The Defense Model Stork

Carolyn — 1 week old

Wartime or not, the 1944 model stork seemed to have a very high national priority rating. This happened despite the need for him to become a lean, streamlined old bird, devoid of all frills and furbelows. Though frequently handicapped on the last lap of his journey by short gas rations and worn out tires, he managed to come through with flying colors. In view of his national production record, many of us felt he should have been awarded the “Army-Navy E.”

Our 1944 baby was just one of many in our apartment village — and probably one of thousands in the general Washington, DC, area that year. Still, we were pleased and proud to say we did our part in making 1944 the peak wartime year of lilliputian U.S. citizens!

The military service obstetricians may have felt rather differently. They really did a booming business here in Washington and, based on their wartime performance records, probably found the rest of their medical careers to be quite peaceful. Their days consisted of facing one very long, unbroken parade of all stages of “infanticipating mamas” each of whom poured into the doctors' tired ears a thousand variations of the same old tale of woe. Once they had consoled their last patient and headed home, the obstetricians were faced with the nightly nightmare of dozens of hurry-up summons and false alarms. To be sure, there was precious little rest for Washington's weary obstetricians. I'm sure most of them had more than a few days when they would willingly have swapped their charts, scales, rubber gloves and non-fattening menus for a foxhole where they had to face only the enemy!

Whether it was the glamour of the papas' uniforms or merely chance, it was documented fact the stork made far more calls to service than to civilian families here in the Washington area. The first question for most expectant mothers at an obstetrician's office was simply, “Are you Army or Navy?”

We Join The Obstetrical Parade…
During my first visit as a mother-to-be to the doctor's office, I found myself — slim, trim and glowing — looking around at dozens of women in the latter stages of pregnancy. Was I happy for them or, perhaps a trifle envious that their waiting was nearly over? No! In my ignorance and inexperience, I was horrified at their size and shape! “Never!” I vowed, “Never would I allow myself to look like that!”

Somehow, this cherished delusion persisted throughout the entire nine months and three weeks of my pregnancy. I knew I had gained at least the usual amount of weight but managed to convince myself that I had become a master of camouflage and no one could have guessed the true state of affairs. In fact, while en route to the hospital for delivery, instead of worrying whether or not the overcrowded facility would have a bed for me, I passed the time wondering how I would explain why we were there at all!

Needless to say, my bubble of conceit burst the moment I reached the hospital entrance in June, 1944. As I trudged up to the desk, the receptionist took one look at my bulging profile, anxious husband and suitcase, then asked, “Who is your obstetrician and how far apart are your contractions?”

Our new daughter, Carolyn, was born on Father's Day. It must have been more than a coincidence that her birthday fell on a holiday. She was scheduled to make her Washington debut on Memorial Day and, when that failed to materialize, I was confident that her birthday would be the same as mine, early in June. She nonchalantly discarded that day, too, as well as the following day, better remembered as “D Day” in the Normandy invasion. And she skipped right over her grandmother's birthday the following week. But she learned early how to become her Daddy's special girl by choosing Sunday, June 18th, to make her appearance.

I'll always remember the day for an additional reason. In addition to our new arrival, it was the hottest June 18th on record in Washington. Hospitals with air conditioning are a blessing, but they certainly did not exist in 1944!

My husband, Harold, will always remember the heat, too. To become a new father was exciting enough, but to have the event happen on Father's Day as well was simply too much for him.

He dashed to the hospital as soon as permitted and, dressed in his Sunday best white uniform, came to visit us. I thought he looked a little “green around the gills,” but attributed it to the shock of seeing him in dress “whites.” Until that moment, nothing short of a direct command from his superior officers would have persuaded him to don them!

Before he could say more than, “Hello,” he staggered forward, dropped his head in his hands, then dashed out mumbling something to the effect that he was sick. Until then, I had been feeling very well but when he made his hasty exit, I began to feel most uneasy. When he had not returned after a half-hour or so, I was quite worried.

He did return at last and apologized sheepishly, saying the smell of ether had gotten him down, but that he had recovered as soon as he got a bit of fresh air. The truth came out later ...

