Not Stupid. Anna Kennedy

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СКАЧАТЬ secretly seen a few boys in the short term, my first date with Sean was in the wake of a bad experience with one boy that had really scared me, mainly because I had been so naïve at the time. Sean, on the other hand, was quite forward and not shy at all. After chatting, we were surprised to find out that we had attended the same school in Middlesbrough and at the same time, although, to the best of our knowledge, we had never met.

      Within three weeks Sean had asked me to marry him. At the time, we were in the house he shared with his mother, Coral, and his Aunt Pam. Sean had even cooked the meal for the occasion. A week later he took me into the town because he wanted to buy me a ring. It was now time to break the news to my family, but, when we got home, we discovered that Maria Luisa had been rushed to hospital with appendicitis, so it was obviously not the most appropriate of times to share our news. Instead I went straight to the hospital to see her.

      However, the time eventually came when Sean was to be introduced to Dad. It was a complete nightmare. Everyone was nervous and Mum was baking for England. I’d already primed Sean to say all the things I thought Dad would want to hear, but it very soon became obvious that Sean was his own man. No one was going to tell him what he could or couldn’t say!

      I was cringing as Dad became angrier and angrier. There were long silences, interrupted only by Mum frequently asking if anyone wanted more strawberry cakes. The meeting was a disaster. Dad was completely unimpressed, declaring, ‘He’s not going out with my daughter!’ Consequently, further meetings between Sean and me had to be clandestine.

      I was heartbroken when Sean left Middlesbrough to attend Brunel University in Uxbridge, northwest London – and so was he. On arrival in London he rang me to say he’d get the first bus home to be with me again, but I persuaded him to stay. After four or five days, however, I was missing him so much. My Aunt Anita could see how low I was and said I should just pack up some things and go to him, that at my age I shouldn’t still be under Dad’s wing. Although I only had around £20 on me, I took the train to King’s Cross, where Sean was waiting for me on the platform. It was so good to see him again.

      Sean had been sharing in a boys’ bedsit, so he had to smuggle me in to his room, where we shared a single bed. Considering Sean weighed 18 stone, it was cramped but fun, and I had to hide my clothes so the cleaners wouldn’t find them.

      Moving in with Sean was a scary experience for me, bearing in mind my complete inexperience with boys, but things went quite well and, after a time, I found work, first in a Woolworth’s store, which I hated, then at Sanderson’s, a textiles manufacturer, as a supervisor in the orders office, where my language skills came in handy. I even managed to get my dance classes up and running again. Meanwhile, Sean, who was studying biochemistry during the day, found night work in a nearby Tesco supermarket to help make ends meet.

      My move south to London angered Dad so much that he wouldn’t speak to me for six months and even my sister wasn’t best pleased with me for leaving her behind. Mum, apparently, had cried when she found out I had gone. Because I hadn’t the heart to tell her I’d moved in with Sean, I told her I was sharing a bedsit with four other girls. The trouble with lying is that you need to remember what you tell someone, and this cover story meant I had to make up and remember the names I’d made up for my imaginary friends whenever I spoke to Mum.

      It wasn’t the best way to start a relationship, but Sean and I were happy together and, without telling our families, we married at Uxbridge Register Office in front of two witnesses we didn’t know on 24 September 1986. We moved out of the bedsit into married quarters at Brunel University and, not long afterwards, moved again, this time into a shared-ownership house in Uxbridge. It may have had only one bedroom, but we were so excited when we moved in.

      Then, in 1989, I fell pregnant. We were delighted. This was meant to be the start of a wonderful experience for us both, but little did we anticipate the heartache and traumas ahead of us that would have such a devastating effect on our family.

      I had always hoped to have my first child before I reached the age of 30, but I endured a really bad pregnancy. I suffered from pre-eclampsia which, basically, meant my ankles became swollen and I had problems with my kidneys, which resulted in proteins leaving my body via my urine. It is an extremely dangerous condition for both the mother and her unborn child. There were fears that there could be deadly complications, one of the main concerns being my high blood pressure.

      Toxaemia, which indicates toxins in the blood, was also diagnosed. My body was giving up on me and I knew I was really ill. It was really scary. For the first 12 weeks I couldn’t stop vomiting, which meant I couldn’t go to work. I thought, If this is pregnancy, you can keep it!

      After a while, though, the vomiting became less frequent and I was able to return to my work at Sanderson’s but, within weeks, my feet had swollen up like balloons. When I was 25 weeks’ pregnant I was getting severe headaches and silver dots began appearing before my eyes. My colleagues were telling me that I didn’t look well and that I should visit my doctor. I made an appointment but found I couldn’t even get my shoes on.

      After checking me over, my doctor wouldn’t even let me get off the chair. She tested my urine and discovered that the sample contained three plusses of protein, which put my baby and me firmly in the danger zone, and my blood pressure was through the roof. She immediately telephoned for an ambulance.

      I was taken to Hillingdon Hospital and there I remained for weeks and weeks in the maternity ward. It had been decided that I needed bed rest to bring my blood pressure down and I was placed in a room next door to the nurses’ station because I could be more closely observed through a window in the dividing wall.

      Despite all the care and attention I had been receiving and weeks of bed rest, at 28 weeks my blood pressure went through the roof again and, because the special-care baby unit did not have a suitable cot and the doctors had decided I might need to have an emergency Caesarean operation, the hunt was on for a hospital that could not only deliver my baby but would have a specialist cot to accommodate him or her after the birth.

      When I was informed that the nearest hospital to meet these requirements was in Brighton, I panicked. I didn’t want to go there. After all, there was no way Sean would have been able to get there and I really wanted him to be with me when our baby was born. The doctors and nurses tried to reassure me. If, they told me, my blood pressure could be reduced, I could stay where I was. Nurses came in to help me with relaxation exercises and, thankfully, my blood pressure responded accordingly.

      Two weeks later, on 5 January 1990, a nurse came in and told me I would be OK to go on for another day. ‘The longer you keep the baby in there, the better.’ The next thing I knew, I was surrounded by medics telling me they needed to get the baby out straightaway after they had studied the results of some medical tests. I was to have an emergency Caesarean operation. There was just enough time to telephone Sean before I was put under a general anaesthetic.

      For the next 48 hours I had to have a nurse by my side. My kidneys were packing up and I was continually being sick owing to an allergic reaction to the anaesthetic. When I came round, Sean was sitting next to me, stroking my hand, but because our son Patrick was so small, he had already been taken to the special-care baby unit.

      Normally, under these circumstances, a picture is taken of the newborn baby to show the mother when she wakes up but, unfortunately, the camera was broken so all I knew about Patrick was what Sean had told me. ‘He’s really lovely,’ he said, before explaining that Patrick was receiving special care owing to the fact that he weighed just 2 pounds 10 ounces (about 1.3 kilos). He also had pre-eclampsia and his body, like mine, had been filling with fluid. When it was drained from him, his weight dropped further to 2 pounds 4 ounces (just over a kilo).

      It wasn’t until Patrick was four days СКАЧАТЬ