If however, you are of saltier form, prepare yourself for simple truths, told simply as all the stories I have to share have virtually no decorum whatsoever ... they're just TRUE!
This is a photo of all the living children of Ted and Jessie Bernados (two were unsuccessful births) circa 1970's ... don'cha love the big, yellow station wagon in the back? We're living at the homestead on John's Island ...
Prisca, Kathy, Ted (Taber) and Tony ... oh, and that's our dog Muffet (Muff-Muff)
Birth, the first ... Prisca Jane - June 12, 1962
If the story of someone’s birth is a foreshadow of the life that is to come, then mine was always to be a “funny” life and begs to be put into print. Throughout there has been that ribbon of laughter that binds story to story and it all began at the Navy Hospital in Charleston, SC. There was no “birthing room” and husbands didn’t hold the mother’s hand back in ‘62. It was Jessie Lou Peloquin Bernados and several other mothers-to-be all in the same room separated by curtains and in what amounted to cribs for women. As told by my mother, Jessie Lou, who is by all accounts an amazing story-teller the room was also filled with the sound of the cries of the woman in the next stall. “GET IT OUT! GET IT OUT!”, the poor woman would cry. The doctor and nurses were working feverishly to help this poor, loud mother as she struggled with delivery.
That was Jessie Lou’s cue. There was no way she was going to make all that racket! She didn’t want to complain. Sure it hurt and this was her first pregnancy and all but she’d been raised on a farm and had witnessed first-hand the miracle of birth (at an early age she had watched when her dog gave birth to puppies. The adorable part of the story was when Jessie Lou saw the dog to eat the afterbirth. It appalled her and she came stomping into the house and was disgusted with her own mother, “How could you eat that stuff, Mom?” she had accused.) Back to the story... so the other mother is howling and the doctor is giving instructions, “Raise your right leg up onto the railing...and your right hand, grab the same railing .... good..now take a deep breath .... get ready to push ...” Well, Jessie decided she was going to go ahead and do the same stuff, after all, she was in pain too ... just not making a fool of herself in the process. So she did. She positioned herself as described and she began pushing. It wasn’t long before the doctor heard another female screaming her little lungs out. No, not mom, ME. I had made my grand entrance.
The doctor popped his head around the curtain, “Mrs. Bernados?” Upon seeing the newly emerged “punch-line baby”, they immediately attended to my mother and me. Afterwards, he asked her what she had been doing and why hadn’t she said anything. “I was just doing what you were telling the other mother to do and not trying to bother anyone...” (The woman was a martyr..) His response was to laugh, “Oh, Mrs. Bernados! That woman had a thermometer stuck in her rectum!” (That is a direct quote, I'm not responsible for the fancy doctor language).
There you have it! That’s the END of the story of the birth of Prisca Jane (the punch-line) Bernados ... ha ha ha.
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