I had a few friends from the pregnant ladies I'd met through the clinic as well as those from the Welcome Baby program.
One was a lady named Laverne. She was oriental at least she looked it. We met when we both attended a class on cooking for our families. It was offered free to any of the wives. This particular class described how to cook something called Laulau. Sometimes I see that as two words but usually its one.
The lady showed us how to take Ti leaves and spread them out on the counter. She put pork cut into chunks along with some vegetables in the center of two crossed leaves. I think she added seasonings but I was just thinking it was a waste of time because once I left Hawaii I'd never see a Ti leaf again. I watched the preparation, though.
She folded up the Ti leaf bundle and tied it with string. She told us she usually put taro leaves around it but she couldn't find any when she came in to show us how so we had to pretend they were there. She put these all in the top of a steamer and cooked them. We all got a sample and it was delicious but I knew I'd never attempt it.
Laverne sat next to me and we chatted during the quiet moments while it was cooking. She was farther along than me. We talked about babies and birds of all things. She had two white cockatiels, I think she called them. I like looking at birds but I'd just never saw myself as a bird "owner." Maybe its the native part of me that I think birds should be free to fly in the sky as they were meant to be. I didn't tell her that.
Later when I was "incarcerated" in Tripler she would come to visit me whenever she came in for a checkup. One day she came in and told me she was in labor. I asked her why she was here talking to me when she should be giving birth in a room somewhere.
She laughed and told me the baby wasn't quite ready to come out yet. The doc told her to take a walk. He said to go up and down the halls and come back when he was ready to come out and play. So she visited me. She eventually did go into full blown labor and gave birth to a girl not the boy she thought she was having.
I saw her a few times before we left Hawaii. The baby had a huge head that was out of proportion to the body. It bothered me. She told me the doctors told her she was feeding her too much. She wasn't even two months old and Laverne was feeding her mashed potatoes. Even as dumb as I was about babies I knew you didn't feed solid food to an infant that young. I have no ending to this because four months after Tommy was born we went back to the mainland.
Another lady I met was Toni. She already had a toddler, a boy whose name escapes me. She was about as far along in her pregnancy as I was in mine. Her husband was also in the military and they lived in sponsored housing at Schofield.
After Tommy's birth I would sometimes visit her there. It was a nice apartment except for one thing. The kitchen sink was overflowed with dirty moldy dishes. It had nasty water in it. I'm sure when I saw it my face must have revealed my feelings because she hastily told me that it had been clogged up for over a month and the housing people had her on a list to get it fixed but they said they were backlogged. I think I would have found a way to clean it out myself. It was disgusting.
I'm getting a little ahead here but when we left our apartment when all was shipped and we needed a place to stay till we could get on the planes the next day to leave, Toni let us stay with her. Some of you reading this will be surprised at what we did, the two of us that night.
First we weren't allowed to fix the sink because that would have been a violation of the rules. She had to wait for them to come fix it. They had people to do those tasks. Never mind that they weren't doing it.
What we could do and did while they were all sleeping upstairs was to take all the nasty dishes out of the sink. I cleaned what I could in the sink in the bathroom. If they were too far gone I put them in a trash bag for the garbage. I knew she'd never use them again.
Tom bailed out the nasty water and cleaned it up as best as he could. I secretly felt she'd just fill it up again so there would be a tell tale mess if they ever got around to her sink. Her husband was only a PFC so I'm sure he was pretty far down on the list of priorities. I felt I had been lucky to live off base with a land lord handy who would deal with stuff like that. We had never had a plumbing problem. Well, except for me constantly flushing the toilet in the night when I had the "morning" sickness in the night.
Tom even mopped the floor. I was surprised at that. Tom was never a neat person. Maybe he did it just to thank Toni for letting us stay and saving us a bundle on a hotel room.
There was another pregnant lady we all knew and loved. She was a lot younger than me. Her baby came real early. They got her to Wheeler, her husband was in the Air Force, and they said she had to get to Tripler fast sooooo they hoisted her into a helicopter and on the way to Tripler she gave birth. The baby was tiny and was in the special baby ward for about two months until they were sure he would live and be safe to go home. He had a lot of weight to gain, too.
I really need to get back to my stay in the hospital and the birth of my son, though...
