It was a hot summer in 1975 and although I was terribly uncomfortable I was happy. My long awaited wish of having a baby was coming true. I knew my pride and joy was a little girl and I would talk to her sweetly and hold her by wrapping my arms around my stomach; she would move and I would smile. Until her birth, she was all mine and I took excellent care of her by eating all the basic food groups, drinking plenty of milk, taking prenatal vitamins, and walking. So why did I have this feeling that her birth would be devastating in a sort of end of the world kind of way? I spoke with my mother and made her promise that if anything happened to me, she would raise my daughter and not my husband.

David was ok in his own way but I didn't trust him. On a surprise visit to his work at lunch, I found him in the arms of an attractive blonde and when he saw me, he ran. So she was probably the reason he couldn't take me to the required doctor's visits. Thank goodness for my father, he drove me to the appointments as I didn't have a driver's license at the time; it was our bonding time.

Because I gained weight too fast and didn't feel comfortable at work, I quit in June and would receive unemployment benefits until my baby's birth, September 12, 1975. Outside of the extreme weight gain, I was never experienced morning sickness or irritability. There was only one brief moment when I felt nauseous and that was in December 1974 two weeks before the Christmas Holidays at 11:30 p.m. I suddenly woke up and felt the wave of nauseous overcome me. This feeling only lasted a few minutes and never happened again. On February 2, 1975 at 2:00 p.m. I was diagnosed as being pregnant. I was ecstatic!

My happiness lasted only a few months for on Wednesday, July 28, 1975 I started having contractions every ten minutes. This went on for a couple of hours then stopped. I called my physician and he suggested I keep off my feet so I did. Friday night (two days later) I had such horrible pains in my groin area. This scared me as the physical symptoms were the same as my menstrual cycle. I called my physician at the hospital, it was 1:10 a.m. Saturday morning by now, and he told me to lie down. I did so, but it didn't help. My husband was getting irritated because he had to work 1/2 a day on Saturday and needed his sleep. Excuse me! See why I wanted my mother to raise the baby if anything happened to me. He was not a humanitarian by nature, but a very selfish,

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