The GI Bride (9 page)

Worse than doing the laundry, though, was
the ironing. At work, Bob wore what he called wash-pants and wash-shirts. In those days,
they were made of heavy 100 per cent cotton twill and were almost impossible to iron. My
mother-in-law told me I needed ‘pants stretchers’, which was what she used
for Daddy’s bus-driver uniforms she always called him ‘Daddy’ when
speaking to or about him so Bob and I duly bought some. They were metal frames in the
shape of a trouser leg that you inserted into each leg while they were wet. The frames
were expandable and once you had them inside the legs, you stretched them as far as they
would go. This stopped the trousers shrinking and supposedly made them easier to iron.
Ha, I thought, easy for them to say. But I digress.

The new apartment was directly across the
street from Our Lady Help of Christians Catholic Church on Iowa Street, which turned out
to be a source of free entertainment as there were always weddings to watch on Saturdays
from the glassed-in sun-porch. We moved in when I was seven and a half months pregnant,
which was also the right time for me to stop working. I hated to leave my job with Happy
Harry’s, but since the season was slowing down anyway, it seemed perfect timing.
Besides, I knew the Morrises and I would remain friends, and that I could rely on Joan
if I needed advice or help, but I hated leaving my British friend Alice Hawryluk and all
those lovely cups of tea.

Bob and I enjoyed shopping for our new home.
We’d had to do it quickly because we had no furniture, except the kitchen table
and chairs, which had been a gift. We bought a suite of living-room furniture, including
curtains, table lamps, rugs for the floor and a TV set. We also bought a bedroom set,
complete with cut-glass dressing-table lamps, and put it in the dining room, leaving the
bedroom as a nursery for the baby. Everything we bought was the latest fashion. The
couch and chair were covered with turquoise bouclé fabric, which had silver thread
running through it. The curtains were bark cloth, with huge country scenes, in pink,
turquoise and grey. The bedroom furniture and living-room tables were in blond wood. I
thought it was all very posh, and although it would take a long time to pay it off, the
whole lot had cost only about three hundred dollars. The entire apartment had recently
had a fresh coat of paint heaven compared to our previous, rather grim home. There were
plenty of windows, too, making the rooms light and cheerful, and we could open them and
enjoy refreshing cross-breezes. Summer had finally ended and the weather began to cool.
I could now see a strong possibility that I might survive in this strange country, after
all.

Shortly after we moved into our lovely new
apartment, I received some bad news. Alice had had a freak accident about two weeks
after we’d moved out of our old place. She had fainted in the bathroom one day
when no one else was at home and had lain unconscious, her face wedged against the
radiator’s hot-water pipe where it came out of the floor. It had burned her flesh
to the bone and left her terribly disfigured. I wanted to visit her
but she wouldn’t let me. ‘I don’t want you to see me like this while
you’re pregnant,’ she said. ‘It might not be good for you or the
baby.’ I didn’t understand at the time but someone later told me that,
according to old wives’ tales, your baby could be disfigured if you looked at
someone’s deformity. I was surprised that Alice still believed such nonsense but I
appreciated her concern for our unborn child.

We walked into Bob’s parents’
house one Sunday and I almost had a heart attack. About forty people were crowded into
the living and dining rooms and they all shouted, ‘
Surprise!
’ I
hadn’t a clue what was going on so I just stood there, shocked, and gaped at
everyone.

‘What’s going on?’ I asked
Bob. I knew it wasn’t a birthday party and it was the wrong time of year for any
other celebration.

‘It’s a shower,’ he said,
with a huge grin. ‘Presents for the baby. It’s what people do here.’
Oh, Lord, I thought. These Americans are so weird! Fancy making all these people who
hardly know me buy gifts for a baby who isn’t even here yet.

Bob’s family certainly had surprised
me. I was almost knocked off my feet which wouldn’t have been easy to achieve,
given the size, shape and weight of me. Even my usually sensible husband had begun
teasing me about my pregnant self.

