Becoming a Mother

Has there ever been a time in your life when you felt…beautiful? I remember vividly feeling so beautiful and it wasn't when I was all dressed up at a prom or even at my wedding but it was when I was pregnant. It really didn't matter how others felt about me or even what they said, I just felt.. beautiful.

My husband was very upset when I was pregnant with our first child. It seems that we made an agreement that I would work for the first five years of our marriage. Now, only two years into this marriage, I was expecting our first child. At first he was so very angry I imagined that I must have had an immaculate conception. I knew this wasn't so but he took no responsibility until I started to show. (Now that meant months of feeling beautiful in spite of everything around me.)

I liked knowing that I was "with child". Sometimes I would imagine this cute little boy and what he might look like. This was in the olden days before they did Sonograms on everyone as a routine. I liked not knowing and having to wait for the outcome.

I have often wondered about that test. I looked up what an Ultrasound is. "Ultrasound is a popular diagnostic medical procedure that used HIGH FREQUENCY SOUND WAVES to produce dynamic images called sonograms." We are experiencing a lot of autism and yet they continue to bombard the unformed fetus with sound waves similar to the kind that they use to break up kidney stones? (Progress?)

After I started to have a little belly, my husband was a different man. Then he went around bragging about what he had done.

I don't remember getting morning sickness a lot but I do remember that I decided it was time for me to learn to cook. My husband and his friend were going to take a class one night a week at LACC (Los Angeles City College), so I signed up for a beginning cooking class. The classes were great. I learned a lot of short cuts and got a lot of recipes. The night that we were going to learn how to prepare fish, I got so sick that I had to sit the whole class out in the hallway until the guys were ready to go home. (This child still will not eat fish of any kind)

I was working at a motorcycle insurance and finance company with a bunch of women and they treated me like a princess. They gave a baby shower at the office for us the week that I left.

I had to leave work in my seventh month. This baby wasn't sure that she wanted to be here. The doctor decided that I had to spend the next two month in bed.

My husband's step-grandmother came to stay with me. We had great fun. She loved to sew and tell me about her growing up years in The Dakotas. She told me that she grew up in a sod house. It was about the only one that had a wood floor. Her father was a carpenter by trade and made furniture. She mentioned that in the winter he would sew. She showed me a three-foot-long baby dress that he had made for her christening and asked if I would like to use it for this baby. I was thrilled.

We hadn't lived in this house very long, so the bedroom windows were covered with the newspaper that we put up when we painted the room. She and I made drapes in those two months. She insisted that we hand sew everything. "Little stitches, Phyllis. Make them smaller." I learned to sew. Those drapes hung in many houses after that, we must have done a good job.

I gained 30 pounds with my first child and it was all in front. The doctor thought I was carrying twins so they x-rayed me to make sure that it was just one big baby.

Having the baby was a very new experience. It was like I was the observer. "So this is what it is like." (I remember saying that to a lot of experience that I have had in this lifetime.)

Because labor was so long, my husband decided to spend it at home. When I finally delivered an 8.5 pound baby girl with dark black hair and a round red face, I remember thinking, "So this is what it is all about."

I told the nurses to call my husband but not tell him what sex she was. He told her that he would be over as soon as Bonanza was over.

This baby didn't cry but had her eyes wide open looking around like she was trying to figure out where she was and why.

She was a happy/smiley baby. When we brought her home, Connie, my mother-in-law came to help out for a few days. She was very good with the baby. This was her only grandchild and she fussed over her a lot. I hadn't expected Connie to be that good but she was. Sometimes Connie was the original dingbat with things.

I decided to nurse and was glad that I did. It seems that most people didn't expect me to do that but it was just natural and my doctor encouraged it. I guess if you are poor you nurse? All my friends had their babies on bottles. There are a lot of benefits to nursing and one was to have that wonderful bonding with the baby.

These were the days before paper diapers. So that meant a lot of washing but in California, when you are hanging out a line of diapers and get to the end of the line. You can go back to the beginning and take the first ones off.

Her Daddy named her and he didn't want her to have a name that could be shortened into a nickname. So she got the name Kathy. I remember having a couple of dolls when I was little that were named Katherine and Katherleen. (My sister's teased me about that one. Kather Leaning on the fence post.)

She was such a pleasant baby. I had heard stories about babies that were always fussy but not this baby.

The day we brought her home from the hospital in Inglewood, I feed her about 11:00 pm and was expecting her to wake up in the middle of the night. Well, that is what all the books said. She didn't. So when it got to be 8:00 am and she was still sleeping, I put in a call to the doctor. He called back within a half hour. By then I was really upset because this baby was supposed to wake up and be hungry. The doctor told me to relax. He said that she was a big baby so even if she dropped some weight, it wouldn't hurt her. By 9:00 she was awake and wanting to eat.

Over the years she has been my teacher. Like, relax mother, I will get up when I am ready.

It was pleasant to be around her. She was always smiling and laughing at everyone. At the time, We had two dogs and when she was in her infant chair sitting on the floor, they would walk around her or step over her. She would laugh and thought they were there to entertain her.

Once when her grandparents came from Iowa to see her, Grandma Grayson and I went shopping in Beverly Hills. I had the baby over my shoulder in an elevator. The people behind us were talking to her as she cooed at them and smiled her famous smile. When we got out of the elevator, I turned to the ladies and found I was facing Doris Day along with two other ladies. Doris said, "She is ecstatic." I had to go home to look that word up and see what it meant. Doris Day said that about my baby. It made my day!

Being pregnant was always a nice time for me. I felt beautiful but being a mother was the fulfillment of my dreams. I wanted to be a Mom since I was very little. I liked being a Mom. I still do.

Each pregnancy is different, each delivery is different and each baby is different. I have had three children and each baby got smaller. So it just got easier and easier. It is a wonderful experience and I wouldn't have traded it for anything in the world.