The women who made motherhood easier

I’ve just read, with such sadness, that mothers of babies and young tots are having to buy scales to weigh their children to gauge their progress.

No wonder women today are opting out of motherhood and even marriage.

Let me tell you how it was in 1954. Just out of the “flush of the honeymoon phase”, I fell pregnant. I was 22.

Well, there I was, happy, fit and “up the duff”. But I was also unprepared, uninformed, unsophisticated and therefore quite naive about what it meant to be pregnant and then a mum!

My doctor, the “toast” of Spring Street, was aloof and superior, he and his nurse (she had been a matron in a major hospital), treated me well, but with slight disdain. Maybe my youth and ignorance made me feel this way.

The first few weeks were spent in the toilet (a la Kate Middleton) but then a miracle happened … I blossomed, I ate, slept, revelled in my new body shape and took it all in my stride.

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Husbands were different then, not too interested in what was happening, but kind and careful not to interfere too much.

Then came the day. Waters broke, why hadn’t anyone told me about that? Labour began. Off to a maternity hospital, there with my case and baby “trousseau”, my 26-year-old husband was told to “go home now, and we’ll keep you informed”.