A nurse told me that she had found Harold reeling along the hall and had come to his rescue. In her efforts to cheer him, she brought our new baby to see him thinking the sight of our little one would spark his paternal pride and restore his feeling of well being. Instead, he passed out! The nurse had to administer spirits of ammonia and work with him for over half an hour before he was completely revived.

By the time he returned, I was worried about him and, I must confess, about any disturbance on our part that would weaken my precarious hold on one of the hospital's scarce available beds.

Understaffed and Overworked…
Anyone who spent any time in a hospital during wartime will understand only too well that the complete staff of doctors, nurses, dietitians and helpers was greatly overtaxed. This was caused by an accelerated number of patients who had to be served by a corps of attendants that had been cut severely in size by the demands of the armed services. In view of their rush business, crowded quarters, difficulty in securing help and the ever-present problem of shortages, it is nothing short of miraculous that they performed so well throughout the war.

Despite hardships and overcrowding, most staff members provided outstanding service. But, like most institutions, there were a few characters. I was, for instance, terrified of the cleaning person on our floor.

She was an angry-looking woman whose mouth was set in a vise-like fixation and who looked and smelled as though she had a mouth filled with snuff. Daily, she would appear for a few moments, give one swish of her mop in the center of the room, then stride out, glaring at anyone she encountered. One day, while alone in the room with her, she saw some change on the dresser, then darted over to me and hissed,“If you have something to give me I can take it now.” I was so intimidated that I said she could have the change. She never reappeared during my stay — with or without her mop — and I was too frightened of her to tell anyone!

Assisting the hospital staff throughout the building were volunteer workers — both Nurses Aides and Gray Ladies — who took over many of the non-medical tasks. They helped out and filled in everywhere in the hospital, from the kitchen to the wards. But there was one phase of the training given Nurses Aides which I never did quite understand. When asked, one young woman brought me a bedpan but, when I asked later for it to be removed, she demurred.

“Oh no,” she said. “I've had enough hours' training to be permitted to bring you the B.P., but I haven't yet received enough training to take it away.” I'm still puzzled by this.

Please Go Home — Today If Possible…
In 1944, it was customary for women to spend a week in the hospital following childbirth. But after my third day in the hospital, whenever the nurse appeared in the morning, instead of inquiring about my welfare, she would ask hopefully, “Is it today that you are going home?”

Daddy's girl

When I replied in the negative, she would look at me most regretfully while she advised that there were twenty-nine (or thirty-six or forty) patients in the labor and delivery quarters and simply no beds, not a single one, on the maternity floor to which they might be transferred. After she left me with this dismal thought, my conscience would bother me all day, despite the fact that I could not leave until discharged by the doctor.

As the days passed, I started pulling the covers over my head when the morning nurse appeared and pretended to be asleep so I might avoid hearing the current census of the labor and delivery room. They must have squeezed everyone in somewhere, judging by the chorus of howls floating out at intervals from the nurseries.

Certainly a part of my willingness to stay put until told to go home was my sheer terror at being left to care alone for our new baby. I'm afraid I had not spent a lot of time around babies while growing up, and our families were many, many hours from Washington.

We tried to hire a practical nurse, only to find that they ranked in popularity with the butchers, the gasoline dispensers and the nylon hosiery salesman. Every one we contacted seemed to have been booked about eight months before a baby' s arrival. Worse, because they were in such short supply, their daily rates often exceeded that of even registered nurses in hospitals.

But finally the day came when, at the arrival of the morning nurse, I pulled my head out from under the covers and announced, “Oh yes indeed, I AM going home today!” And so that afternoon, I gaily waved goodbye to everyone and set out confidently for the ambulance ride home. Little did I dream that before the afternoon was very old, I would long to be right back in the maternity ward.

There was already one inharmonious note as we pulled away from the hospital. Carolyn had NOT wanted to leave the hospital. She did not like the ambulance, the attendants, not even her adoring mother. She had just missed one of her six daily meals and let us all know in no uncertain terms exactly what she thought of the whole situation. Her penetrating howls could surely be heard for blocks around our apartment village long before the ambulance was in sight.

Even after being fed she lay in her bassinet, tiny arms and legs flying in all directions, tiny lungs expressing supreme displeasure with everything and everyone. Our savior appeared in the form of Miss Carolyn's godmother, a saint among women and a registered nurse, to boot. She appeared at our door with everything from cookies to infinite patience and soon had us all sorted out.

