Transcript:

Saturday: April 2

 

Dear Dr. Beuscher,

Ted & I are happy to announce the birth of Frieda Rebecca Hughes. She was born at 5:45 a.m. yesterday morning, April 1st, weighing 7 pounds 4 ounces, 21 inches long & covered with white cream like a floured pastry. I am now sitting up in bed typing letters after the morning visit of the midwife (it turned out to be the little Indian one of the triumvirate who delivered me & we have grown very fond of her) who bathes me & the baby, eating yoghurt & maple syrup & hardly able to take my eyes off the baby who has enormous blue eyes, a fluff of dark hair & seems to us extremely lovely: perfectly made.

Ironically, in spite of all my strict arrangements with doctor & midwife about plenty of pethidine & gas etc. for my labor, I had the baby completely without analgesia of any sort…nothing but two bits of barley sugar the midwife happened to have in her pocket, & this due to the record speed of Rebecca’s arrival. Ted had been hypnotizing me regularly with my daily bout of relaxing & napping to have “an easy quick delivery”, which may have had something to do with it. It wasn’t easy, but the whole thing lasted 4 ½ hours. I’d had a sinus cold for 2 weeks, not slept much & was rather run down; wakened at 1:15 a.m. Friday April 1st after a bare hour’s sleep to feel the waters break. Contractions started immediately & were strong & regular every 5 minutes by the time the Indian midwife arrived on her bicycle at 2 a.m. without anesthesia or anything, just to see me “get established in the first stage of labor” & then return after breakfast. I felt unaccountably unwilling to have her leave: she rubbed my back, washed my face, tried to get me breathing deeply with the contractions, but I was groggy with a sleeping pill & very surprised I had no time to rest between contractions. By 5 I was fully dilated, no question of the midwife’s leaving. She called my doctor, who had also thought to drop by after breakfast & he came just in time to supervise the delivery of the baby at 5:45. The cord was around its neck once “but loosely” & by following their directions of pushing & not pushing I wasn’t torn at all, just nicked in the front, no stitches, nothing. The worst time for me psychologically was the series of consecutive intense contractions between the first & second stage which I thought were merely a sample of beginning contractions: I’d read about these 10 or 12 bad ones & if I’d recognised them, would have felt better. As it was, I didn’t see how I could stand 20 hours more of them. Almost immediately I wanted to push & the midwife let me go ahead.

Then things were fine: I felt purposeful & controlled & able to sit up enough to see the baby’s head-top in the mirror Ted held. We had expected nothing but a boy & both of us are so delighted with a girl we can’t imagine now every having considered a boy as a possibility. The only really negative times were my vomiting a large dinner up as soon as the midwife came & those violent contractions, the worst, which I thought were a sample of early easy ones. The midwife thought at first I was exaggerating the intensity of them, but as soon as she examined me & saw where I was became nothing but praising & encouraging. I felt marvelous as soon as the baby lay on my stomach wiggling, had tea & slipped in to call mother as soon as doctor & midwife left. Ted was wonderful the whole time & delighted with his new daughter.

I am absolutely delighted with home delivery & wouldn’t ever have a baby in hospital now. The nightmare vision of that delivery I saw at the Boston Lying-In ­– the mother too doped to know what was happening, not seeing or holding the baby, cut open & stitched up as if birth were a surgical operation & sent off on a stretcher in the opposite direction from her child – is completely dissipated. No doctor’s bills for us either. Every day I watch the midwife bathe the baby in my biggest pyrex dish & I let it suck every 4 hours & love having it right by me. She yelled for an hour off-and-on between 2 & 3 a.m. last night for the sheer joy of it & we were both very tired but she looked so amusing we sat up by candlelight & played with her a bit. So we nap in the day if she wakes us much. I don’t know when I’ve been so happy. I am surrounded by flowers & telegrams & being tired, bloody & without apparent stomach muscles is just a stage to be grown out of, no real bother.

Other news seems pale beside this to both of us, but Ted’s 2nd book LUPERCAL is out here as of March 18th, getting fine reviews, & he just received the Somerset Maugham award of over $1,000 for the “promise of his 1st book,” the amount to be used for 3-months abroad in the next 2 years. So we’ll be “forced” to find a villa on the Riviera this winter or next: utter bliss to think of a winter of sun & no sinus weather. My book of poems THE COLOSSUS is due out here early next fall & you’ll receive one of the first copies. England is a marvelous country for babies & books & we are happy as we’ve never been anywhere else. Our dream is an eventual London house & garden. · With his 2 awards & Guggenheim, Ted’s won over $7,000 in the last 2 years: No doubt there’ll be lean years in plenty ahead, but these fat ones are a great encouragement.

Lots of love to you + let me know when your next baby arrives + who it is ~Sylvia