BABY FACE

Our child won first prize in a baby contest. Okay, there were no other entries. 02/29/2016

BABY FACE

We decided to call our new infant, “Jamie Lee,” after seeing this name in the society page of the local paper shortly before her birth. Her unusual name caused some people to think we had a baby boy. Jamie did not care for her name while growing up. Later, she changed the spelling of her middle name to “Leigh” and is now quite pleased with her moniker. 

Jamie arrived on time, a full term perfectly healthy baby. We had bought just about everything needed for a newborn: Crib, bassinet, furniture, playpen, carriage. You name it; we had it. We were elated to bring her into our home, and looked forward to becoming ideal parents. We had no idea how difficult this task would be during the next few weeks. Our idyllic concept of parenthood soon ended when we could not soothe Jamie who cried and cried. We had expected some crying, but her screams were constant and unending. After ten days of sleeplessness, we were both completely unnerved.

One experience illustrates my state of mind. A man knocked on our apartment door, introduced himself as a representative of Metropolitan Life Insurance Company, and stuck out his hand to shake mine. Without comment, I slammed the door in his face. Luckily, he pulled his hand out of the way before the door slammed shut with a resounding bang. A few days later, he phoned to apologize for making a cold call.

“No, I am the one who should apologize for being so rude. At the moment, we have no interest in buying insurance.” Had he been peddling sleeping pills, we would have invited him in for dinner.

At her two-week checkup, the pediatrician said Jamie had lost weight and advised Angie to give up her efforts to breast-feed. Jamie’s cries were ones of starvation. As soon as we started feeding her formula, she became a happy infant, and we regained our sanity.

Parents in those days cared for their infants using cloth diapers and sterilized powdered milk. The convenience of Pampers and packaged formula were years away. Should Jamie awake before we had time to sterilize the next batch of milk, we had to endure her screams while we rushed to get the pot of water boiling. Nothing made me feel more despondent than having to delay feeding her because we lacked sterilized milk. In time, we became more pragmatic. To hell with germs. To hell with Dr. Spock.  Give the kid something to drink, sterilized or not. Naturally, Jamie thrived, and so did we.

Initially, we ordered diaper service. In short order, we found it far more convenient to wash the diapers ourselves. Learning how to pin a diaper, now a lost art, took me quite a while to master. I punctured Jamie on more than one occasion.

All parents believe their first baby is the most special person in the world, and we were no exception. By the time Jamie turned six months, she had become gloriously angelic in our eyes. She had an olive complexion and curly black hair. Angie dressed her in new clothes every day, so it seemed. We were bursting with pride and happiness. A stranger had come and turned our world into something magical.

In the summer of 1957, we spent our vacation in New York in order to show Jamie to our relatives. While visiting my parents, my mom placed Jamie on the fire escape for some nice fresh Hoboken air. Angie gasped, and stood petrified. She thought my mother had put Jamie’s life at risk and couldn’t wait to retrieve her. Home movies show my parents, leaning out the front window, waving good-bye to us as we returned to California, a treasured memory from that trip.

The TWA flight from New York to San Francisco took about 18 hours, a tortuous journey. The plane made frequent stops all across the country, including an extended layover in Kansas City, during which time the passengers remained on board the aircraft. Poor Angie. She sat there in sweltering heat, cuddling Jamie while suffering from an infection. The round trip airfare of $175 had seemed like quite a bargain, but it cost us a lot more in discomfort. Jamie did not mind. She never cried a peep nor did she file a complaint with the police.

Despite the ordeal, our trip convinced us that we had made a wise decision to move to the West Coast. San Mateo had so much more to offer us than Hoboken or Brooklyn, our roots.

As 1957 came to an end, we looked back and realized how much we had experienced in our marriage. We had risen from the despair of miscarriage to the elation of childbirth. We felt grateful and pleased.

Early on in our marriage, we agreed that she would control the purse strings. She had proven to be a far better at money manager than I. During the brief time we were wed, she paid off the costs of furnishing our apartment and a vacation trip back east without the need to borrow or resort to credit. 

Infants dominated our lives. Our neighbors, Pat and Kate Moran, had their first baby, whom they named Shauna, a few days after Jamie had been born. Angie’s friend, Frances (and husband Ted) Lysten, whom she met while employed at Lenkurt Electric, also gave birth to a girl about the same time. The three new moms compared notes seemingly every day.

We stayed close to home; content to take weekend drives around the area. We were both very domesticated cats. It overjoyed me to play the role of “Dad.”  I took especial delight in giving Jamie her first bath as Angie found it a challenge to handle a squirming wet and soapy infant. Marriage and fatherhood suited me, and although Angie missed her family very deeply, being a wife and a mother pleased her.

We willingly surrendered ourselves to the role of parenting, wholeheartedly. We devoted all our time to Jamie, relishing every new day in her life. Call us prejudiced, but we felt our child to be the most beautiful baby on earth, a real blue-ribbon winner.

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