I began to feel that I had little in common with Harry, in any area of life. Our wedding had taken place in February 1973. Five months later, in July, I discovered that I was pregnant. I had started to experience morning sickness every day. I began to feel that my body was different from normal. The weather was warm and sunny, and I normally felt good and fit during the bright summer months. Being a nurse, I took a urine sample from myself, and sent it to the laboratory for an unofficial test. There were no do-it-yourself pregnancy tests in those days. I told the laboratory technician that it was my own and that I wanted him to give me the results unofficially.
After all the examinations by gynaecologists, I was not optimistic about my prospects of conception, never mind carrying a healthy baby to full term, but I knew there was a chance and being a Catholic, Harry would not use contraception. Condoms were freely available for sale in the United Kingdom but in Catholic-dominated Ireland it was illegal to sell condoms, so the culture of using contraception was unknown. The fact that Harry was not using contraception was never an issue between us.
Once again, I had told a white lie. I told Harry that because of an accident I had as a child, it was unlikely that I would be able to have children. I told him this news long before we got married. He seemed to accept it without any bother. I did not think about his easy acceptance of this fact at the time, except to make a subconscious note that it seemed a tiny bit strange to me. All other fellows that I had been involved with, or had known, had wanted to have children at some stage in their married life.
The contraceptive pill for women had been available for many years, but 99 per cent of me believed that I did not need it, due to my damaged internal reproductive tract. The remaining one per cent of me hoped that I would become pregnant. While I had such a case history working against my becoming pregnant, I did not want to aid and abet it by taking the pill. If one of Harry’s sperm was determined enough, and wanted to make its long and troublesome way up as far as my Fallopian tube, it was going to get all the help and encouragement that I could provide.
I told the technician in the laboratory that I was expecting a negative result. I told him that if it were positive I would go to my GP and have it confirmed, officially.
Two days later the laboratory staff phoned me, while I was working on the ward, and asked me to go down to the laboratory for the results. When I got there, he told me that while the results were unofficial, they were accurate. He said that the result was positive, and that, I was indeed, well and truly pregnant.
I was ecstatic.
I was over the moon with happiness.
I was full of uncontrolled joy.
I kissed him on the lips, with thanks, for giving me the joyful news.
‘I thought that you did not want the result to be positive,’ he replied with a frown.
‘Ah well, I might as well make the best of it,’ was all the explanation I could produce, while I was obviously consumed with happiness. I can still remember him walking away from me, shaking his head from side to side, muttering to himself incredulously, ‘Women, women!’
I went to my GP the next morning. First thing that morning I had taken another urine sample, in a sterile plastic container. I gave it to my doctor and asked him to have a pregnancy test done for me, as I suspected that I might be pregnant. I could barely conceal my happy expectation. He said to call his office in a few days for the result.
I could not sleep for two nights, while awaiting the official confirmation of my pregnancy. Sure enough, two days later the test yielded a positive result. I had the precious gift of life inside me. I could not believe it!
It was my most distant dream, come true. I promised God that, whatever happened, I would do everything in my power to bring that spark to life, to fulfil its place within this world, the world that it was entitled to be born into. I promised God that I would love and cherish it.
I would never give it away to anyone.
I would never cause it to suffer, in any way.
I would never abuse it physically.
I would never allow anyone else to abuse it physically.
I would never allow any of the horrible things that happened to me as a child, to happen to my child.
I was going to be the mother to my child that I never had myself.
I told Harry the news that evening, when he came in from work.
‘I am pregnant, we are going to have a baby,’ I shrieked, as I jumped up and down, before him. In my happiness I threw my arms around him, in a giant hug. He was disappointed.
‘Could you not have waited?’ was his reply. I felt that he was implying that I was to blame for becoming pregnant or possibly not using contraception, but I hoped that, given time, Harry would accept the idea of me being pregnant with his baby.
I wasn’t able to tell him why being pregnant meant so much to me.
At 10.25 pm on March 26, 1974, my first child, Anthony Joseph, was born. He weighed nine pounds and it was a very difficult delivery. I ended up having an emergency Caesarean operation. All those gynaecologists who had examined me previously were not entirely wrong in their diagnoses. The only thing that I remember, after the injection to put me to sleep, was waking up to find a priest that I had never seen before, leaning over me in the bed, praying furiously. I thought that I was dying, because I could not see my baby in the room. I got into a state of panic. I caused such a commotion, while yelling and screaming for my baby, that the nurses said that they would wheel my bed down to see him in the nursery.
I realised immediately that I had a baby boy. They pointed to a tiny pink face wrapped in a white cloth. When one of the nurses lifted him up close to me, I thought that he was the most beautiful baby that I had ever seen.
I had become a mother. I was so proud. I could not stop crying with emotion every time someone congratulated me. I was permanently in tears during my stay in the maternity ward. All his tests were normal. He was a healthy baby and I couldn’t wait for the three of us to be a family together.
After recovering from the initial trauma of having a baby, the hospital had me back, after four months, to follow up on and investigate the problems that had arisen during the birth. The result of this consultation was that they advised me that any future children would have to be delivered by Caesarean section. Natural birth would be impossible.
