Babies… The Final Frontier… - August 5, 2017
Poor Michael and his wife Merry (not their real names.) We are beginning to scare them to death about bringing home a newborn. We (their circle of family and friends who have had kids) don’t mean to be unkind, but it must be exasperating for them to only hear, “You think you can be ready for a baby? Bah! Nothing prepares you for this…”
Laurence and I weren’t worried at all about bringing home our first baby (who turned out to be Anna) – not because we were competent, but because we didn’t know what we didn’t know, and didn’t know we ought to know it. We knew how to make the Spock handsign “Live long and prosper!” What else did you need to know?
Things are different in M & M’s word. They feel they are expected to know everything!
First of all, Michael and Merry PLANNED to have a baby. This means they had to worry about whether they could conceive or not. (They didn’t have to worry long, thankfully.)
Us? Well, I had been told – having had an extensive ob/gyn “work up” after we were married – that I was not able to have children. If I got pregnant, it would be a miracle. And we accepted that quite well. Having kids was really not on our “to-do” list anyway. And then, after about a year and 8 months of being married, SURPRISE!
Michael and Merry had to “doctor shop”. Living in Vancouver (not their real city,) there are so many options. Laur and me – we went to the prenatal clinic at the closest hospital. The doc who happened to be “on” that day, said, “You’d be a good candidate for our Nurse Practitioner program.” OK then… (I was all of 22 years of age.)
The prenatal testing that goes on these days – I don’t know how a couple can decide when they are really pregnant, let alone having a baby. Laur and I went to see our NP once a month who checked the fetus’s and my vitals, smiled, and said “Things look fine. See you next time.”
Ultrasounds! Oh my goodness, little Frederick (not his real name) has been photographed more times in utero that my hubs has in his whole childhood. (Mind you, Laur was one of five boys.) And Michael and Merry knew Freddie was a boy by week 20. Our first “tadpole” was known as Patrick or Anna – until the day she was born.
Physical and educational readiness. M & M have good jobs, completed educations, some savings, a nice apartment in a good area, cell phones, and a car. Not only that, Merry has “studied” babies at college, and she works with babies and toddlers.
Laur and I had just come off a year of volunteering so we had no money and no place to live. We finally snagged a place in a basement apartment in a building where the female landlord didn’t want babies. It was the husband who showed us the place and rented it to us – that’s how we got it. The wife was furious with him (and us) – but what could she do? We were in!
We had virtually no furniture and we certainly had no money. Laur was going back to school in the Fall but we needed money for July and August. No one would hire me – I was due in September. Laur got a job as a security guard – the night shift.
We did not have a phone – in the summer and fall of 79, there was a Bell strike in Hamilton. So when I did go into labour, Laur had to run to the nearest mall to use a phone. Who was he phoning? A cab company – we had no car. Not only that, he had to remember which company to call, because one wouldn’t take a woman in labour.
And neither of us knew very much about babies. We had virtually no experience. I had one baby book – Penelope Leach’s “Your Baby and Child” (which I still have. It was my “bible” – or at least it was for my first child. By number four it was probably used to prop up a playpen.)
These days women know almost to the day when they are going to have their baby. Back in the old days of 1979, there was the due date but it was more like a due month – it was generally accepted that it could be two weeks earlier, or two weeks later, or even three weeks later. Nothing you could do about it. Parents were told, “When the apple is ripe, it will fall.” Anna was two and a half weeks late and I had just come to accept that I would be a heavy-laden tree forever.
Pain meds. There are apparently these wonderful things called epidurals that I never got to try for any of my four births (for four different reasons. Stories in themselves.) Epidurals were available when we had Anna, but the expectation was that if you had a nurse practitioner, you were going for a “natural birth.” And we were at first. Until I arrived at the hospital at 4 cm dilated and thought “An epidural wouldn’t be that bad.” But I couldn’t figure out how to ask for it, and the NP – who was part of a study to see if having an NP decreased the use of pain medication – certainly wasn’t going to offer it. Yowee yow yow!
