Back then ...

Today was a day of shopping and making soup, of going out in the mists and finding unexpected beauty before the light faded, of feeling I'd wasted time and of missing friends. Because - apart from the extra photo of our late afternoon walk by an amazingly high and tranquil sea - that was it, in less than a paragraph, I've decided to reminisce ...

Fifty years ago tonight, I was in that handsome sandstone building in Great Western Road, Glasgow. I'd been in labour all day and was still at it; there was a further two hours or so left. The building was then known as Redlands Hospital for Women, and was perhaps 20 minutes' walk - much of it uphill - from our little flat in Hyndland. I had been born there too, when it was more a nursing home than a hospital, though that had not played any part in my own decision-making: I was merely told by my GP that that was where I'd be going. 

I found the following information online: James Buchanan Mirrlees, a wealthy Glasgow businessman, acquired 24 acres of land north of Great Western Road in 1869. He employed the architect James Boucher to build an Italianate villa with conservatory, stable block and greenhouses. This photograph, by Thomas Annan, shows the newly-built house surrounded by the fields of Kelvinside, which was still largely rural. Great Western Road can just be seen in the bottom left corner.

The house was converted in the early 1920s to become Redlands Hospital for Women. The hospital was closed in 1978 and the building became a Scottish Ambulance Service training centre.

In 1974 it was usual for one to be admitted and labour to be induced on one's due date if nothing had happened before that. I can remember that happening, after which the day became progressively more of a blur. There were distant wails from other delivery rooms, as well as in the small ward where I was, some from women, some from newborns. I remember nurses talking about "a baby in the bed", which sounded like A Bad Thing. Himself visited, and was sent away in the evening - he spent the intervening hours at my sister's, beside the phone. I relapsed into a pethidine-induced sleep and was wakened by a nurse to get on with things (her words!).

I reckon it was a rather extraordinary place to have a baby in the later 20th century - I can remember creaking wooden floors in corridors, and a bit where the corridor rose as if moving from one building to another; I think there must have been other buildings erected next to the original. I don't know if it was still staffed entirely by women - which it had been originally - but I don't recall any male staff at all.

Two days after this, I and my son were moved to an individual ward - me in one of three single rooms, while he was in a nursery, also alone, across the corridor. I think he had an eye infection, but whatever the reason it was one of the loneliest weeks of my life. The formidable female doctor in charge of me said briskly that it would give me a chance to read, now that I was away from "all these women" - but for the first time in my life I recognised the need for company and shared experience. I don't think I've ever felt more sorry for myself.

The trend in 1974 was to bottle-feed; I was determined not to. (A life-long slut, I feel I was destined not to have to sterilise bottles ...) My mother, who visited every afternoon, was a fierce advocate, so I'd never actually considered not feeding my own baby. She would bolster my determination and then go and seek out a nurse to reinforce the point. 

All this time Himself was already working in Dunoon, having started a month earlier. And writing this has brought it all back ...

It's as well we have babies when we're young.