Before the consultant could utter another word, I jumped up from the chair in which I was sitting. ‘Future children?’ I shrieked. ‘Does that mean that I can have more children? I would love to have more children. How many more children do you think I could have?’
‘Mrs Roberts, Mrs Roberts,’ he addressed me gravely. ‘I would urge you strongly, NOT, I repeat NOT, to have any more children. If you have any more children, it would be at great risk to your own life or the baby that you might be carrying.’
I thanked him very much for his advice and left his office. While the consequences of having another baby were serious, I found myself in a different gynaecological dilemma, which was, should I have another baby or not? The situation, as far I was concerned, was that ‘could’ had become ‘should’. The risk was the same, as before, 99 per cent should not, one per cent should. As previously, the one per cent dictated the pace.
I desperately wanted to have another baby. The urge to become a mother for a second time was even stronger than the first. Our sexual behaviour continued on as it had started, without the use of contraceptives.
* * * *
Around this time, we returned to live in Ireland. Anthony was four months old then and Harry decided that he wanted to return home. I had this fantasy that we could build a house there, as a home for Anthony, on his parents’ farm and it would be a nice place for him to grow up. It sounded like Harry had had a safe and happy childhood there. I wanted that for my own child so I agreed to go. I had left work to have Anthony so I didn’t need to give any notice. We went to live in Kilkenny at Harry’s family home, with his parents. That was our only option, because m
y parents were dead.
Living with Harry’s parents did not work out so well. While there were no wars between us, Harry’s mother and I did have a few skirmishes. It was the usual classic ‘two women in the same kitchen’ type rows. I was the younger woman who had never been used to parental advice or authority. I saw his mother’s verbal offerings as unwarranted interference and I was unprepared to accept them as anything else.
It wasn’t long before we moved out of his parents’ house, and rented a house in Waterford City. I went to work as a nurse in the local hospital and Harry got a job as a barman in a city pub. As we were both working, we had to get someone to look after Anthony. We employed a local woman to look after him, mostly while I was at work. Every time that I left him in her care, my heart was beating twice as fast as normal. I wanted to be with him. I was thinking about him constantly. I felt that the woman was not particularly good at looking after him. I had reservations about her caring abilities. I was torn emotionally. I felt I was abandoning him to the same sort of life that I had experienced, through no fault of his own. History was repeating itself.
In Waterford, I had no support, family or friends. While Harry’s family were not too far away in Kilkenny, his parents would offer no support. But I felt that we could not expect any help from his brothers and sisters either. They were busy living their own lives. Whatever support Harry might be able to garner for us, from family or friends, my contribution lay somewhere between nil and negligible. So after spending eight months in Ireland, I decided that living in Ireland under such circumstances was decidedly less than romantic and at best, it was an unmitigated disaster. I began to put pressure on Harry to move to somewhere that my baby and I would feel secure. We returned to London in April 1975.
* * * *
At first, when we returned to London, we stayed with friends in Harrow. Then we rented a small flat in Clapham. I felt that I had support from a large group of my own friends very quickly after settling back in London. I had made my own friends over the years, and most of them were involved in nursing. I went back to work, on night duty, at St John’s and Elizabeth’s Hospital. I wanted to be with my son during the day. I did not want anyone else to look after him except Harry, who looked after him while I was on night duty. It was very hard-going because the only sleep that I got was when the baby went down for a nap during the day. Finally I started working in a position with full-time night duty, on June 16, 1976 in St Thomas’s Hospital.
Nursing is a vocation, and as such it either becomes an integral part of, or takes over, your life. It is also a 24 hour, seven days per week job. It is a lifestyle, and consequently, is not a career for everybody. So inevitably, people tend to make quite a lot of friends who are also nurses. It is easier to make friends within the nursing profession, as you already know the type of character that another nurse is likely to have.
The job of nursing is worked on a shift basis. So you are always meeting some of the same people, some of the time. It is not like a nine-to-five office job. Nurses and their friends do not live in one another’s ear all the time, but when you are in need of help or support, nurses are friends to be treasured.
I needed a friend when I began work on full-time night duty, because as I was coming off duty in the morning, and when Harry was beginning his day’s work, there was an overlap. So Anthony had to be left with somebody on Harry’s way to work, so that I could collect him on my way home. In the end Harry used to leave Anthony with a friend of mine who lived near the hospital. I collected him at about 9 am and stayed up with Anthony during the day. I’d go to sleep when Harry came home in the evenings. After we had dinner, I usually went to sleep from 6 to 7.30 pm. I then bathed Anthony, got him ready for bed and then Harry and he would drop me to work at 8.15 pm. I was soon exhausted. I can remember that I sometimes had to tell Anthony to keep quiet just so that I could have a few minutes’ rest. But I still thought it was the best way to ensure that Anthony was safe.