Breastfeeding. There are now these wonderful women at hospitals called “Lactation Consultants” who can help you get off to the very best start. Me, I had no idea of what I was doing. All I knew is that my mom breastfed me at a time when NO ONE was breastfeeding. Surely I could figure this out at a time when it was expected that you would breastfeed (though there wasn’t much help.) Thankfully, I lucked into an army sergeant of a nurse on about day three, who pulled the curtains around my bed, stripped off my nightgown, and determinedly and repeatedly latched Anna’s tiny rosebud mouth around my very full bosom. And Anna and I soldiered on.
The homecoming. Little Frederick will come home in a car seat in the family car (and that is a good thing.) I don’t even remember how Anna got home. Did we walk? I was so tired having been five days in a four-bed ward, that I can’t even remember. If someone gave us a lift, I held Anna in my arms in the car. (Inexcusable, except that was still the norm.)
Baby equipment? Little Fred will have a special co-sleeping crib attached to his parents’ bed, he’ll be slept on his back because that is now known to be the safest, but not in bed with his folks (which is now known to be dangerous.) And the entire apartment will be taken over by baby ware. We had a mattress on the floor, a bassinette lent by my brother and sister-in-law, a change table filled with diapers (thank you mom and dad), and a second hand Gendron carriage that I pretty much walked the wheels off.
I’m already over a thousand words and I haven’t even talked about what happened when we got home, though I will in a later story. Fred will have to be about three months old so that I can compare experiences. (Bah! You think this is tough?! Back in my day…)
Why am I going on and on about this? Do I really think that the 70s were better for babies than the 2010s? Not in the least. Simpler, yes; cheaper, yes. But this may have been as much part of the fact that we were starving students and minimalists. (We are still minimalists – mostly because we hate shopping.)
No, I think I’m trying to do a few things here.
1.Remember with a smile on my face how absolutely clueless Laur and I were and yet everything seemed to work out. (My mom – who visited monthly and took the kids for much of the summer - is probably saying “in spite of you two!” :) )
2.Reassure Michael and Mary that you can have an imperfect world, and a child can still come into it knowing that he or she is perfectly loved.
And all of you still are. “I have been... and always shall be... your friend…”
Laurence and I weren’t worried at all about bringing home our first baby (who turned out to be Anna) – not because we were competent, but because we didn’t know what we didn’t know, and didn’t know we ought to know it. We knew how to make the Spock handsign “Live long and prosper!” What else did you need to know?
Things are different in M & M’s word. They feel they are expected to know everything!
First of all, Michael and Merry PLANNED to have a baby. This means they had to worry about whether they could conceive or not. (They didn’t have to worry long, thankfully.)
Us? Well, I had been told – having had an extensive ob/gyn “work up” after we were married – that I was not able to have children. If I got pregnant, it would be a miracle. And we accepted that quite well. Having kids was really not on our “to-do” list anyway. And then, after about a year and 8 months of being married, SURPRISE!
Michael and Merry had to “doctor shop”. Living in Vancouver (not their real city,) there are so many options. Laur and me – we went to the prenatal clinic at the closest hospital. The doc who happened to be “on” that day, said, “You’d be a good candidate for our Nurse Practitioner program.” OK then… (I was all of 22 years of age.)
The prenatal testing that goes on these days – I don’t know how a couple can decide when they are really pregnant, let alone having a baby. Laur and I went to see our NP once a month who checked the fetus’s and my vitals, smiled, and said “Things look fine. See you next time.”
Ultrasounds! Oh my goodness, little Frederick (not his real name) has been photographed more times in utero that my hubs has in his whole childhood. (Mind you, Laur was one of five boys.) And Michael and Merry knew Freddie was a boy by week 20. Our first “tadpole” was known as Patrick or Anna – until the day she was born.
Physical and educational readiness. M & M have good jobs, completed educations, some savings, a nice apartment in a good area, cell phones, and a car. Not only that, Merry has “studied” babies at college, and she works with babies and toddlers.
