The Pink Blanket

One of the most joyous occasions in a woman’s life is the day she gives birth to a child. At least to most women it is. Tim is my second child. He came two weeks late on Dec. 12th. Three days before my fathers’ birthday.
It was early in the morning. Still a young woman, just out of my teens, I was so afraid. With the delivery of my first child less than two years before, in a not so professional manner, I was really scared. I was waiting for the doctor to bring in extra nurses to push the baby from my womb. I don’t think I was screaming so much from the delivery pain as from the fear of how this child would be born. This doctor didn’t do that though. He yelled at me to quit screaming and put that into pushing the baby out. I was shocked, but I did as he said, though I did throw in a few curses at this child to be born.
It is funny what things our mind chooses to remember. When I had my children, it was before the epidurals and sonograms and things of that sort that make delivery calm and collect these days. I had to depend on a shot in the bottom to relieve the pains I felt with each contraction. They didn’t allow your husband or mother into the delivery room to help calm your fears. Nor did you have these nice and cozy birthing rooms. You only had the cold room with the bright lights and some grouchy old nurse who had delivered baby Jesus and was still in practice to deliver your child too.
Then after he was born, they would not bring him to me to breast feed. Not right away. That poor child went over 5 hours with nothing because of their ignorance, and I was too young to understand or demand that they bring my child to me. I did not have anyone to ask questions of, or to go and check on my baby for me. The nurses would only tell me that the baby had to stay in the nursery because it was not time for him to be brought to me.
When I tried to breast feed him, my milk would not come in and he would vomit because he tried to eat too much to quench the hunger that he felt. When I put him onto formula bottles, he no longer vomited and began sleeping better.
Such a happy little boy he was. Always laughing and giggling. His little mouth could make the biggest smile. White blonde curls on his head. The darkest brown eyes you have ever seen.
He would not sleep anywhere but his own bed. Not even a little nap in my arms in the rocking chair. You had to lay him in his crib or the playpen for him to rest well.
We lived in a world before car seats and safety belts, and Tim would crouch down on the floorboard of the passenger side in the truck. That is where he would ride many times we went places, until we had a car. Then he would get down onto the floorboard in the back seat.
Someone had given me a baby comforter when I was pregnant. It was just a piece of pink material, folded over some cotton batting, with pieces of yarn to make little tucks into it. It made no matter to me the color of the blanket. Warmth of the child was what mattered. I wrapped this child in this blanket the day I brought him home with me, and I received it back from this same child when he left my arms to join the navy at the age of 19. It was no longer pink and fluffy, but dingy and gray, with the corners chewed off and repaired many a time. A tear that was non-repairable and batting that could never be held in with a piece of yarn again. I tucked it away in a box with other memories of my little baby born on a winter’s night.