Times have changed
Mar. 26th, 2007 10:52 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
pbrayMany years ago, sometime between the time when dinosaurs roamed the earth and the invention of the internet, my mother woke up on a Sunday morning experiencing labor pains.
Since this was the 60s, her first act was to get dressed and iron the previous day's laundry so my father would have a week's worth of shirts to wear to the office. Only then did she inform my father, who drove her to the hospital after dropping my brother off with family. The hospital told him to go home--this was going to take a while, and there was no point in a mere father staying at the hospital. So he went to his mother-in-law's house for Sunday dinner, which was traditionally served in the early afternoon.
During dinner the hospital called--I'd arrived much faster than expected. I was also a girl, to everyone's surprise. There hadn't been a female Bray born in the last hundred years. As for my mother's family, she and her sisters had already produced five male grandchildren, so there was much general rejoicing. (And a mad dash to the stores on Monday so my aunts could finally buy girly baby things, after years of unrelenting blue.)
My father was so shocked by the news of my arrival that his brother-in-law (the state trooper) drove him back to the hospital, not trusting my dad behind the wheel.
Every time my birthday rolls around, I think of how much times have changed. Of my mother, giving birth alone, because this was how things were done, while her husband, mother, sisters and their husbands sat down to a Sunday dinner. Over the years as my mother recounted the story, her one quarrel with my father was not that he had left her alone, but rather that he'd enjoyed one of her mother's roast beef dinners, while she was stuck in the hospital.
Anyway, that's how I came to be here. I'm not much for celebrating birthdays, particularly not my own. But it is a good day to remember where I came from.
Since this was the 60s, her first act was to get dressed and iron the previous day's laundry so my father would have a week's worth of shirts to wear to the office. Only then did she inform my father, who drove her to the hospital after dropping my brother off with family. The hospital told him to go home--this was going to take a while, and there was no point in a mere father staying at the hospital. So he went to his mother-in-law's house for Sunday dinner, which was traditionally served in the early afternoon.
During dinner the hospital called--I'd arrived much faster than expected. I was also a girl, to everyone's surprise. There hadn't been a female Bray born in the last hundred years. As for my mother's family, she and her sisters had already produced five male grandchildren, so there was much general rejoicing. (And a mad dash to the stores on Monday so my aunts could finally buy girly baby things, after years of unrelenting blue.)
My father was so shocked by the news of my arrival that his brother-in-law (the state trooper) drove him back to the hospital, not trusting my dad behind the wheel.
Every time my birthday rolls around, I think of how much times have changed. Of my mother, giving birth alone, because this was how things were done, while her husband, mother, sisters and their husbands sat down to a Sunday dinner. Over the years as my mother recounted the story, her one quarrel with my father was not that he had left her alone, but rather that he'd enjoyed one of her mother's roast beef dinners, while she was stuck in the hospital.
Anyway, that's how I came to be here. I'm not much for celebrating birthdays, particularly not my own. But it is a good day to remember where I came from.
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
Happy Birthday!
Date: 2007-03-26 03:51 pm (UTC)Re: Happy Birthday!
Date: 2007-03-26 03:55 pm (UTC)A far cry from those hyper-involved dads of the 90s who were both labor coaches and videographers....
(no subject)
Date: 2007-03-26 03:54 pm (UTC)Yeah--my Dad dropped my Mom off at the hospital and went home, too. Late 50s.
(no subject)
Date: 2007-03-26 03:57 pm (UTC)Of course this was the era when Dr. Spock's Guide to Childcare had one slim chapter on the father's responsibilities--which started off by advising men that now was the time to buy their wives an automatic washing machine so they didn't have to do the diapers by hand.
(no subject)
Date: 2007-03-26 03:59 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2007-03-26 04:16 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2007-03-26 05:08 pm (UTC)Thanks for the good wishes.
P.S. Really cool snippet, by the way.
(no subject)
Date: 2007-03-26 08:59 pm (UTC)Thanks! It's a fun little thing to write. :)
(no subject)
Date: 2007-03-26 04:21 pm (UTC)(Born in 60's on couch in family living room....)
S.J.
(no subject)
Date: 2007-03-26 05:09 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2007-03-26 05:59 pm (UTC)My daughter broke my husband's family's all male tradition. OF course my brother-in-law, whom I don't get along with, repeatedly said, throughout the last couple of months of my pregnancy that he hoped I had a girl. In his mind that meant it wasn't his brother's child. Imagine his disappointment when the second one was also a girl and nobody else thought it was strange. We were just the first of the generation though. Seems like every one of his cousins ended up with girls this time around.
(no subject)
Date: 2007-03-26 06:04 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2007-03-26 06:05 pm (UTC)My father also didn't stay at the hospital (this also in the 60s) but instead of going home, walked across campus to his lab, where a major large instrument was being delivered and installed. And went back and forth between as both deliveries progressed. Or so I'm told -- I have trouble believing he never went home, since Mom was in labor for over 24 hours.
---L.
(no subject)
Date: 2007-03-26 06:19 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2007-03-26 06:59 pm (UTC)I was born in the mid-1970s. My mom was an Older Mother (she was 32) and therefore considered High Risk, so she had a terribly officious and dictatorial OB who induced labour because I was (allegedly) 16 days late, then gave my mother an epidural even though she didn't want one, and then, when about an inch of me had emerged (I was frank breech) announced, "I think I feel a scrotum!" (Umm, I don't know what it was, but it definitely wasn't a scrotum.) My dad was around somewhere, but only because he made such a fuss about being ejected that they caved, dressed him up in a plethora of sterile gear, and let him stay to shut him up. The whole thing took 4 hours, and was nevertheless such a horrible experience that the next time around my mom tried to insist on a home birth ...
(no subject)
Date: 2007-03-26 08:21 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2007-03-26 10:05 pm (UTC)mutual HBs all around!
Date: 2007-03-27 10:52 am (UTC)We're everywhere! We're everywhere! :)
Re: mutual HBs all around!
Date: 2007-03-27 12:25 pm (UTC)And a happy belated to you.
(We really are everywhere. I got an HB e-mail yesterday from a friend -- her birthday is tomorrow -- who said, umm, it is your birthday today, right? It's my boss's, and my friend so-and-so's, and now I have a dreadful feeling maybe yours is March 30 ....)
Re: mutual HBs all around!
Date: 2007-03-27 01:08 pm (UTC)Re: mutual HBs all around!
Date: 2007-03-27 01:07 pm (UTC)Bwa-ha-ha-ha-ha!
Re: mutual HBs all around!
Date: 2007-03-27 03:43 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2007-03-26 07:10 pm (UTC)I know we're all a product of our times, but I still can't get my brain around the mindset that said men should go home while their wives were undergoing some of the most physically challenging and painful work of their entire lives.
I wonder if it's part of the same mindset that seems to have had women obsessed with the notion that they had to keep the men in their life protected from discomfort in the home at all times, no matter what. I notice that older women still "worry" about the men in a way that feels a bit alien to me.
(no subject)
Date: 2007-03-26 08:41 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2007-03-26 10:26 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2007-03-26 11:49 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2007-03-27 01:04 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2007-03-27 01:03 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2007-03-27 12:06 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2007-03-27 01:06 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2007-03-27 03:42 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2007-03-27 04:53 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2007-03-27 08:31 pm (UTC)A couple more red lights, and the story would have been even more interesting ;) .
Liz
(no subject)
Date: 2007-03-28 02:12 am (UTC)