When I gave birth to my eldest son in a town far from my homeland on the outskirts of the country, my husband served in a missile unit. While I was at the family home, he boiled white and red baby clothes in one bucket. And instead of sweets and flowers, he brought me boiled chicken to my family home, which rotted on the windowsill until I could not get out of bed after giving birth. How did your husbands greet you from the hospital? The birth itself was also fun. In the evening I began to feel contractions and asked to inject myself with painkillers so that I could sleep and go into labor with strength. But their sister’s room heard swearing: “Fuck them all...” And all five of us went together in the morning to give birth, and there was only one chair. Some began to receive injections to inhibit labor. For example, a boy who will later be given the name Leo will be born with a neurological injury, simply because that day the same doctor who saw me before the birth was on duty and the inhibitory injection was given to his mother, and not to me. Just by acquaintance, so to speak. How was your birth? My second ones were even better; I actually gave birth in bed. But I’ll tell this story someday. And then I pushed twice and gave birth. And I saw on the next table a small package from which my son’s very beautiful adult eyes looked. I will never forget this first meeting of our eyes. After a sleepless night and childbirth, I was very weak, I couldn’t walk or stand for days. And I wake up in the middle of the night and hear the cry of a dozen babies. I hear the children screaming for five minutes, ten, fifteen. The mothers are sleeping, having not yet taken responsibility for the children, there are no nurses. I couldn’t stand it, I went where I shouldn’t go into the children’s detention center. I look at the children to see who has sucked the pacifier and is screaming. Who just lost it. Who signed up? I stuck pacifiers on everyone. And mine is actually lying in the cold vestibule, wet and spitting from the nipple. His nipple is full, and he spits. I check, and it doesn’t have a hole! I wonder how long they fed him like that? I took it wet, put it on my chest with inexperienced hands and slid down the wall, because there was nowhere to sit and I didn’t have the strength to stand. And then a nurse appeared. When we brought the little one home, we unwrapped this little bundle, and there was this miracle lying there, kicking its legs. And we started reading books because we didn’t know what to do with him. No friends, no parents, but together. And four days later my mother arrived and stayed with us for months (at that time my sister was still healthy). She told me a lot, but with her attention she pushed my husband away from me and the baby. When my mother left, my husband left too. My son was three months old and I was left alone for three months in a foreign city with a baby in my arms. It was '89. Lines for milk last two hours. Winter is not the Rostov winter with zero degrees, but a real one, with winds, mountains of snow and frost up to 40 degrees. One baby froze under the store in those years, because the mother fainted in the store, she was taken away by ambulance, and the child was noticed only a couple of hours later. Therefore, I rarely went to the store, breastfed the child, and I lived on tea and water. When my husband returned, things didn't get any easier. Because he spent three or four days at a point, somewhere outside the city in a missile silo. Sometimes I couldn’t stand it and went to my mother for several months, but this alienated my husband and I. It ended in a hospital for a child, which became a vacation for me. But it impaired the child’s immunity for many years. Birth stories - in my VIP telegram channel for psychologists