3. Andrea - born January 24, 1973

Our American visitors in 1972 were my sister Kathy, her husband Neal and their son Mark who was also Jonathan's godfather. They spent about a week with us before they went on their European tour and. then came back for a day or two at the end. Mark stayed several weeks with us chiefly because he was waiting for a letter from his girlfriend which never came. Neal, one day said to me, “About time you had another baby.”  He and Kathleen had five children - my sister being a better Catholic than me and not using contraception.
 
“No,” I replied. “We’ve had our family. Just what we ordered, a boy and a girl.”

Two weeks after they left, I found out that I was pregnant. Neither Neal nor Mark had anything to do with it, but it was a coincidence that they are both blue eyed - and so was our new baby, Philip and I both with very dark brown eyes.

We took a trip to America that summer to visit my dad and his new wife, and also Judy and her family. With each of my children, Judy had had a corresponding one, three months later. So I told her that I was pregnant again and she said, ''We're getting a dog".

Since I'd gained so much weight with Jonathan, I was determined to be sensible in my eating habits with this new baby. I watched my weight very carefully, but  was so hungry.

I again went to St. Mary's hospital for this baby, but they had by now moved to another building which was pleasant and clean looking and much better.

Our new baby was due in early February. But from December onwards she seemed to be causing some complications. She insisted in lying in my uterus, cross-wise rather than up and down as babies normally do. It didn't make a whole lot of difference to me but the doctors were somewhat concerned about it. I did have some bleeding in early December, and because the doctors thought there might be a possibility of the placenta blocking the birth passage, I had to go to the hospital more frequently and have various tests done such as a scan and a series of x-rays.
They found out that all was okay, but the baby insisted in laying crosswise, so in mid January the doctor told me that I would have to come into the hospital and maybe when I was on bed rest, the baby would go the right way. Sure enough after a week, she did. I was very lonely for my other children, and hated being in the hospita1. I shared a room with 3 other ladies which made it difficult for me to rest as they talked and had crying babies in the room

Several times I thought I was going into labour, but it always turned out to be a false alarm. The doctors told me that if the baby stayed in the right direction, they would induce labor the next week, which would be three weeks early.

On Wednesday morning one of the nurses took me and several other ladies who were also to be induced up to the labor section on the next floor up. We walked carrying our books and whatever we wanted to pass the times, and went up in an elevator. It seemed so funny to me that one should have such an ordinary start to such an exciting event.

When we got to the labor section, I was put in a single room, dressed in a sterile gown and left to get on with my book which was Edna O’Brian's Girl with the Green Eyes. It was a very sexy book which no doubt helped me in my other activity of the morning. A doctor came in a broke my water bag with his scalpal producing a flood over the bed, which was then changed. Then I was hooked up to an intravenous drip of pitocin, which was supposed to start the uterus contracting. but nothing seemed to happen to I got on with my book.

Phil came to visit me about 10 and still nothing had happened. The doctor came in and put up the speed of the dripping process, but still no action. Philip had to leave about one to go back and take the children from one friend who was babysitting them, to another.

Within half an hour, everything started and with a vengeance. So I put on my bedside light which indicated to the nurses that I wanted attention. Nobody came. I was getting worried now for the pains seemed to me to be very strong. Finally a lady came to the door and said, ''Want a cup of tea, love?"

I said, "No, I want a nurse because I think the baby is coming now." She said she’d see if she could find somebody; and yet it was nearly 10 more minutes before a nurse came. She said everybody had decided to have their babies at once, and they were fully occupied, but when she saw how ready I was, she immediately pushed me into a delivery room.

The midwife, as with Jonathan, I'd never seen before, yet she made me feel very relaxed and as if I were in competent hands. They had me lie on my side rather than my back as with the other two children. There was a physiotherapist there and she stood by my head and said encouraging things, and told me when to push and relax, and smiled and generally made me feel less apprehensive. There was a mask for breathing gas and oxygen and she showed me how to use and made sure I did it right. It did help but made me feel very sleepy.
 
I heard one of the nurses say that this was a perfect delivery it was and I was so proud.

The baby was born at 3:00 and put in an incubator where I could see her. She looked very much like Stephanie had as a baby. Then they delivered the placenta without any problems. As before, I'd torn, but the midwife said, "Do you want to wait to be stitched by the doctor? If you will let me, I'll do it and it will be done much faster."

