Need to interview someone who gave birth 20+ years ago...

ADN2B · Feb 6, 2012

Willing...my oldest is 25.

DaydreamerRN · Feb 6, 2012

Thanks in advance if any of you are willing - I don't think it would take much time at all!

Angela

My kids are 29,23,and 21. For my oldest, born Dec 1982,I was in the hospital from Friday until Thursday. Baby was 7# 11oz, healthy although she had some jauncice and was treated with the light. I had a lady partsl delivery with lots of demerol. The doctor retired shortly after she was born from a long career of gp and delivering babies. I was impatient, not really in full labor Friday night at 7p.m., but I whined so much they kept me. My husband and I had little family support, I had none from my side. The doctor kept telling me babies are born all over the world every day and had been for centuries without a doctor and I would do fine, it was my first baby and they just take time. I knew of epidurals, but he did 'do' them, He gave me demerol, but nothing else until Sunday morning when I was progressing slowly he finally stripped my membranes. I cried and then about a half hour later I thought I wet the bed. I was 18. She was born noon Monday. The nurses told me my water had broke. I was given lots of demerol and finally went to the ER where I labored for an hour or so where I remember grasping the anethesist hand during a contraction and crying and apologising afterwards. I could wave to my husband througha small window in the door, I wasn't doing much waving though. That was my last memory. I do not remember her birth or pushing, just woke up in my room several hours later and told I had a girl. The sex of the baby was a mystery, back then you weren't told, tho I did have an ultrasound at 5 months. I had BCBS insurance and I was required to pay my deductable and co-pay before her birth to the doctor in installments. I think it was around $300 total, the $200 co-pay and the rest was co-pay. I think the hospital bill was less than a thousand, which I paid 20% of the first 1000 abd major medical covered the rest. This was back in the day of great insurnace for $6 a week from my check.

I did not breastfeed, I had no support and though the nurses at the hospital encouraged me, I had zero support from relative. My husband was 17,(We have been married 30+ years now). We had WIC from the time I was eight months, that is when the doctor advised me to quit work and rest till the baby was born. He wrote a note stating I was not given enough bathroom breaks at the factory and was suffering from recurrent UTI"s, so I needed to be on leave. I could have kissed him. I hated working at a factory, sewing shirts.

Back in those days, they sent you home with everything but the kitchen sink. So many samples of everything. The nurses where awesome, with back rubs and the patience of saints...tho it took me years to realize how frustrating a patient I must have been. We married so young and had no idea what we were doing. It was five years before we had our second child and so much had changed. It was C-sectionand send you home asap by 1988. If you need more, let me know. I was getting nostalgic remembering those starving, poor days of my youth.....I now have 3 grown children and 3 grandsons.

DaydreamerRN · Feb 6, 2012

Sorry for the spelling and grammer

Just woke up and replied rather quickly.

ADN2B · Feb 8, 2012

What are the questions? I am too newly registered to get messages.