Victory Model Baby Equipment…
Our next hurdle was to secure diaper service. Due to the enormous number of customers and new babies, no diaper company would even add your name to the waiting list until mother and baby were home from the hospital. This left most parents with at least a few weeks until diaper service could begin, and already home with a new infant and his or her fully functioning waterworks. Along with every other expectant mother, I had scoured Washington' s stores for months, but found a grand total number of only twenty-four diapers, all of which would have to be hand washed. Believe me, nothing was so welcome several weeks later as the sight of that diaper truck!

The diaper shortage was not the only one confronting the new wartime mother and baby. Everything from bottle sterilizers to safety pins and undershirts seemed to be completely missing in the stores. Occasionally one could locate a card of Victory model safety pins. These may have looked like the originals, but were made of goodness-knows-what substitute material. They could not be pushed through a wet blotter without collapsing and were of absolutely no use in trying to hold together a diaper.

Rubber pants and sheets had also vanished. The entire quota of rubber normally allocated for the manufacture of these strategic baby articles seemed to have been reassigned elsewhere in the war effort. Instead of rubber pants, sheets and other necessary items, we had something that looked the same but was constructed of some kind of horrid, synthetic “rubberized” material. Whatever the intent, rubberized baby items never, ever worked. As soon as the article became wet, as it always did within minutes, the whole affair just gave up and wilted as the coating separated into sticky particles of goo — much of which adhered to the baby and had to be removed with tweezers!

Second-hand carriages and strollers were every bit as desirable and almost as hard to find as cars throughout the war years. New “victory models” were available but hardly worth buying — metal parts (like spokes and wheels) had been replaced by wood and the tires were replaced by a crumbly composition material that wore down even faster than the heels on a pair of shoes.

Babysitters Came in a Victory Model, Too…
Another commodity in short supply turned out to be babysitters. When our daughter was several months old, I finally mustered enough courage to leave her with someone else for a few hours. Our apartment village had many teenagers and I assumed they would be happy to earn twenty-five or fifty cents for a few hours “sitting.” Instead, I discovered they were in such demand that we must meet their very strict requirements before most of them would even consider us as prospective employers.

Most teenage sitters turned out to be both expensive and booked far in advance, so we had to place our names on their lists very early. It was their privilege to break the engagement in favor of a special date or tempting entertainment, but customers who cancelled were required to pay the full fee anyway. Under no circumstances would the teenage sitter be required to perform any work other than watch the baby; most insisted on full access to the refrigerator and cookie jar, too. After viewing the remains of an evening raid by a hungry sitter, we sometimes wondered whether we should pay her or she should pay us instead!

A few older ladies were also available as sitters, but this sometimes turned out to be even less desirable than coping with teenage appetites. One friend told of an elderly sitter who was always so successful at getting her little charges to sleep that finally their mother asked how she managed to do this with so little trouble. With great cheer, the dear old soul informed her the only thing necessary was to wave the babies a bit over an open jet on the gas stove — not very much, mind you, but just a wee bit “so as to sort of coax them to get sleepy!”

Of course, our greatest need for sitters was often during the day, when all the teenagers were in school. Since there were so many mothers and babies in our Arlington apartment village, we finally formed a group and rotated time watching the children on the apartment playground. The only unhappy part of this arrangement coincided with rainy days, when the unfortunate mother of the day had to watch all the babies and toddlers in her own apartment. Otherwise, it turned out to be a fine arrangement and provided each of us with some much needed free time.

But children thrive and grow in wartime as well as in any other period. I am certain that when they all started to school, no one could tell which babies had been pushed in carriages with real rubber tires or had their diapers fastened with pre-war safety pins as opposed to the Victory models. Whether Daddy was overseas or Mommy worked as a riveter became unimportant. All we remember is that these babies were loved and fed and very much wanted.

Yes, the defense model stork was a hard-pressed old bird, subsisting on a lean diet and minus many of his pre-war feathers. Nonetheless, he winged his way into thousands and thousands of welcoming homes and hearts, and deposited his little bundles of joy just as carefully and proudly as did his peacetime counterpart.