Birth Of My Heart. My Firstborn Child

 A long post of the birth of my first daughter whose birthday is today. I'm saving it for her here so it will never be lost. 

It's hard to say it was just a day because it was actually 3 days. I started to feel the pulling on my body 72 hrs before and even though this was my first birth, I knew that you were trying to come home. I was so scared, alone and knew that I would have to drive myself to the hospital so I didn't want to wait too late to leave Chula Vista for the Balboa Naval hospital. I had been to the Dr on that fateful 4th day before and he had "stripped my membranes", a practice they don't do anymore, Thank God, but it was done to me and it started the process of birthing. 

It was so painful early on and I was worried so that day around 10AM, I drove myself in and after examining me, they said I was only 1 to 2 CM and they sent me home. They told me to walk a lot and stay busy so I drove back home and walked up and down the lil hill where our trailer was parked. I visited with my elderly next door neighbors and they were very worried that I would wait too long to drive myself in so around 6 PM, I drove myself back to the hospital. I was a full 3 Cm by then and they weren't going to keep me again but I told them I was alone as my husband was deployed so they put me in a room by myself, gave me an enema, and it began. 

It was so slow and I started bleeding about 11 PM.  I was so embarrassed that I kept wiping myself with the lil kleenex on the side table. I kept getting out of bed to go to the bathroom to wipe and one of the nurses finally figured out what I was doing and said, don't do that anymore. If it gets Blood on the sheet, that's OK. It was so hard for me but I stopped wiping so that they could tell how much blood I was losing. 

The baby monitor on my belly was so loud and uncomfortable with those big straps they put across me but I made myself stay put and just listened to your heartbeat. Around midnight or one, I noticed a change in your heartbeat and called the nurse. She said it was alright and to just turn on my side and try to rest, which I did. 

But I couldn't just shut off the plopping of your heartbeat. It seemed like hrs later and around 5,  a bunch of " wanna be" Drs came into my room with an instructor and they talked about me. Right in front of me. That's when I knew I was a case now. Something was going wrong and they wanted the students to see it. I became furious and yelled at them to get out of my room. They looked at me like I was the one with the problem and they left. 

All I could concentrate on was your slowing heartbeat and I was praying for what seemed like hours , for you and I to live. I had become so worried that you were not going to make it. I prayed over and over,

 yea though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil for though art with me. 

Over and over I whispered it to your heartbeat sound on the monitor, trying to impart some energy to that slow, ploppy heartbeat. I begged the nurses to tell the Dr throughout the morning but they just reassured me that everything was alright, when I knew it wasn't. I was only 8 CM. They kept telling me , it's a first pregnancy and these things take time but I was alone, so scared and listening to what I thought, was my daughter dying. 

Your  heart beat was only in the 80's now. I watched the monitor like a hawk all the while praying,  yea though I walk through the shadow of death, I will fear no evil for though art with me, over and over. 

It was probably only an hr but it seemed like forever when the Dr finally came to see me. I used to remember the name of the dr and I'm sure it's written in Wendi's baby book but I can't bring it forward now. I think the last name was Smith. 

He looked at the monitor, pulled the sheet up and asked how long has she been bleeding? They said since last night. He listened as I did,  to the heartbeat, at which time it sounded like a wet plop into a bucket and only about 58 beats to a minute and said prep her for surgery. They nurses sprang into action. Washed off my stomach, started to shave me for a C-section and then they could see hair from your head. You were trying to be born but You had no strength and I didn't either. 

They stopped shaving me and immediately took me down the hall to surgery. I was almost out of my mind with worry so it all seemed a blur of activity. They put me on a gurney type bed, stripped my gown off and put this huge light over my the area. I was so traumatized at this point that I was so exposed, so weak from blood loss and I couldn't heart your heartbeat anymore. 

They were moving in lightening speed but it seemed like slow motion to me. They seemed urgent and I didn't know why because they tell you nothing,  when something is wrong. 

The dr was down there working, they were telling me to push. I didn't know what any of it meant. I hadn't had anyone tell me what to expect, how to breathe, what to do. I was a stranger in a strange land at 21 years of age. 

I saw the dr grab a circular shaped tool and felt him insert it into my body. I didn't understand any of it. But what I found out later is that he was trying to help pull you out. They had seen the cord around your neck. So they pulled with the forceps and what seemed like finally, you came out at 7:22 AM. 

I saw your lifeless body, all blue, with black stuff all over your face and the first words out of my mouth were, she's dead. They didn't keep you long on that table. They suctioned your nose and mouth of the merconiam and cleaned your face and whisked you away. 

