With each of my pregnancies I suffered with "morning sickness"for the first three months . After the first three months had passed I was perfectly healthy, for the duration of the pregnancy.
The "Morning sickness" I suffered from didn't live up to its name, as by rights it should have been called "24/7 sickness" because it was twenty four hours a day, seven days a week.
I was nauseous all the time and the only food I could stomach was slices of bread with a thin layer of cheese, dried out in the oven until it had no moisture left in it. It had in fact, become a rusk with a thin covering of brittle cheese. The only liquid I could keep down was water or black tea.
I was still in this phase of my pregnancy when, my late husband (who was a funeral undertaker at this stage) was transferred to Middleburg, Transvaal. We went from a three bedroomed house with a garden to a two bedroomed flat situated on the floor above the funeral parlour. We already had three children and were now expecting the fourth, and we had less space.
By the end of March 1964, my forty year old husband had abandoned his family and was cavorting with teenage girls (at that stage I didn't know the word "paedophile" )
The nightmare had begun and I was six months pregnant. The first three months was the usual nausea, then three months I was nausea free, the last three months I was unable to eat because of the stress. Two thirds of this pregnancy was a starvation diet. It was so bad that I was losing weight at an alarming rate instead of gaining it.
In order to survive financially, I was sitting in front of my knitting machine, day in and day out and then sending my eldest son who was thirteen years old, out on the streets to sell the jerseys I had made.
Fortunately, people who knew of our predicament, even strangers, often dropped off groceries at my door and sometimes a stranger would even give my children money to give to me. This made me very aware that God was looking after us. There were many more incidents where He showed His mighty power, but that is not for this blog.
Two weeks before the birth of my daughter, on the 14th May 1964 , my beloved father died suddenly due to a heart aneurism. This involved a trip to Johannesburg for the funeral. Up until this time my family were completely unaware of my plight.
I believe that this child in my womb went through as much of that trauma as I did, and I am convinced that it had a devastating effect on her well-being.
Added to this, my husband had been "fired" from his job, a few weeks prior to her birth and so the day I came home from the hospital I received notice to vacate the flat. I had given birth on the 14th spent seven days in hospital and on the 21st I was given nine days in which to do a major move with nowhere to go.
"The cherry on the top" of all this was that the "messenger of the court" appeared on my doorstep with a warrant and wrote up everything in the flat and instructed me not to "remove one teaspoon" This was due to money owed by my husband to his ex boss, the owner of the flat.
How I coped with all of this is another story, I am merely giving you an outline of the kind of world this innocent little girl had been catapulted into.
next post 26th June
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