I was the first baby born on the NHS
Aneira ‘Nye’ Thomas’ new book Hold On Edna!, tells the fascinating background to her historic birth. Here’s an exclusive extract
‘EDNA,” says the doctor, coming to stand beside the bed. “You need to wait. It’s not long now. Don’t push. Just hold on, Edna.”
In three minutes, it will be July 5, 1948.
She waits until that long, achingly slow clock hand ticks over, and then she pushes. I come barrelling into the world at a minute past midnight, the first baby to be born on the NHS.
“Have you thought of a name yet?” asks the doctor later that day, his pen balanced over the papers in his hand.
It’s a few hours since my birth, and Edna’s face has regained some of its colour. “Because if not,” said the doctor, “I have an idea. She should be named for the man who made this possible.
“The man who allowed her to be born here, for free. After Nye Bevan. “Call her Aneira.”
Edna thinks for a moment, the word filtering through the air. It has a lovely lilt to it – strong and playful all at once.
She starts to nod. “My National Health Service baby,” she says. “Yes. Aneira.”
A month prior, when the consultants visited, Edna had been flabbergasted.
“We came to talk to you about your baby, Mrs Rees,” one said. “The reason we’re here today is because of your due date. Your baby is due to be born at the beginning of July. From next month we’ll be able to offer a very different kind of medical care to you, and to your family.
“The National Health Service commences its operations.
“The man responsible for all this grew up not too far away. We’d like to honour him by ensuring the first child born under this new service – this new, entirely free service – hails from the same land he calls home.”
Edna was suddenly overcome. She stared at her husband Willie, who looked equally taken aback.
“And you want that baby…” she said slowly, “to be mine?” “Yes,” they said together. “You’ll be the first woman who needn’t worry about her health costs while she’s giving birth,” said the first doctor. The first woman to do something none of your family will have been able to do.”
So here she is, my mother, in Amman Valley village hospital.
She cannot believe the bustle and pace of the place, the equipment lining the corridors. Everything, it seems, is ready – there are beds, but a good many of them are empty.
Jars of medicine sit labelled and unopened on pristine-looking shelves, tubes and swabs and metres of curled gauze sit in baskets.
The staff seem to far outnumber the patients. It will take time for people to realise they can come here, whatever they do or however
much they earn. The birth of the NHS received scant coverage, mostly hidden in the back pages, and editorials were peppered with distrust.
Perhaps many feared it was little more than a pipe dream.
I suppose my mother, in the hours following my birth, was one of the first to realise just how momentous the change had been.
For hours, she’d been seen to by the nurses and doctors on duty, given pain relief, had her baby delivered and wrapped up warm and handed back to her, checked over and healthy.
It was such a far cry from my
brother Eddie’s birth in the barn four years previously. Over the course of my first year I received inoculations, treatment for a rash, and cough medicine – all of it handed to my wide-eyed mother. My early life was spent in part at the smallholding of Rhydcerrig and then at a new council estate called Is-Y-Lyn, or “Below the Lake”.
It was a happy childhood. A busy, fun-filled one – with six elder siblings, I never lacked playmates. I passed my 11-plus and people asked if I’d thought of becoming a nurse. It might seem odd, but I hadn’t. I’d never considered a career with the National Health Service, despite how intrinsically linked I was to it.
“Well look, Nye, you’ve gotta do something, eh?” said my aunt. My parents were delighted. I was accepted as a nursing assistant once I’d finished school. In 1964, aged 16, I was duly fitted up for my uniform: pink, with a white cap.
I will never forget the fear of my first day on the wards. It was a mental-health unit and there were 12 male patients. Talk about thrown in at the deep end!
Then, at the age of 17, a suave, handsome-looking bus driver, Dennis, asked me out.
It progressed quickly, our relationship. Some weeks later, I fainted at work.
I knew as I stared up at the ceiling that my last, missed period was no fluke. Dennis and I married on 24 September 1966, at St Michael’s Church. The following year – after a long, traumatic labour – our first baby was born at a healthy eight pounds and promptly whisked away.
I never heard him cry, but the nurses – bustling around, shooting reassuring glances – told me this was standard.
I was in hospital for days, unable to do very much at all. I was desperate for word of my baby – I’d decided to call him Gary Anthony – but no word came.
After a week, a sister approached the end of my bed and told me my baby had died. I could barely breathe. I had not seen him since the moment of his birth, and now he was gone?
It was a horrific episode of my life. One thing it did teach me, however, was the delicacy of childbirth.
My next two children were born: Kevin in 1969 and Lindsey in 1974, precious babies whose births were just as traumatic as Gary’s, but who nonetheless survived and thrived.
I required transfusions after Lindsey’s birth and, just as the service had brought me into the world, so it saved me time and again through difficult pregnancies and messy, complicated births.
It doesn’t surprise me and it may not surprise you to learn that Lindsey’s career took her straight into the NHS. She works as a frontline paramedic.
Five years ago, I was at home one morning when the phone rang. “Lindsey’s had an accident.” I drove faster and more furiously than I’ve ever driven to the hospital, where a consultant informed us Lindsey had suffered a brain haemorrhage.
But once again, a life was saved. Lindsey has made a full and remarkable recovery.
Amman Valley Hospital is still fully operational, but the maternity ward closed in 1984. It stands derelict to this day, its long corridors strewn with three-legged chairs and broken prams. It’s an eerie, silent place. The sort that has known great drama, great happiness and jubilation, and great tragedy.
In a way, I’m glad it has been left untouched. Its walls are witnesses to history.
Hold On Edna!, by Aneira Thomas, is published by Mirror Books, RRP £12.99. Save £3 with offer code RB5. Call 01256 302 699 or order at mirrorbooks.co.uk (free P&P on orders over £15).
She should be named for the man who made this possible...The man who allowed her to be born here, for free. After Nye Bevan. Call her Aneira. How a doctor helped Aneira’s mum decide on a name