They sewed me up, took me to a recovery room where for hours, they massaged my ututerus. 

I can't begin to describe to you how much that hurt. If I thought the pain of childbirth was more than I could bear, the massaging felt so painful I cried. I felt so wimpy doing that but I was in an emotional state. The nurses were rough with me. 

They said if I didn't massage it, that they would and they were so rough. So I massaged and massaged until they took me to a ward with other mothers. They kept getting me up and I was white as a sheet. I was so pale, from loss of blood. 

The last time they got me up, they put me on the toilet and left me alone. I fainted, fell off the toilet to the floor and hit my head. When they came back I was sprawled on the floor and they finally seemed to get it that I was weak. 

12 hrs after you were born, I was in the ward. The other mothers had seen and fed their babies but I had not. An officer Dr came to see me when I fainted and he examined me. He took my hand and turned it over where the palm was entirely white. He said,  you're not going to get out of bed now without help and you're not going to be alone in the bathroom till you feel better. We need to give you a couple pints of blood but I was so scared of that so I refused. 

He said what baby did you have and I told him a lil girl but I didn't know anything about her. He said, what do you mean? I said I haven't seen her. I don't know if she lived or not and I was so sad and crying. I will never forget him patting my hand. Then I saw him walk over to the nurses station where he read them the riot act. He said , this girl doesn't know if her daughter lived or died. God, he was so mad. When he was done, he came to me with a wheelchair, helped me into it and took me down to the Nursery himself. 

Once there I saw you for the very first time. 12+ hrs since you were born. You were pink now, with wires all over your little body. You were breathing, sleeping like a lil angel and you had brown hair and oh so pale skin like a China doll. 

I was so thankful to this young Dr that i couldn't thank him enough. You were alive and your life gave me a burst of energy. I had someone else to live for now. All my life seemed to suddenly make sense. The abuse, my dads drinking, my mom leaving us, my bad marriage. All of it. I knew that I had to do all that to be here for you. You were my reason and you still are. 

They moved me from the smaller recovery ward to a long ward with about 32 rooms, filled with mothers like I was and for the first time that night, I got to hold you and try to feed you. I gave you a name Wendi Gail, the Gail being after my sister Donna. The nurses said Windy gale and I said no. Wendi Gail. They said, oh man. I don't know about that and they did hurricane windy hands and laughed. 

I didn't care what anyone thought. You were my Wendi Gail and I loved you with every fiber of my being. They told me you had to eat 2 ounces before I could take you home so I kept trying to achieve that every 2 or 3 hrs when they brought you to me.

You just couldn't eat that much so at the end of the 2nd day, I started feeding the plant in the room what you couldn't eat of the 2 ounces and told the nurses you ate it all. 

I had this thought that I needed to get you home by any means so that you would be safe.  They kept waking you up to hold you because you were one of the most beautiful babies they had seen so I worried you weren't being allowed to sleep. I knew they were waking you up to hold you because they told me. They didn't know how that worried me. 

I kept quiet, kept feeding the plant and on the 3rd day, they said I could go home. I put you in my green pinto wagon and took you home. Car seats weren't required then so I held you while I drive us home. I still can't believe that I did that to this day but I didn't want to just put you on a seat and more yet, I didn't want to be away from you for a minute. We had worked too hard to get you here. I drove the miles from San Diego to Chula Vista and walked inside my home,  a 2 bedroom trailer on blocks. I went next door to get my other baby, a 3 year old tan miniature dachshund named Scooby-Doo and got ready to introduce my first baby dog to my first baby child. 

The elderly neighbors gushed over you and said what a beautiful baby you were and they brought me things over the next week til my sister Donna came to visit. I was so happy to be home with you and even more happy that you had fought to live like I had fought to live. You were born at 7:22 on June  9th 1974 weighing 6 lbs. 9 ounces and 21 inches long and 21 hours after I entered the hospital. 

You were the same poundage as the day you were born. 6-9 and i was in labor with you for 21 hours which was my age. That started the marvelous, adventurous and miraculous life that we have shared. I love you with all my heart. Happy Birthday Wendi. You are my life's breath. Love,Mom

The Wooden Doll

My time on this earth began in the early 1900s. I was a tree in the forest that was chosen to become a doll. 

The men who harvested my tree and made me into chunks of wood took it to the Schilling Doll Factory in Sonneberg Thuringia Germany. I was given to a master craftsman, and he began looking at the piece of wood to determine what kind of doll could be made. The man with weather beaten hands picked me up and said, “I can see you now. He was getting an image, but the image he saw was his own beloved 5 yr. old daughter Gretchen. He started to carve my head, and he made it have an open area on the top so that he could send me down the line to have my brown glass eyes inserted. I could now see my predicament and looked at the hundreds of dolls that lay in various stages of being made into a complete doll. My master craftsman was interested in me personally as his little Gretchen had wanted a doll for a long time, and this one was for her. He followed his doll down the assembly line, directing her to be made with care. 

