I received this list some years ago and I don’t know who wrote it. Every young woman born in the ’70s will relate:
YOU KNOW YOU WERE A LITTLE GIRL OF THE 70′S IF:
1. You wore that rainbow shirt that was half-sleeves and the rainbow went up one sleeve, across your chest and down the other.
2. You made baby chocolate cakes in your Holly Hobbie Easy Bake Oven.
3. “Oh Mickey you’re so fine, you’re so fine you blow my mind Hey Mickey!” was your first favorite pop song.
4. You wanted to be Laura Ingalls Wilder really bad. You wore that Little House on the Prairie-inspired plaid, ruffled shirt with the high neck in at least one school picture.
5. You wanted your first kiss to be at the roller rink.
6. You tried to make sure that no boys would grab the comb out of your back pocket and skate away at the roller rink.
7. Your hairstyle was never described as having “wings”.
8. You thought Shaun Cassidy actually wrote the songs “Da Do Run Run” and “Hey There Lonely Girl”.
9. Strawberry Shortcake and her friends Blueberry Muffin and Huckleberry Pie.
10. You couldn’t wait to be old enough to wear high-heeled shoes….the one’s called “Yo Yo’s” with the plastic heel with a hole through it!!
11. You carried a Muppets lunch box to school.
12. You and your girlfriends would fight over which of the Dukes of Hazard was your boyfriend.
13. You memorized every song on the “Annie” movie and know at least one person who immediately went out and got the Annie afro.
14. You had Star Wars action figures, too.
15. You thought unicorns were real.
16. It was a big event in your household each year when the “Wizard of Oz” would come on TV. Break out the popcorn and sleeping bags!
17. Light as a feather, stiff as a board.
18. You loved The Lion, The Witch, and the Wardrobe so much you got the whole Chronicles of Narnia series for Christmas but never read the other books.
19. You crawled in a wardrobe somewhere and actually believed for a few seconds that you were on your way to Narnia.
20. You completely wore-out your Grease and Saturday Night Fever soundtrack albums.
21. You tried to do lots of arts and crafts things, like yarn & popsicle sticks or those weird potholders made on a plastic loom.
22. Shrinky-dinks! What was so appealing about these? I loved the Raggedy Anne & Andy shrinky dinks. I still remember how the oven smelled when they were “baking”.
23. You used to tape record songs off the radio by holding your miniature tape recorder up to the speaker.
24. You couldn’t wait to get the free animal poster that came when you ordered books from the Scholastic book orders your teacher would give you. Remember? The order catalogs looked like miniature newspapers.
25. You learned everything you needed to know about sex and your period from Judy Blume books.
——————————————————————————–
That list of what it was like to be born in the ’70s prompted me to write the following list of what it was like to be a childbearing woman at that time:
I am a big fan of women born in the ’70’s. The books you loved and the rainbow shirts
produced a group that are the future of midwifery. My first homebirth was in l976. Thought you might like to know what it was like to be pregnant in the 70’s. Gloria
You know you were pregnant in the 70’s if:
1.You had to battle to keep caustic silver nitrate drops out of your baby’s eyes to prevent gonorrheal infections that you didn’t have.
2. Every maternity top had puff sleeves and frills. All the pants were Fortrel.
3. No one would ever wear a bikini if pregnant. Nothing form fitting either.
4. Your favourite books were “Birth Without Violence” by Frederic Leboyer and “Spiritual Midwifery” by Ina Mae.
5. Even though you weren’t a hippy, you had to make friends with some hippies to lead you to a midwife.
6. Your midwife was a follower of Baba Hari Dass or Rajneesh. You never knew her last name and you paid her cash ($75 per birth . . . or $50, if you can’t afford it).
7. The idea of water birth, Dad’s catching or birth on all 4’s had never occurred to anyone yet.
8. there was mandatory separation of Mother and baby in hospital births for 24 hrs after birth for “observation” in the newborn nursery.
9. Episiotomy was standard practice for all hospital births unless you could find a British-trained doctor. Then, you’d get one anyway but at least he’d tell you in the office he wouldn’t do one.
l0. The cesarean epidemic had started.
11. Women were told to toughen their nipples with toothbrushes and rough face cloths to prepare for breastfeeding (no one did it). No one knew about positioning for breastfeeding so we held our babies at the breast like we were feeding them a bottle (face up to the ceiling). Sore, cracked bleeding nipples were part of life.
12. Millions of women had already given one child up for adoption.
13. The birth control pill was tested on us and that could be why a lot of your Moms have breast cancer now.
14. As children, we played on X ray machines in the shoe stores.
15. We loved our babies and created a grassroots movement of birth that the most powerful medico-legal-pharmaceutical groups in the world have not been able to quash. We are proud of the young women rising up to carry the torch for us.
