50 years ago today

At two in the afternoon while sitting on my couch, I felt my first labor pain.

Thank goodness, it wasn't the day before. My gynie had gone to D.C. for Nixon's inauguration. He was back.

There were still unpacked boxes from our move into our newly purchased house the day after Thanksgiving. We paid $13,000 for its two-bedrooms, old fashioned kitchen, and screened porch off what would be the nursery. It sat on a double house lot, the second lot accessible by three stairs.

The nursery had been painted yellow. I had decorated with a jungle theme, including fuzzy tiger curtains to help keep-in heat in winter and out in summer.

I was weak. The month before I had nearly died from the flu. When I called my doctor to tell him I had kept nothing down for several days, he paused and said, "I'm sending an ambulance." At the hospital I refused to let them take her because I wasn't sure she would survive.

I spent a week. The woman in the next bed died of a heart attack. After that the bed remained empty.

A month later I hadn't regained my strength so settling in to the new home was slowed.

My husband said I looked like our dogs when left at the Vets as they wheeled me off to the delivery ward. They did not have husbands in the delivery room in those days, and I doubt my ex would have survived it.

I was fitted with elastic stockings, which identified me as a patient of my Hungarian doctor. He believed the veins needed support.

They say you forget the pain. They are right, but I remember my reaction. I had had no birthing classes and not sure they were even available. My doctor had said relaxing was the best thing to do. I bet he never had a labor pain.

The woman in the next room screamed and screamed. I tried one scream. It hurt more.

Midnight came and went. Nurses peeked in to measure me.

I am not sure of the time that they wheeled me into the delivery room. I recognized my doctor's beautiful eyes (most of his patients spoke about them) but I was more than grateful he was there.

As planned, I was given a spinal. The needle looked as if it would penetrate my entire body. A few minutes later, there was no pain and I touched my hip. No sensation there, but my hand felt as if I'd touched a pillow.

My hands were strapped, my legs placed in stirrups after being given a spinal. All the pain disappeared. "Don't lift you head, it will mean you will have a horrible headache," one of the nurses warned me.

The nurses and doctors were talking about the inauguration. The conversation drifted to one of the doctor's new Mercedes.

The anesthesiologist held my hand sometimes resting it against his penis. I wasn't sure what to do. If it happened now I would have squeezed hard and asked why he was doing that. I was young and sweeter than. I didn't want to embarrass him.

"What are we working on, boy of girl?" my doctor asked in his Hungarian accent. They didn't do sonar in the olden days.

"It has to be a boy. My husband wants a boy."

The doctor pulled the baby out. My daughter was born a few minutes shy of the date and time my ex-husband was born.

"It's a girl, I'm sorry."

I heard her cry, the most beautiful sound in the world.

"Wonderful," I said.

"I thought you said you wanted a boy," the doctor said.

"My husband wanted a boy. I wanted a girl." It was true, I never, never, never wanted a son. I was glad that it was his chromosome that determined the sex.

Someone described her as looking like "an inverted gourd." My daughter has turned into a beautiful woman, inside and out.

She has enriched my life. There is a Bob Franke line "It wasn't the thing I did best, but raising her was the best thing I did."