I agreed for her to do it, as I'd have agreed to anything nearly at that stage. It hurt a lot, but with the gas and oxygen, I managed to not worry too much. She didn' t give me any pain injection at all like I'd had with Jonathan.

About this time, Philip returned having deposited Stephanie and Jonathan with our next door neighbor. I pretended I'd not had the baby yet, but he wasn't fooled for long. He saw Andrea in the nearby incubator and was very pleased all had gone well. The actual labor had been just over an hour all together, which was faster than the other children by quite a bit. When I'd been cleaned up I was wheeled back to my room and the baby brought in to me right away.

I'd had so much gas and air that I felt unsteady and felt incompetent to held her, but I did and somehow managed not to drop her. She was smaller than the others had been- 7 Ibs 11 ounces  and 20t inches long, but she had been three weeks early. She didn't cry a lot and seemed to be a very sleepy baby. I had asked to have a private room after she was born rather than sharing with the three woman I'd had before.

Stephanie and Jonathan came with Philip the next day to see us. I think they were pleased to see the new baby but were disappointed too because she just slept and didn't seem very interesting to them.

I was breast feeding Andrea and after the first night she slept in the little nursery attached to my room. I was expected to get up and feed her at night. She didn't seem to take much milk, and slept short intervals and then cried, and then didn't take much before she slept again. So I wasn’t getting much rest and I was very tired.

On Saturday I'd hoped that we would be allowed to go home, but when the doctor came, she said that Andrea looked jaundiced and she ordered a bilirubin test. It came back quite high and I was told we would have to stay in for a few more days. I felt so tired and upset and I cried when I telephoned Phil to say we couldn't come home.

On Sunday she was tested again, and again on Monday. They seemed to think she looked better and so allowed us to go home on Monday. I told them I thought she was a lot less yellow, but more because I so much wanted to go home than that I really thought so. I wasn't very worried about the jaundice as she didn't seem ill and they had assurred me that although she was a different blood type to mine, mine didn't have any antibodies so she shouldn't have had a reaction to that.

Everything seemed okay when we were home except Andrea's color didn't seem to be any less yellow and she still was a very sleepy poor feeder. I had decided not to ask Philip's mother to come again although she had offered to come. Instead we had a home help who came each morning for a week and did things like clean the house, and peeled vegetables. It wasn't really what I'd had in mind. I just wanted someone to watch Stephanie and Jonathan so I could get some sleep but she didn't have much to do with the other children - only cleaned the house.

The midwife came once or twice and although I called her attention to the baby's colour she didn't think it was anything to worry about. The cord stub had dropped off and the wound looked sore. She seemed to think that perhaps a doctor should see that if it didn't improve in the next few days.

But Phil was not content with her ideas and called the hospital and asked to have her seen in the outpatients’ department. They agreed that she come in so we took her immediately, leaving the children with the home help. The doctor we saw was the consultant in pediatrics and he was immediately of the opinion that she was not well. He had a blood sample taken and told me to stop breast feeding her and put her on bottle milk. He said for some reason breast fed babies didn't get over jaundice as quickly as bottle fed ones, and that she needed lots of fluids.

Each time they took blood from her heel and she'd cry and cry. We went again the next day and he'd had the result of' the blood test which showed a high level of jaundice, and he took another sample. He'd started her on antibiotics for the infection of her naval which he took to be the prime source of the trouble. He said as she was slightly premature, her liver was unable to cope with an infection - hence the jaundice.

The next day he told us that her jaundice had been even higher the day before, and if it continued to rise, he would have to have her back in the hospital for a blood transfusion. Phil insisted that they repeat the Coombs test to see if the Rh incompatibility was the cause. They reluctantly agreed to do so, and it turned out as before. The jaundice they felt was caused mainly by the premature birth and the infection of the naval and made worse by the lack of fluids due to inadequate breast feeding.

But on the next day the report said that the jaundice was receeding. We didn’t have to go back for a week then, and by the next visit, her condition was normal and the doctor said, "You’ve lost your Chinese baby". We were told that I could now go back to breast feeding. I doubted that it would work as I'd stopped more than a week before, but I tried and was able to feed her well by about another  week with giving supplementary meals as well at night and sometimes early evening.

Andrea was a good baby and didn't cry very much even when her jaundice cleared up. She gained weight well and was pronounced fit and normal.