them down. Then one day we were driving and saw a new estate being built in Pitsea, it would become the Chalvedon estate and was something of a social experiment architecturally. They were all on one level and very contemporary, with floor to ceiling windows. A little more thought than the usual two-up two-down soulless boxes that were built in that period for the working classes. Bill asked one of the builders if there was a map of the site. The corner plot was huge, thought there must have been a mistake. We put our names forward for it – and a few months later much to our joy – were informed it was ours. Moved in, the garden was huge for a corporation house, and the house was so light and airy because of all the glass. I had  my baby boy and  my own garden,  at last. Life was just so sweet.














.