If You Only Knew..

My gorgeous birth mum getting to hold me for the first time after after being in an incubator in intensive care for 10 days and an incubator for 6 weeks.

My mum had a pretty short pregnancy, that she was aware of as she was already 3 months pregnant with me when she found out, then 3 months later I was born! So weirdly it seemed like she was only pregnant for 12 weeks!

I was 12 weeks premature. My mum had to have a C-Section as my lungs were too underdeveloped to survive a natural birth. Sadly I was taken straight away from my mum and dad once I popped into this world to have three tubes put into my lungs as both my lungs collapsed one after another. I was put straight into an incubator, tubes and all and put in intensive care where I would stay for the first 10 days of my life. After the ten days I was moved to another unit with other premature babies in incubators. That was when my mum and dad could eventually get to even touch me through the two holes in the incubator, fitted with rubber gloves so that no infection could get inside.

I weighed 2 pounds when I was first born, but after 7 weeks in an incubator, getting fed through a tube down my nose and being looked after amazingly by the nurses in charge of me, I eventually reached a weight of 5 pounds and could breath by myself. It was then that my mum held me for the first time, could touch me with her bare hands and was able to take me home to my first home in Hopetoun Street with my Dad.

I’m a massive David Bowie fan, my dads doing.... I’ll explain all the madness of my Bowie and Dad beliefs later. But this was the song my mum and dad used to sing to me as a baby, the couple of kooks that they were. Surprisingly I never liked this song dispite this being sung to me and being the huge Bowie fan that I have been all my life!

Getting home to the tiny bedsit my mum and dad lived in (who were only 19 and 24 at the time) was the beginning of a rollercoaster and you may say somewhat eventful life which even though has had its mad downs, the ups and good times and experiences I have had, have more than made up for the sad and some mentally and physically torturous times I’ve lived through.

I technically had my first night clubbing at well known gay bar in the 80’s called “The Laughing Duck”. In its 80s heyday, the Laughing Duck in Edinburgh was a haunt of drag queens and a then unknown act (who a lot of us know now, real name Paul O’ Grady) called Lily Savage entertained the crowds. Celebrities like Barbara Windsor and Su Pollard also hung out there when they visited the city.

My dad told me how I was an original club kid.... When I was 10 months old, my mum and dad went to this club with me tucked inside my dads big fur coat. I was so small the doormen and bar staff didn’t notice. So that was my first experience of clubbing I guess, Haha. It got to a point throughout the night though where they were showing me off to their friends and eventually got caught and thrown out that night. I was the only one officially barred though until I was 18! So first night out to a club and barred from one in the same night before I was even one!

From 10 months old though my life was about to change dramatically, which would effect me in many ways for the next 8 years of my childhood. A part of my life I’d rather forget but can’t seem to let completely go of.....

My current fiancée of 8 years now knows everything about me and all my skeletons and told me to write these stories so I thought “hey, why not” it will hopefully entertain, educate and give hope to those who read them and could be self therepautic for me too. That’s my aim. I hope you will enjoy reading as much as I’ve enjoyed living them in the end!