On December eighth, early in the morning they took me to wherever the birthing ward was. Up until then I'd been in the women's surgical wards because that was where they stuck us ladies with complications.
Now I was propped up in a bed in a big room with a lot of other women. There were curtains they pulled around the bed while they attached monitors and cords and belts and IV's to me and to Tommy. Yep, they told me they actually screwed in to the top of his head a tiny monitor sensor that would let them know he was all right at every second.
So I had one cable in there. I had two IVs. I guess one wasn't enough. I had a blood pressure monitor on me at all times and a heart monitor thing. I don't know all the technical names. I also had a white wide band around my tummy with other monitors under it, one of which kept track of Tommy's heart beat. I was all set up.
One of the IVs was putting a drug in me to start my labor. I think it was called pitocin. It's a good thing I didn't know then about all the possible side effects of that drug.
So there I was, propped up in bed with my legs wide open and no panties on, just a bunch of tubes and wires coming out of me. There was the one curtain but it was opened a bit later to admit not one doctor but about twenty or more strangers of both sexes.
This was a teaching hospital and these were the students. All were looking between my legs except for one male who was blushing and trying to look elsewhere, anywhere but there. It was at that moment that my water broke as the saying goes. Talk about embarrassment. I was so upset but the doctor said I was doing fine. It was normal. Not to worry. Easy for him to say. He wasn't the one lying in bed with a bunch of strangers looking up inside him.
It would have been nice to be able to say Tommy was born right then but this kid didn't want to come out. I laid there for hours. I started having the pains but they weren't bad. Then they got worse. A lot worse. Finally the doc told me to push and I tried but he wasn't helping any.
Sometime around two in the morning they decided it was enough. They wheeled me to the operation room and cut me open. They told me I wouldn't feel it. I not only felt them cutting my skin but I could hear it. Whatever they gave me and I think it was a gas at that time, numbed me a bit but not a lot.
I couldn't move or say anything but I could clearly hear every sound and feel the pain of them cutting me. I heard one of the doctors saying something about "no wonder she couldn't get him out". I thought it was a nasty crack about my weight. Pregnant women are always sensitive about their weight.
Tommy was born at two thirty five in the morning. He weight seven pounds and fourteen ounces. I think he was twenty one inches long. They knocked me out completely then and it wasn't till the next day that I would discover that in taking him out they had nicked my bladder. They had to sew that up first. They told me later they ran milk through it to make sure they had it sewed up tight.
In the mean time Tommy was rushed in the elevator and taken to the baby room where he was hitched up to more monitors. Tom went with him in the elevator.
He took this shot and I think three more as soon as they would let him.
Shocking as it sounds, they wouldn't let me see him for over two days. They said it was because I was so sick. I had an IV still in me. I was being monitored all the time. Tommy was monitored for the diabetes the first day of his life. He was fine and they took him off the IV but they told me I couldn't see him till I was able to get up.
I was in so very much pain. I was bleeding badly. I didn't think I was supposed to bleed that much. They told me it was normal, but it was scary.
They had put me into a bed that instead of springs had some kind of metal plating under a thin mattress. This really bothered my already arthritic back. I couldn't sleep, I could barely tolerate life. I was praying I could get better so I could hold my son and love him.
I finally got it through to someone how much pain the bed was causing me. They moved me to a real bed. No one seemed to know why I was in that one in the first place. I think it was supposed to be a bed for people with back problems but if you were to ask me, and no one ever did, I think it would have given them more pain than helped.
I think it was two and a half days later when with help they let me stand and got me in the shower. It was painful but such a relief to be standing. I had one of those blue plastic pad like things taped over my bandages so I could shower. I still had my cables and tubes but I was in the shower.
They told me they would let me rest a bit and then they would remove all the tubes. Under the bandages, I was itching an awful lot. It was maddening. They told me it was normal. It wasn't.
After the tubes were out I was allowed to hold my precious son. Before the day was out he was safely beside me in his own little bed for the rest of my time in the hospital. I had to stay there for a week after giving birth because of the bladder thing.
One day they took the outer bandage off so they could check my stitches. I had staples and I had plastic steri-strips. Where the steri-strips were I also had huge angry blisters. Not even I knew at the time that whatever was in those steri-strips was causing a major reaction. They removed the plastic strips and put soothing lotion on the blisters. It healed in days but it itched for at least another day or two.