We had settled into our new routine when, in December 1976, after having my bath one day, I discovered a small lump under my left breast. It is one of those moments that every woman dreads. My hand stopped moving. I felt no lump. But I knew that I had felt something. I tried to make my hand go backwards to where it had been. With difficulty, my hand movement reversed.
It was there. I could feel the lump. I moved forward again – there was no lump. Backward again – there was definitely a lump there.
I did not want a lump to be there because I knew what it meant. In my career as a nurse I had seen women at every stage of breast cancer. None of the stages of breast cancer are easy to deal with. But I was tough. I did not want to fall down in a heap, on the floor. I would not collapse mentally. I would fight it. I had seen women fight it. I had seen women fight it successfully. My first thought was, ‘I have a young son, and I want to see him grow up, and I want to see his son grow up. I will fight the Big C, and I will win.’
The next day I went to visit my GP. I was in fighting mood. I explained to him what I had found under my breast. He examined me and suggested that I should go and see a Professor Ellis at the Westminister Hospital.
‘I will write you a note and you can bring it with you,’ he said.
‘How soon should I go to see him?’ I asked him, my voice was at least two octaves lower than when I had entered his office.
‘Immediately. I’ll get you an appointment today if I can,’ he said, as he picked up his phone. After a short conversation he told me, ‘Professor Ellis can fit you in at 4 pm this afternoon, make sure you are there.’
Professor Ellis’s examination was over quickly. ‘There is no doubt, you must have immediate surgery, my dear,’ he announced loudly.
I had become a mouse.
‘When?’ I asked. I could hardly hear myself.
‘In two days’ time, on Friday morning. I will arrange for you to be admitted on Thursday,’ he replied.
I was dismissed.
I was drained of all energy. I tried to stand up to leave. My two legs got a message from my brain, which asked them to stand up. The muscles were unable to take messages. There was no power in the muscles. I somehow muttered a low sound that resembled ‘Thank you’, to the Professor. I do not know how I managed to walk out of the building and hail a cab to go home.
My mind was a blur of thoughts. Over a period of just 48 hours, the strong, tough, courageous woman that was going to fight breast cancer, and win, was now reduced to a woman, with all the strength of a jelly. I was so upset.
I checked into Westminister Hospital as appointed. Harry came to visit me in the hospital and brought Anthony with him, which lifted my spirits. The doctors, nurses and medical students, were a great support to me, as it was near Christmas. They used to take me to their pantomimes, in the doctors’ mess. It sort of helped me to recover from the shock.
Luckily, I did not need to have a full mastectomy.
I got out of hospital on December 19, just in time for Anthony’s second Christmas. We spent that Christmas with some friends and for New Year’s Eve, we had a party in our flat. By this stage we had moved to Trinity Crescent, Tooting. It was a great party with lots of singing and dancing, but my heart was not in it, I was weak and tired all the time.
I got pregnant for the second time, immediately after the breast operation. I was so happy because it would be company for Anthony. This baby was due on August 19, 1977.
I was on night-duty in May, and started to have some pain in my stomach. The next day I was admitted to St Thomas’s Hospital. After the doctors had done a scan, they said that the baby was fine, and left me to listen to her heartbeat. It seemed all right from the scan. We found out that it would be a girl and I decided to call her Mary Ellen.
I was taken back to the ward at 6 pm. At 2 am I started to haemorrhage quite badly. They rushed me to theatre but could not save her.
I was very depressed after losing this baby. I had a new GP at this time and his advice was that the best way of get
ting over it was to try for another baby. I decided that, while he had my medical notes, he should have been as familiar with my history as my previous doctor. I did not need to be told twice. I did not refer him to my previous history, which was in my notes. I still had that one per cent chance of pregnancy, shining like a beacon before me. I wanted to have another baby. I felt the chances were becoming greater as time went on. I knew I was capable of conception. I just had to be more careful about how I cared for the foetus, during its nine-month stay with me.
Just as things were looking up, life dealt me another blow. In October of that year, 1977, I found another lump on my breast. I went back to Professor Ellis for a consultation. He found not just one lump, but two. There was a lump on the other breast as well. He said that more surgery was necessary. I told him that my periods were late and that there was a possibility that I could be pregnant. He got a gynaecologist to examine me, who said that I was not pregnant. Also a urine test proved negative. So, with all the negative pregnancy tests, surgery went ahead.
I was very sick after this operation. I also had a lot of abdominal pain. The gynaecologist decided to do a laparoscopy to check the ovaries and uterus for cancer.
They found none.
I knew that I was pregnant. I wanted another pregnancy test. This time it was positive.
By this time I had been in direct contact with radiation. I had also been through two general anaesthetics, in the space of a two-week period. The senior registrar and some of the other doctors in charge of my case became very concerned. They strongly advised me to have a termination. I could not agree with this.
I felt under a lot of pressure. I did not know what to do.
They called Harry into the office on a Saturday morning. They told him that if I went ahead with the pregnancy, I would be risking my own life and that of the baby. They said that the baby would be very likely to be handicapped, because of the radiation from X-rays. They got a priest to come and talk to me. He said that if I had a termination under these circumstances, it would not be a sin.
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