Until that moment, I’d had no idea
what a shower was. We didn’t have them in the UK back in those days well, not that
kind anyway. The only showers in England were more like torrential downpours.

I couldn’t believe my eyes when I saw
so many people gathered, and with all those gifts too. Even people who were unable to
attend had sent something. All we had left
to buy was a pram. I still
hadn’t felt much warmth from Bob’s family in fact, mostly what I felt was
disapproval, impatience or resentment but when it came to gifts, they were tops.

By now, I had given up my job and was trying
to enjoy our new apartment, but it wasn’t easy. I had no friends nearby, and Bob
was still working long hours, including most Saturdays. He would come home from work
exhausted, eat his dinner and fall asleep before we had any chance to engage in
conversation. I was desperately lonely. My only activities were the now more frequent
visits to my obstetrician, talking on the phone to my friend Barbara McCarthy, or Bobby,
as I now called her, taking short walks, cooking and cleaning, and re-organizing the
baby’s room, which I did every other day.

I loved putting the tiny baby clothes in the
drawers and arranging the stuffed toys and other paraphernalia. I often took all the
little things out to look at them if the truth be known, it was like playing house. But
this was no game because I was about to become a mother, and soon. Oh, how I wished my
own mother could have been there to help me, not that she ever had in the past but I
knew she loved babies and I was sure this would have brought us closer. It would have
helped to talk to her on the phone, but that was impossible too: Mum and Dad still
didn’t have one.

I was supposed to be due before Christmas of
1955 and everyone thought that, since I was now enormous and, believe me, I was it might
be sooner rather than later, but Christmas came and went with only slight twinges that
we thought might be labour pains but were
not. Then we hoped the baby
would at least have the decency to arrive before midnight on New Year’s Eve so
that we would have the benefit of the 1955 tax deduction. With this in mind, dear Dr
Crown sent me to hospital to have labour induced. The contractions started, but then
they stopped again and the doctor sent me home, feeling very disappointed. New
Year’s Eve came and went, and by now I was so uncomfortable I had to sleep sitting
up. I had gained at least fifty pounds, perhaps partly because my mother kept telling me
to remember I was eating for two. After six months’ morning sickness, I had really
begun to enjoy my food, especially ice cream, and looked as though I’d been eating
for four.

By 4 January I was still showing no sign of
going into labour, so the next day Dr Crown sent me back to Columbus Hospital (on Lake
Shore Drive in Chicago) to be induced again. This time it worked. Oh, boy, it certainly
did. I thought it would never end. A strange thing happened while I was in the labour
room: a man I guessed he was medical staff came in to examine me. All he did was fondle
my breasts, and when he heard someone coming, he covered me and left. I was sure he had
touched me inappropriately he might have been housekeeping staff even but I was in too
much pain to think any more of it. When I mentioned it to Bob, he told me I was
crazy.

When I was taken into the delivery room, Dr
Crown hadn’t arrived, so they gave me some kind of gas to slow things down. I
could hear myself singing, apparently quite loudly, between contractions, and the nurses
imploring me to be quiet. My doctor had asked them to slow the
contractions because he didn’t want to miss the big event, and he did not. I
later learned that he had been concerned about the birth because of the size of the baby
and my apparently immature pelvic measurement. It was a difficult delivery and I was
sure I was going to die. What a relief it was, at last, to hear one of the nurses
announce, ‘You have a healthy baby boy.’

‘You call that ox a baby!’ was
Dr Crown’s response.

Phew! I’d done it. I had a son and he
was perfect … If only my family was with me to share my joy and if only I felt less
lonely …

Bob sent Mum and Dad a telegram announcing
the birth of our baby and we received one back, congratulating us and telling us they
were overjoyed. Later, when Mum heard that I’d had an episiotomy, she was
horrified. Apparently, they were only performed in England when the life of the mother
or baby was in danger. In some small way, I was pleased to hear that my mum was worried
about me, but it made me miss her more than ever.