Laur and I had just come off a year of volunteering so we had no money and no place to live. We finally snagged a place in a basement apartment in a building where the female landlord didn’t want babies. It was the husband who showed us the place and rented it to us – that’s how we got it. The wife was furious with him (and us) – but what could she do? We were in!
We had virtually no furniture and we certainly had no money. Laur was going back to school in the Fall but we needed money for July and August. No one would hire me – I was due in September. Laur got a job as a security guard – the night shift.
We did not have a phone – in the summer and fall of 79, there was a Bell strike in Hamilton. So when I did go into labour, Laur had to run to the nearest mall to use a phone. Who was he phoning? A cab company – we had no car. Not only that, he had to remember which company to call, because one wouldn’t take a woman in labour.
And neither of us knew very much about babies. We had virtually no experience. I had one baby book – Penelope Leach’s “Your Baby and Child” (which I still have. It was my “bible” – or at least it was for my first child. By number four it was probably used to prop up a playpen.)
These days women know almost to the day when they are going to have their baby. Back in the old days of 1979, there was the due date but it was more like a due month – it was generally accepted that it could be two weeks earlier, or two weeks later, or even three weeks later. Nothing you could do about it. Parents were told, “When the apple is ripe, it will fall.” Anna was two and a half weeks late and I had just come to accept that I would be a heavy-laden tree forever.
Pain meds. There are apparently these wonderful things called epidurals that I never got to try for any of my four births (for four different reasons. Stories in themselves.) Epidurals were available when we had Anna, but the expectation was that if you had a nurse practitioner, you were going for a “natural birth.” And we were at first. Until I arrived at the hospital at 4 cm dilated and thought “An epidural wouldn’t be that bad.” But I couldn’t figure out how to ask for it, and the NP – who was part of a study to see if having an NP decreased the use of pain medication – certainly wasn’t going to offer it. Yowee yow yow!
Breastfeeding. There are now these wonderful women at hospitals called “Lactation Consultants” who can help you get off to the very best start. Me, I had no idea of what I was doing. All I knew is that my mom breastfed me at a time when NO ONE was breastfeeding. Surely I could figure this out at a time when it was expected that you would breastfeed (though there wasn’t much help.) Thankfully, I lucked into an army sergeant of a nurse on about day three, who pulled the curtains around my bed, stripped off my nightgown, and determinedly and repeatedly latched Anna’s tiny rosebud mouth around my very full bosom. And Anna and I soldiered on.
The homecoming. Little Frederick will come home in a car seat in the family car (and that is a good thing.) I don’t even remember how Anna got home. Did we walk? I was so tired having been five days in a four-bed ward, that I can’t even remember. If someone gave us a lift, I held Anna in my arms in the car. (Inexcusable, except that was still the norm.)
Baby equipment? Little Fred will have a special co-sleeping crib attached to his parents’ bed, he’ll be slept on his back because that is now known to be the safest, but not in bed with his folks (which is now known to be dangerous.) And the entire apartment will be taken over by baby ware. We had a mattress on the floor, a bassinette lent by my brother and sister-in-law, a change table filled with diapers (thank you mom and dad), and a second hand Gendron carriage that I pretty much walked the wheels off.
I’m already over a thousand words and I haven’t even talked about what happened when we got home, though I will in a later story. Fred will have to be about three months old so that I can compare experiences. (Bah! You think this is tough?! Back in my day…)
Why am I going on and on about this? Do I really think that the 70s were better for babies than the 2010s? Not in the least. Simpler, yes; cheaper, yes. But this may have been as much part of the fact that we were starving students and minimalists. (We are still minimalists – mostly because we hate shopping.)
No, I think I’m trying to do a few things here.
1.Remember with a smile on my face how absolutely clueless Laur and I were and yet everything seemed to work out. (My mom – who visited monthly and took the kids for much of the summer - is probably saying “in spite of you two!” :) )
2.Reassure Michael and Mary that you can have an imperfect world, and a child can still come into it knowing that he or she is perfectly loved.
And all of you still are. “I have been... and always shall be... your friend…”