WEBVTT

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 Originally when I was a child growing up, I used to say I was gonna have

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six Children and each of them were
gonna look like one of my friends.

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But a as I grew up and had kids, I
didn't think I only have six Children.

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Yeah, two was a good number. It was in
the year of 1967.

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This was my third pregnancy. I
wouldn't call it exactly planned. But it

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was not a huge surprise and it was, it
was like we wanted to have another

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child, but we weren't really
specifically trying that hard. At that moment

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in time I had had toxemia in an
earlier pregnancy. Toxemia is when your

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kidneys start to fail and your blood
pressure shoots way up. That had

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happened in my first pregnancy and it
wasn't realized and my first child

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had died. So I was so afraid of having
to see me again. I had had like a

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grand mal convulsion and everything
else. I mean, I could have literally

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died. I was very careful about things
like that. And both for my second

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pregnancy and the third one, I had
rented a blood pressure instrument and

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I took my own blood pressure every
day. A few weeks before the birth, we

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had had a big snowstorm, which was
scary to me because my doctor had told

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me that it was gonna be a rapid
delivery. The baby was situated in such a

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way that the cord could wrap around
her neck. I got tearful and I said,

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well, what can I do? And he said,
well, what do you want me to do? Put you

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in the hospital early? And I said,
yes, my health was fine. You know, I, I

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was just worried it was gonna happen
again, you know, and a few days

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before Valentine's day, I went into
labor in the hospital, I started with

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having these labor pains in my back. I
wasn't sure I was in labor. There

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was a nursing shortage at that point
in the hospital and I called the

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nurse and she said, I'll be in there
when I can I have to empty all the

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trash cans on the floor first. So
there I was, and finally like 20 minutes

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later or something, she showed up and
when she looked at me, she could

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tell that the baby was about ready to
be born. And so she screamed and ran

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out of the room and called my doctor
and he got there just right about as

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she was being born and he didn't even
have time to put on a white coat or

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anything like that. She was basically
born with almost no sedation or

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anything like that and born very
quickly. And then they had people in the

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hospital a lot longer than they do
now. You know? And I was probably in

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there a good three or four days before
I went home. It's what in those

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states they called rooming in where
you have your baby in the room with

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you. So, and I had done that in my
previous pregnancy too. I, one thing I

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learned from that first experience, I
had my father was a physician and I

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had always gone to good doctors. I had
gone to a general practitioner who

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was the family doctor for my husband's
family. And um my mother kept

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saying, you know, why don't you go to
an OBGYN? But I wanted to do kind of

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what was expected in that situation.
But after that child died of a crib

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death, I then went to see an OBGYN and
had him review my records and

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everything. And I wanted to know
whether I should have another child or

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not because I didn't understand
everything that had happened. And he said

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, you know, this may not ever happen
to you again. And he also was very

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critical of the doctor. I had been to,
he said, you know, he must have

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been throwing your urine samples down
the drain or something. He said

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probably be fine as long as you go to
somebody who knows what they're

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doing. But he said, whatever you do
don't go back to Joe Schmo. I just

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kind of trusted my doctor and I really
came to believe something that I

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read in a book later on. But I
believed it already, which is that you

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really have to be a partner with your
doctor and you can't just say

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whatever you think. Like I had to take
my own blood pressure and things

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like that, which was probably
excessive, but that's how I felt. You know,

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that I, I wanted to take charge this
time, make sure that things went, you

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know, the way they should go. I just
really believe that you have to rely

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on your doctor up to a point, but you
have to be in charge. It's your baby

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and your delivery and, yeah.