One of our neighbors is very ill w/swine flu and her baby had to be delivered by C section last Tuesday after Katie "coded." Katie has been kept in a medically-induced coma for almost 2 weeks so her body can concentrate on getting well.
But thinking of her 2# 11 oz. baby, who is doing very well, reminded me that Victor Stobie, Grandma French's brother, weighed apporximately 3# when he was born. Of course that was long before modern hospital neo-natal units with incubators, climate control, respirators, specialists of every type you might want, so he was kept in either a shoebox or cigar box, lined with cotton batting, kept very close to the cookstove. Having been the mother of 6 healthy, normal-to-large babies, born in hospitals, I can't imagine the worry that a tiny, probably premature, baby would have caused Great-Grandma and Great-Grandpa Stobie.
Thinking of that made me think of my own birth--I don't remember but have heard stories. My mother carried me for nearly 11 months. Of course, everyone thought she had her dates mixed up, but when I was born, instead of being a rosy, healthy pink, I was gray and my eyes were little slits. The doctor told her that had I waited one more week to make my debut, I would have been stillborn. Of course that was back befoe there were ways to induce a birth. At the time we lived in North Bend and when Mother (Grandma Jeanne) went in to labor, there was not time to get her to the nearest hospital, which was in Seattle, so I was born at home. The story goes--and I don't know whether it's truth or fiction--that Daddy was kept busy boiling water to keep him out of the doctor's way.
See, one story always reminds me of another that I think about almost every time I'm in a public restroom. As you all know, there are signs posted that employees must wash their hands before returning to work. When we lived in North Bend, Daddy worked in a dairy. One day, as he was using the restroom, another employee started out withoug washing his hands. When Daddy asked him if he wasn't going to wash his hands, the man responded that he didn't need to as he was going to lunch not to work.
I'm here to tell you that none of us ever dared try to get to the dinner table without washing our hands. The same was true of using the bathroom--we were in trouble if we didn't wash our hands afterwards. To this day, my hands feel dirty if, for some reason, I can't wash my hands immediately. I remember one time Meg and I were going to Walla Walla to visit Mother and Daddy. We stopped at a rest stop and there were no facilities for handwashing. We had none of the hand sanitizer, such as I always have with me now, in the car, so the best we could do was "wash" our hands with an ice cube from the cooler. Neither of us knew if it killed any germs, but we did know we didn't dare go to our parents' house w/o washing our hands!
This is probably my shortest post, but we need to go to a birthday party for our firiend, Dick Ryan, and then to Mercer Island where Michael is playing in the State Sandy Koufax Tournament.