You are the best of the best. Gloria Lemay
Originally posted at Compleat Mother website.
My mom had her first home birth in 1976, when she brought me into the world on a kitchen table at a friend’s house; the neighbors peering in through the open doorway. Not exactly the ideal birth. She went on to have 4 more home births and is the inspiration for my choosing natural childbirth and two home births. I’m so glad my mom went against the flow back then. I don’t know if I would have considered home birth so readily if I had not known someone who did it (I watched my brother being born at home in the ’90s). Thanks for posting this!
I am a ’76 girl myself. A lot of us by this time have had a cone biopsy or LEEP/LETZ procedure. I was wondering about possible problems with dilation leading to c/s, which were not mentioned along with the “…possibly contribute to an incompetent cervix…sutures would be used to keep it closed…” Is there anything to be done about problematic scar tissue which is prolonging labor? Or is this just a myth used to justify cutting cesareans during normal labor plateaus? And, if you have been able to dilate properly after such a procedure, what are the chances of doing so again?
massage can work away scar tissue.
I am a mom that avoided a LEEP like the plague that it is thanks to wonderful information Glo posted on BirthLove years ago about vaginal birth curing (pre)cancer!! yay here it is: http://www.newswise.com/articles/delivery-by-vaginal-birth-may-return-abnormal-pre-cancerous-pap-smears-to-normal
and I am a ’74 baby, hospital birth though my mom’s experiences with that partially led me to homebirth my own.
LEEP or Cone: its my understanding either it will get in the way with the scar tissue or raise your risk to go early because of being half there. The doctor that offered me a LEEP I asked about that, he said it grows back.. the cervix after they cut half of it off, grows back. I thought “incredulous!! um scar tissue isn’t the same tissue so how could it”
I am thinking.. if you did it once – dilated fully – and no new LEEP/Cone then you would probably be perfectly fine to do it again. I wouldn’t even question if its an ‘again’ for myself.. just trust.
Birth is healing. All those stem cells, new cells that form, yeah.
I had the LEEP procedure and had a successful home birth 1 year later. I don’t believe either that my labor was longer or more difficult than my other deliveries. I did have regular ultrasounds to measure my cervical length during my last pregnancy. I had no issues with incompetencies. I had a very normal pregnancy and delivery.
Hi, Glory –
I grew up in the ’70s, but being a guy, wasn’t ever pregnant then. 🙂 I ran across your post doing a keyword search… that DIDN’T have to do with being pregnant… but was all about memeories from growing up back then. I love the RW’s (remember when’s, my wife and I call them) that you included in your list. A few years back, I started writng all this type of stuff down, and then I got ambitious and actually wrote a little nostalgic book all about growing up in the ’70s. It’s called “My ’70s Book” and you can read all about it here. http://www.my70sbook.com. Anyway – I thought it might be something you and your readers may be interested in.
Long Live the ’70s!
I went looking for this material because someone shared a blog on Facebook about a catalog that was found in a house renovation from the 1970s. It is so funny so if you want a big laugh, read it here:
http://15minutelunch.blogspot.com/2007/10/strap-in-shut-up-and-hold-on-were-going.html
Dear Gloria,
You are awesome. I love your blog. I want to learn more with you and spread this knowledge around. 🙂 I love you. Thank you.
Dylan
Gloria, don’t know why, this post really moved me. I was born in 76′ so it brought back huge memories. Also, I was adopted and realize so many went through this heart breaking and loving experience, so thankful to my BM for the gift of life with a wonderful family. Thanks for sharing the memories of what birth was like, helps me to see what my BM may have gone through, giving me a more complete birth history.
THANKS!
I didn’t grow up in the 70’s however I was born in 77. I do remember alot of these growing up in the 80’s though tape recorded songs, roller rink kisses, strawberry shortcake, annie, holly hobby, and they were all great memories!
Light as a feather, stiff as a board. I didn’t realize everyone in the 70’s did this. Now is anyone going to talk about the Ouija board?
I was a child in the 70’s in California. I had never seen someone nurse and didn’t know anyone who had ever had a home birth. My mother was knocked out to have her children and no men were ever allowed in the hospital birthing room.
My, things have changed. I had one baby in the hospital with an epidural in 2001. The second was born at home with a midwife and a birthtub (an “aquadural” ha ha ha but it worked!). I nursed both children and the second one way past her first birthday. My daughter (born in 2006) knows about nursing, and midwives and may choose to have a midwife in the future. My son (at age five) saw her being born and knows that a home birth is wonderful. The Las Vegas midwives were professional and helped me every step of the way.
Thank you to all the midwives for paving the way already. And thank you for the midwives of today who continue to help women take charge, and trust their own bodies to give birth to babies naturally.
Lisa