Isn't she sweet... and look at that thing called a nappy pin.
We had a bit of a traumatic time between us on this day back in 1981. I was a typical nurse and therefore a pregnancy disaster, with pre-eclampsia, an emergency full term delivery and my little 5lb 2oz firstborn bundled off for ten days of needles and tubes in intensive care, which almost broke my heart. I wasn't too well either but knew if I could only feed her myself she'd pick up fast, and eventually had a bit of a tantrum about it all, the sort of tantrum you're only capable of in those first early days of motherhood. Of course I was right, some things you just now, and thereafter if I couldn't get up to SCBU she was brought down to me on the ward day and night to feed, this back in the days when test-weighing before and after a feed was considered an accurate way of showing that you weren't feeding your baby enough and therefore a bottle was required. Please don't tell me off now for putting an extra cardigan on her before they took her back to weigh, because she and I had a little chat about it all and planned our escape from what was the old Freedom Fields Hospital in Plymouth.
This picture was taken when we got back to the peace and quiet of the now sadly defunct Tavistock Maternity Home, where ten day post-natal stays were the order of the day, and I was allowed to stay a bit longer to recover and get the feeding properly established without cheating. Having been the local health visitor they were very kind to me, failing at breast feeding didn't seem like an option if I ever wanted to hold my head up around this town again. For my sins this little scrap then fed 2hrly day and night for months afterwards to make up for all that lost growing in utero, but we managed.
Babies in towelling nappies, hobbles in dressing gowns around the beautiful gardens in the sunshine, lasting friendships made and compulsory afternoon sleeps on beds before being woken for tea and homemade cake were the order of the day in the Maternity Home; crying babies wheeled off to the nursery if they wouldn't settle, where the heat used to be turned up so that they would (shock...horror) and they did, and we all emerged whole and healed and ready to give this motherhood thing a bash, those really were the days
Happy Birthday little one x
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