She was finally ready to be taken to the area to be dressed, and he thought “how would my little one want her to be dressed?” He picked out a Volendam Dutch costume for the doll with the solemn face and thought how proud his little girl would be when he placed it in her arms.

He returned home with pride and could see his little girl standing at the door waiting his arrival after a long day at work.. His daughter could see that he had something in his hand, but had been taught not to ask questions about dolls that he brought home, because her mutter sewed clothes for the dolls sometimes and she thought this might be another of those times. 

 Her Vater ate his meal and talked of his day and the making of a special doll with brown eyes to match his own sweet one. After eating the humble meal, he gave the package to his daughter and said “this one”s for you”. Gretchen almost choked on her sausage as he said this because she did not dare believe that at last, she too had a doll. As she unwrapped the brown paper that wrapped the package, she did not breathe. When at last the paper was removed, she saw the doll that occupied her dreams.  Her face was so like her own with big brown eyes like hers. She did not have hair, so she asked her mutter to cut her long brown hair to place in the dolls head to make her a wig. Her Mutter consented, and the doll looked back at her solemnly in thanks, she thought, for her hair. 

I lived with Gretchen for 5 years until one day, she became sick with a terrible fever that took many of the factory workers, including her dear Mutter. 

After Gretchen's  Death, Vater could not bear to look at the doll, nor think about his beloved daughter's hair. That only brought painful reminders that his daughter could no longer light up his life with her smile. Her doll was forgotten in a drawer until money was needed to purchase food. Her Vater removed the brown paper wrapped doll without looking at her and took her to market. He bargained for food to feed his remaining family and did not give the doll a second look.

I was sent to a doll store and promptly placed in a window where many little children looked at me daily. It was the time of the war and a soldier came in one day to buy me to take to a place called America.. I was happy because I had been saddened by the death of Gretchen and needed someone to love me again. 

I was stuffed in a suitcase and began the long air ride to America. After what seemed an inordinately long amount of time, I arrived at a little girl called Helen. She was a sweet little girl who played with me endlessly and always asked me “Where did you come from?” and “who had you before me?” Whose hair is that on your head?. She could tell it was real hair but I did not tell her as I was saddened to leave Gretchen and I also did not need the reminder that she was gone and my life had changed.   (image borrowed from Google search)

I can’t say that Helen was unkind, but she had many such dolls, and I never felt the love that I felt when I was in Germany. We moved many times, and I am sure that I lost my wooden leg on one of those moves to Canada. Many years passed, and Helen grew up. I was relegated to a drawer once again. Then, I was carefully placed in a box. 

My present owner found me one day in a box without my leg and unclothed on a shelf. She had very little money but had made a deal to trade her jewelry for ME.. I felt very special as no one had cared that much about me for a long time. When Gloria saw me in the box with the exact brown eyes that she had, it was all over for her. Gloria saw herself as a little girl, in that dolls face.. The present owner told her the story of my travel and a bargain was made to trade the doll for jewelry. I was worth a lot and it took several gold bracelets and a diamond ring before the lady would trust Gloria with her aunts doll, but finally a bargain was made and I was on my way to The USA again.... 

Since that time in 1989, I have lived with Gloria. She has talked to me and loved me as Gretchen did and also kept Gretchen alive for me and others when she tells the story of how I came to live with her.

I now go to another lady named Ingrid to live. I don't blame Gloria. She is ill and must make sacrifices to move to a place called florida to live near her daughter, the nurse. 

She tells me she has found a good home for me and I believe her. She even says I will have a new leg.. That would feel so good after all these years. 

She is also sending along my story so that Ingrid will know me and my life and so that she will never forget how one little girl in Germany thought I was so special.  I am awaiting my trip and hope that my new owner will like me as I plan to like her. Who knows? There may be other dolls that I can visit with there and maybe even add another chapter to my story.

The End

           or is it???????...

Kindness in the cotton fields

  Chapter Three

Our days were spent very differently from the other kids at school. I watched them with their pretty dresses and shoes talk about where they were going that weekend or maybe going to a party on Saturday. My days started at 4 AM from the age of 8, making biscuits with freezing cold water in winter. I can still remember the pain in my fingers as I would run to the fireplace in the living room, after making the biscuits, and warming my fingers in the heat. The painful tingling of the warmed blood to my fingers was just a reminder from the day before, and it incited a longing for warmer days.

