6th Aprm

October 18

A wire from Mother: “Have stopped pulling out grey hairs. Hold everything. Coming to see that swimming pool.”

October 21

A date with Pat and the Ruppels for the theater.

Also I have to visit a couple of new mothers in hospital. Also I must do something about this morning sickness before Mother arrives. So, in my red corduroy and my top coat, and a red corduroy hat that’s last year’s-Oh, but believe me, Hannah, it matches-I set out to kill birds. There was a whole slew of bulging women in the Doc’s waiting room but, with the assistance of my roomy top coat, I was able to prance by ‘em and even take my time standing and selecting reading matter, instead of sneaking in guiltily the way the others did as if they were coming into church in the middle of the sermon.

My reading matter for the day was this little piece I found proudly exhibited on the table:

“Census bureau officials say the United States is experiencing the greatest boom in baby production since 192 I. Latest statistics show that the stork is making a new delivery every fourteen seconds. At that rate he is moving faster than the undertaker, who calls every twenty-three seconds. Provisional estimates show that approximately 2,500,000 babies will be born this year. Both the World War and the present defense boom are partially responsible for the latest upswing in the birth rate, says Dr. Philip M. Hauser, the Census Bureau’s assistant chief statistician for population. He said: ‘The large crop of babies born after the boys got back from W orld War I have now become old enough to have babies of their own. And they are having them.’”

The doctor was brisk and businesslike. He certainly brushes you off, but I can’t say I blame him with business booming like this. I asked him if the boom made him worry about his income tax. J could see him quiver.

To my complaint of continued morning sickness, he said, “If you’d do as I tell you and eat more often it would help.”

Then he gave me the questionnaire. “Are you taking those calcium and vitamin pills yet? No? Well, you should be… Do you feel any movement, any life? Just wait! … How do you sleep? Oh, yes, you told me about those sleepless nights…

Again a professional poke or two to my stomach. This time, no comments from me about no bulge! And he wouldn’t say what he learned from his poking. Just, “A lot of things. You’d be surprised.”

Another complaint from me about my tendency to gain weight through the hips and stomach.

“Yes,” he said, “that’s normal. I suppose it is a shame if you want it in your thighs and legs. Nothing you can do about it, though… No, don’t diet. You should be eating sugars and starches now… See you in a month.”

From there I went to the White Plains hospital to visit Sue who had had a baby ten days before. I got the shock of my life. The last time I saw her, eight months ago, she looked young and girlish and slim. Now that was all gone. She was mature, “busty”, maternal, and she had only one thing to talk about.

“Look,” my mind was saying, as I went through the usual listening act, “you’re not going to look like that. Even if you do gain a little, you’ll never look that maternal.”

“How was it?” I felt bound to inquire. “Just wait,” she said, eying my stomach.
“Oh, but I heard you had no difficulty at all. Pat told me that Bill said he was the one who had all the agony. You just slept through it all.”

“Just wait!”

“Anyway, how do you feel now?”

“Sorta like I’ve been doing a lot of horseback riding.”

When I left I was just in time to see the babies, each wrapped from head to toe in their individual blankets like withered mummies. I took one look and my gloom deepened. Such ugly, drooling, puny, red-and-blue faced little squallers! Not one of them cute and plump and pink and white like the pictures in the condensed milk ads! And the horrible sickly-sweet milkish odor that hung around them! If that’s the reward for being seasick every morning-But Jake’s not going to be like that.

So to my second call. At Harkness Pavilion Tish had just had her fourth baby four days before, and Tish was my model, my paragon, my beacon of hope and glory. It was on her I had based my ideas of how simple it was to have a baby. She had had three, was perfectly delighted about the fourth, and furthermore she was good to look at, tall and slim with her very trim figure quite unimpaired. If she could, so could I.

But today they told me she was much too ill to be visited. Her baby had weighed almost ten pounds and it had been a breach birth… I left Harkness with a definite case of willies.

To round out my obstetrical day I went to buy gifts for the “little strangers”, and found a cute woolly bear for Peggy’s “Robespierre”. Then slightly weary and worn, I bought myself a martini, fixed my face, tweaked my red hat, bought me a red carnation for my lapel, and went to meet Pat and the Ruppels. Ruppel razzed me plenty, but with my coat on I could take it. We had colossal steaks and then went to the theatre.

Faced with the closer-to-home thought of having a baby, the War has up to now seemed fairly remote. But “The Eve of St. Mark” dropped it into our laps. I was ready to end the day then and there, but rather than face more razzing I agreed to a drink at Sardi’s. We found a corner table and sat down with Ruppel’s friend, Lenny Lyons of the Lyons Den, and I coerced him into naming all the celebrities that wandered into the place.

It was awfully warm, I was dead tired, and the two whiskeys and sodas I had didn’t help. But it was Marge Ruppel who did the fainting when we finally fought our way to the open air. I was the one who held her up until someone brought a chair!

When I finally fell into bed in Connecticut I thought I’d never get out. My legs ached from unaccustomed high heels, my stomach ached from being held in, my eyes ached from being kept open, and my back ached just to be in the swim.

Wrote Mom again and told her to hurry up.

Told her we wanted to make the trip our present, and Pat will make arrangements and send her the ticket.