HOW I LEARNED THE FACTS OF LIFE – C2012 JoJo

HOW I LEARNED THE FACTS OF LIFE

When we are young and ignorant, there are many sources of information available to us, to learn about sex and how babies are born. The best source, one would think, would be dear old Mum. Not in my case it wasn’t.

“Mum, where do babies come from?” I recall asking her.

Mum blushed to the roots of her hair.

“You don’t need to know,” she stammered.

I thought about that for a while. “Why not?”

“Because girls should remain innocent.”

“So when will I be told?”

“I will tell you when you become engaged!”

No kidding – that’s exactly what she said. Good grief, I could’ve gotten into all kinds of trouble long before I became engaged. By some miracle, I didn’t – but I could have …

I know at my all girl’s school I’d see a gaggle of them huddling together, heads bent, whispering to one another, snickering wildly, but it all seemed… dirty to me so I never participated.

So I grew up… innocent. Well to tell the truth, not just innocent – bloody ignorant with only a vague, ill defined idea about the whole sorry business. And in the back of my mind, was the concept that if Mum found it unsavoury to talk about, and my school friends had to go into secretive huddles to giggle about it, it must altogether be something both distasteful and nasty – ergo I didn’t want to know about it. At least not until I got engaged!!

Then I went through a life altering experience. At the age of 15, due to a series of events like getting lost in the woods, finally locating a forester’s hut, I was the only person around for MILES when a young girl, just a couple of years older than myself, was giving birth – and I had to do the honours!

When she saw me walk in through the door, frightened out of my mind (believe me, getting lost in a dense forest in Brazil, is nothing like getting lost in Sherwood Forest) this soon-to-be-a-mother let out a cry of joy.

“God must’ve sent you to help me!” she yelled.

“Erm, no, I don’t think so. I was lost in the forest …”

“No, God sent you. You must help me.”

“How?” I asked.

“I’m going to have a baby!” she exclaimed.

I smiled. “Wonderful! Congratulations! When?”

“RIGHT NOW, YOU BURRA” (Portuguese word whose literal meaning is “donkey” but really means “idiot, moron, nincompoop.”)

I’m sure I went ashen at that moment. “But I don’t know anything about having babies,” I stuttered.

“Well you’re going to have to learn in a hurry,” she snarled. “Come over here.”

Cautiously, I made my way across the dirt floor.

She was lying on a pallet covered with a blanket, so all I could see of her was her face which right now was not a pretty sight. Suddenly, without warning, her lips pulled back baring her teeth, her back arched and she let out a mighty scream which scared the living daylights out of me.

‘AAAAARGH!’ she yelled. Then let rip with some ripe juicy Portuguese swear words!

“Why did you yell like that?” I asked somewhat annoyed.

She sat up a bit and glared at me. “Why do you think burra? Because IT BLOODY HURTS, is why” she growled.

“Oh, sorry about that.”

She cast her eyes heavenwards. “God, if you had to send someone, couldn’t it have been someone USEFUL instead of this BURRA?”

My pride was piqued. “Listen, you tell me what to do and I’ll do what I can to help you – but you’ve got to stop insulting me, or I’m going to turn around, and go right back out of that door,” I said pointing.

She wasn’t to know that wild horses wouldn’t have gotten me back out into the forest lost again, but my words calmed her down and she apologized.

In between contractions, (accompanied by ear splitting screams and curses – I learned a whole lot of new words that night), she told me what to do, how to prepare for this child’s birth, and what was going to happen.

There was a wood stove burning at the back of the hut, and I boiled a knife and piece of string. Then I sat at the foot of the pallet and waited for something to happen.

I won’t go into details here, only to say it was not a pretty sight. Fortunately, the birth was uncomplicated, it was a healthy little girl who started yelling lustily the moment her head popped out of the birth canal, and I followed the mother’s instructions about tying the umbilical chord in two places and cutting in between the tied off bits. Then I cleaned the baby up, and dressed her in the clothes her mother had laid out for her.

About 20 minutes later, the afterbirth came away. OH…MY…GOD, I thought the poor mother was coming to bits in front of my horrified eyes, and that her uterus had just spilled out onto the newspapers laid out on the bed. I went into panic mode and tried to shove it all back inside her.

When she realized what I was doing, she stopped me, then broke into peals of laughter. She laughed so hard in fact, tears were pouring down her cheeks. After she’d explained what the afterbirth was, I felt relieved but no, I did NOT find it in the least bit funny! Why hadn’t she warned me about this BEFORE it happened? Crikey!

She was lying comfortably in bed with the baby suckling at her breast when the door burst open and in came her partner accompanied by the local midwife he’d gone off to fetch, the idiot – he should’ve remained behind and delivered the baby himself instead of rushing off.

Of course, the new Mum had to regale the two of them with my ineptitude, which they found hysterically funny, laughing their fool heads off while I, the “burra” stood there feeling stupid.

The husband offered to take me on his mule back to where I was staying. I accepted with alacrity.

“So what are you going to name the baby? I asked as I prepared to leave.

“What’s your name?” the new Dad asked.

“Joanna.”

“We will name her Joanna then – Joaninha.”

I should bloody well think so too – it was the least they could do in my opinion. At least they weren’t going to call her “Burra!”

************************************************************************

Note: Mum was true to her word. On my wedding day, she said to me, with great embarrassment “Darling, be sure to take a little towel with you because when you… do …. it the first time, you might … bleed… and you wouldn’t want to … soil the hotel sheets.”

And that was the sum total of my sex education from my sweet Mum, God rest her soul!

Recommend0 recommendationsPublished in Senior Chatters

Related Articles

Responses

  1. hahaha!!! jo i laughed all the way thro’ that…i know it wasn’t supposed to be that funny but me been me thought it was…brilliant!! as is everything you write!!! 🙂

  2. Thanks so much Pollie – it was a scary and not so nice experience back then, but looking back on it now, it was in fact, funny! Today you wouldn’t find a 15 year old girl who didn’t know the facts of life! Mine was a very sheltered upbringing!

    Thanks for commenting!

    1. Thanks for your comment skippy – you could say I got a crash course on midwifery! Back then, I swore by all that was holy, that I would never EVER give birth to a child, and go through the agony that poor backwoods girl endured – but I did – twice (once with 26 hours of labour was obviously not enough for me – haha)!

  3. Thanks so much Malt! You could say (with good reason) that I have a warped sense of humour – things that, at the time, appear horrific, catastrophic and utterly ghastly – long after the event (like many years later) strike me as having been really funny as was the case with this event! When I think back, I try to mentally visualize my face the first time she let out a totally unexpected, godawful, piercing, ear splitting shriek along with swearing like a sailor – well, it must’ve been hilarious! As for the expression on my face when that afterbirth came away … well, words fail me.

  4. Wow what an experience jo – I don’t think I could have handled that at 15. The only things my mother told me was “keep your legs crossed and kiss with your mouth shut” – today I find that hilarious lol – another great blog jo xoxoxoxox

  5. Thanks so much Patty – I think your Mum’s advice was hilarious – come to think of it, it would be an excellent method of birth control! lol Thanks for the laugh and the comment.

    1. Yes indeed Barbara it is another story! I didn’t include that part because it would’ve made my blog too long, but I will write it up and post it separately. Thanks so much for commenting.

  6. Ha, ha jojo!! I remember my mother trying to tell me about ”’the hard facts of life”, and when she had finished her lecture looking red and very uncomfortable, I was so confused by the wrapped-in-lecture that i asked her if my dad also had the period every month!!