I made the biscuits and sometimes gravy, grits, eggs, and bacon for Daddy's breakfast at first, and then when the boys were old enough to go to work, I made it for them too. While they ate, I packed the lunches for them of leftovers from last nights meal. It took an hour for that, and then I went back to bed until I had to get up for school. No one at school knew what I was doing, and I told no one about it. We did what we had to do to get to the next day. And when we did, we started again.

On some Saturdays my brother Ernest, my sister and I used to work in the fields right along side the blacks, and since we were one of the few white kids working in the fields, we were looked at with some surprise. We did not think anything of it because we were not raised to be aware that skin color made any difference. We knew enough to know that some people treated other people badly, but it is not something that we did. I would work from sun up to sun down on Saturday to make a "poor mans dollar", like the song goes. I picked cotton, and it took a long time to make a hundred pounds of cotton. Some days, I would make 80 cents, and some days, I would make a dollar.

Some people think that pulling cotton is the same as picking cotton, but it is vastly different.

(From the Cotton Pickin experts in Texas)

"Picked cotton is that which has only the white fluff – the fiber – with the seed inside. It was very laborious to hand pick cotton as you had to pick it as clean as possible. Pulled cotton included the white fluff AND the leaves and stems, etc….whatever you grabbed. A good cotton picker might pick as much as six or seven hundred pounds in a day or pull as much as a thousand pounds. Pulled cotton would be “cleaned” at the gin by the Moss Lint Cleaner, which was added to the Burton Farmers Gin in the early 1960’s. Pulled cotton had to be cleaned first ….then it was put through the gin stands."

I remember one day I was picking alongside this old man, and he had some gloves on. He looked over at my hands, and they were bleeding. Cotton is beautiful, white, and fluffy, which are all great things, but the husk, when dried, will cut your fingers to ribbons, even when careful. I guess that is a lesson there that things can seem all good, but underneath the fluffy goodness, it can be something to harm you.

Anyway, he looked over at me a 10 yr old child and came over to me. He lifted my hands up, saw them torn and bleeding, took off his old leather gloves, and put them on my tiny hands. They were huge, but they provided a barrier for me the rest of the time that I worked in the fields. He just went right back to picking as he sang a Negro Spiritual, the rest of the way down the row. I don't remember if I ever properly thanked him, and I don't even know his name, but he was my hero that day.

I made a dollar that day because I was able to pick faster, with the gloves on. I don't recall if it slowed him down at all, as he made it to the end of the row in record time. Picking cotton was life to him, whereas it was "candy" money to me. I feel bad now, writing that, although we were poor , we had food, and I had a couple dresses and shoes on my feet. They worked so hard to eat, and now as I look back on it, I am sorry that I worked to get an extra, and they worked to live. He really did something nice for a stranger that day, and taught me a very valuable lesson about humanity.

(Excerpt from my book, " The Ripples In The Lake" )

(Google image)

Our New Home

 

Gloria Peacock Kimmel

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Well, I have been in the RV for two days and am adjusting to the movement and sounds of a different life. My big chair did not fit so my daughters bought me another chair to use in the RV and I love it or will when my body gets used to sleeping in it.

It was so good to see them again and my lil doggie.

Today we go on a short one hour or so trip to the next campground and then We will come back for my Sept 8th appt to remove the stent. I can't wait for that and will be so much more comfortable.

I hope that everyone has a beautiful day. I will let you now how things go later today and send a big hug and love to you all, Always, Kimmee

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Three More Weeks til I am done..

 

Gloria Peacock Kimmel

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Hi y'all. I hope that your morning is starting with love and light in your life.

This is my favorite day of the week and daddy is never far from my mind on Sunday. This was his day of rest but he spent the day taking us swimming, with him fishing and then making our supper.

It made me think of all those selfless parents that keep on giving to their children and families when every ounce of their strength is gone.

God bless those parents. I just wanted to honor those hard workers sacrificing everyday so their children can have what they need.

It is not easy right now. Jobs have been lost with incomes imploded and so many changes that I have whiplash. I can't imagine if I had to care for children now.

I pray for continued strength and healing for us all.

I pray for sunny days ahead.

I will continue to pray for all of the lives lost due to the virus and for those fighting to live right now.

Special prayers for my childhood friend and Nurse, Linda Hall Watson who passed a few days ago from the virus.

Thank you for being here with me, especially these past few months. It hasn't been easy but we are here together and that is really all that matters.

I love you and pray that today will be one of hope and encouragement surrounded by the love of family and friends. Always, kimmee

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