That dear Dr Crown: several months later, we
realized we had never received a bill from him, and when I called his office to ask
about it, I was told there was nothing to pay. I was reduced to tears by his
kindness.

Bob was ecstatic that we had produced a boy;
he cried as he thanked me for giving him a son. However, we did not give in to family
pressure to name him Robert Henry Irvine III. Bob was a ‘junior’ but we
thought that was as far as it should go. We named our son Wayne Robert: Wayne because it
was an all-American name and Robert after his daddy, his paternal grandfather and my
younger brother. They’d just have to get used to our break with tradition.

Foolishly, I was anxious to leave the hospital
and get home to take care of the baby myself. I was still uncomfortable after the
episiotomy, and shuffled along like an old woman. My friend Joan Morris lectured when
she visited me in the hospital: ‘Don’t be in such a hurry! It’ll be
the last rest you have for years, believe me.’

Later I wished I’d listened to her.
She was so right, and why wouldn’t she be? She had recently given birth to her
fourth child.

We left the comfort of the hospital three
days after Wayne’s birth, and then another nightmare began. I tried desperately to
nurse him but it just didn’t work. My breasts and nipples were extremely painful
and he was not getting enough to eat. Consequently we were both crying a lot. In fact,
the baby was screaming blue murder. By now, Bob was at his wit’s end, frustrated
because he didn’t know what to do for either of us and short-tempered from lack of
sleep.

‘Maybe your mom could come over to
help,’ I suggested.

‘I hinted about it last time I talked
to her but she didn’t offer. I don’t think she can get away from Dad and
Roberta or she thinks they can’t manage without her,’ he said.

I kept my mouth shut. I was sure she
didn’t care enough, but that was nothing new to me.

I felt inadequate as a mother. Each day I
wished my mother was with me, to give advice and support. She and I had never been
close, but I knew that now she would have taken care of the baby and me, without
hesitation.

The next blow to my confidence came when the
baby’s
paediatrician told me I must stop trying to breastfeed
Wayne and give him a bottle. I followed his orders but was terribly disappointed at my
perceived failure. However, Wayne was at last a happy baby and we all began to get some
sleep.

Our respite was short-lived. A new problem
arose. I developed mastitis. I was in agony with inflamed, engorged breasts, and
bleeding, cracked nipples. I also had a raging fever and was delirious at times. I knew
that I looked like an ugly, bloated cow, which made me feel even worse; I just wanted to
die. Bob had been able to take only a few days off after we came home from the hospital
and was already back at work, leaving me alone and in a dreadful state. Again, we
thought Bob’s mother might come to help when she heard how ill I was, but we were
wrong. She came by bus, just once, and that was to drop off some homemade soup for Bob.
For me, there was no one, and once again, I felt utterly alone and worthless. Yes, I was
extremely sorry for myself.

I’m ashamed to say that, in those
days, I was not a very good mother or wife. I just didn’t know how to cope. What a
blessing it was that Wayne had settled and was now such a contented child. He was a joy,
but I still had great difficulty in keeping up with the housekeeping and other
‘wifely duties’. Bob had insisted on having sex before I had completely
healed down below and intercourse was excruciating. I later learned that a couple of the
episiotomy stitches had torn loose; no wonder it had been painful. Saying no to my once
gentle, patient husband was out of the question.

For a long time, I didn’t want to get
out of bed in the
mornings, often staying there until midday. I would
get up to feed and change the baby but then would take him into bed with me and we would
go back to sleep. I was realizing that I was very much alone and that I couldn’t
expect Bob’s family to replace my own, and perhaps I was experiencing what is now
recognized as post-natal depression. My depression deepened, and it was as much as I
could do to function from day to day. Bob offered little comfort or support because,
basically, he didn’t know how. We were both frightened and I’m sure I
wasn’t alone in praying for an answer, and the answer came.