Wednesday's Child by Laura Thomas

Author:Laura Thomas
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Olympia Publishers

Come home to me soon my love.

Violet xx

The following morning the enormity of it all hit me. From nothing, I had created this perfect, innocent being and brought life into this world, a life that would be wholly dependent on me for everything. The beauty of this aside, at the same time, the disgust of my physical self began to take hold. My body was still swollen, and my breasts were engorged, the bleeding was still present and I was glad that Stephen was not here to witness me in this sorrowful state. After two long days of labour all I wanted to do was sleep, but every time I was somewhere near drifting off, Peter would wake with his incessant scream and want feeding, draining me not just of milk, but also life. His appetite was insatiable, and he seemed to cry without me being able to settle him. I don’t know if it was the exhaustion or the feeling that I just couldn’t satisfy him that would leave me crying at the least little thing or for no apparent reason whatsoever. Stephen’s mother and sisters were the only women apart from Grandma and Madge who I knew that had experienced childbirth, and they all spoke about it as if it was the most natural and most wonderful thing in the world, whereas I felt like it was the most unnatural, disgusting thing that I had ever experienced in my entire life. There are so many things that nobody tells you about childbirth, things that nobody wants to talk about, things so obvious yet unexpected.

As the days went on and I was starting to get some of my strength back, Mary helped to show me different ways of how to get him to latch on to feed, and showed me how to bathe him in the kitchen sink. One of the things I found most difficult was the copious amount of poop one little human being could produce. I had never been very good with bodily fluids, and those first few nappies took every ounce of strength not to vomit over the poor baby. As if the changing experience wasn’t bad enough, then there was the disposing of the contents and washing them out. A week after Peter’s birth I received devastating news. Cliff was being sent home from France, straight back to the USA, and Ruth was to join him. I had gotten so used to Ruth being around, and although I knew this day would come, it was still a shattering blow.

The United States Army had recently introduced the War Brides Act, providing free passage on American ships for the wives of all-American service personnel from the UK and Europe. Ruth was to leave within a few days to pack up the rest of her belongings and catch the train to Tidworth where the US military had set up processing camps for the UK war brides ahead of their journey to the land of the free.

Saying goodbye

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.