I already had twins (so a ‘teenage Lolita’, ‘gym slip mother’, and ‘out to wreck a man’s life’) but now 16, been 'made an honest woman' of, pregnant and living at the top of a big hill. Carrying the shopping back up it wasn’t fun.
We had a two roomed attic flat with ladder steps up from the 4th floor landing, and when the water pressure was reduced, us and the flats on the floor below suddenly had none, and the communal toilet and bathroom, only a trickle. It got nasty quickly.
No prams allowed on the landings or front entrance, no way of getting one up to flat, so it was homemade slings (lots of racist comments) which increased body heat for them and me, and trying to safely get babies, water, shopping et al up four flights of stairs, then our ladder steps.
Many on the hill lost their water to pressure drop, so we did get a stand pipe a few streets away a couple of weeks later, but by then no-one from the first three floors was talking to anyone higher, as we were blamed for the state of the toilet and them having to carry buckets of water (from their taps!) up to flush it...
A lot of my time was taken up with getting water and then getting more to make up for what I’d spilled.
We didn't have fridge, phone or washing machine, and disposable nappies weren't an option. Money spent on watered down thin bleach and white vinegar to soak nappies in. Husband kicking off about the smell and the heat, and spending most of his time at his mum's or pub. He did little but moan his way through it.
I feared my babies over heating, dehydrating, falling with them or dropping them through exhaustion. Scared I'd go into labor prematurely. But my biggest fear was my milk drying up.
Dust doesn't seem to get mentioned, but there was a lot of it.
The roads melting was a better part, I had pregnancy cravings for tar!
Had baby in hospital, but husband felt a maternity bra to be a 'waste of money', so I had a ‘binder’, which was basically luckless nurses having to wind and unwind yards of bandages round my breasts, every feed or every time I’d been leaked too much and been left too long. The binder got gross pretty quickly and attracted flies. The ladybirds were the nicer option.
People, especially women, were stoical in those days, and got on with a lot, but it was mainly because many had very little choice, and the pointlessness of saying anything was self-evident.
If Mumsnet had existed then, and we could have got unbiased advice, many of us might have had very different lives.