6th Aprm

October 27

Letter from Mom. She gets here on the first. Dug out the long neglected W.P.B. chart and, taking my courage between my teeth, filled it in:

Waist, 28½ inches; Stomach, 35 inches; Hips, 39 inches; Bust, 35 inches; Weight, 120 pounds. But I can still wear the slacks if I let the zipper stop short. What with the long matching jacket you’d never suspect.

And still-despite all the things the girls, the books, the doctors, and the rules say-I’m sick every morning. But I have got over the 4pm upheaval.

My appetite is anything but voracious. I’m still interested mostly in tomato soup but that added weight must be coming from somewhere. Maybe it’s those midnight snacks. And there is a difference in my face. The mask of pregnancy has never appeared, but some of the wrinkles are disappearing just plain fattened ‘out. Others will soon take their place, though; Lucretia fixed that.

Drove Pat to his office in Bridgeport today and stopped off at the first agency in the ‘phone book.

All the girls in town are working in munitions factories for three times a maid’s wages. Not one would prefer a nice family in the country to big money.

I tried Norwalk once more before I headed for New York, and they actually found a girl for me to interview. “All I asks is no baby care, honey.”

October 28

Went all the way into New York and an efficient “personnel director” seated me in one of those tricky little cubicles that always scare me tongue-tied. She produced a fat, sullen-looking woman of about forty, who demanded suspiciously, “How many children?”

“Well, none really, but-”

She smoothed her coat over her broad hips. “No, Ma’am. I’ve had thirteen of my own and I don’t want no more.”

Next came a carbon copy of Lucretia, only smelling of “Floor d’amoor”, I brushed her off quick. The third and last was a thin little girl, racked with coughs. She was sweet, but I can’t have Jake catching things.

I bought a newsp2per and looked up “situations wanted”, while I syphoned off the tomato soup surplus. There were columns of them, all stipulating “no country”. Only a few wanted more money than Pat earns.

Back home again empty-handed, I cooked us a gourmet’s dream of tomato soup, creamed canned tuna fish on toast, canned peas and carrots, and the bakery’s gooiest cupcakes.

October 29

Pat said I ought to be looking for a maid instead of teaing and bridging a~ the baby shower for Peggy. It certainly shows how little a man knows, for I discovered today where I may be able to get a maid. She sounds wonderful and her name is Eliza.

Everyone at the shower was “expecting” except one girl who must have been quarantined. Nobody spoke to her because there was nothing to talk to her about. “Can you still fasten your shoes? Just wait! Bob says he’s got me where he wants me. I can’t get out of the house unless he ties the laces.” …”There I was reading a book in the lobby of the Waldorf, waiting for Jim to come along, and all of a sudden the book zooped right out of my hands, and was I embarrassed! Such a kick, in front of all those people.”… “I got an awful shock when I was walking down the street and tried to look in a store window. I bumped right into it, my stomach was so far ahead of my face!”… “My hands are so puffy I can’t get my wedding ring.”

My own hands are still slim and I hope they stay that way. If there’s ever a time a girl needs to wear a wedding ring this is it.

October 31

Eureka-Eliza! Brother, if she’s as good as she’s cracked up to be, we’re in. “Marvelous cook …wonderful servant …perfect with children.”

I met her in town. She was neat and clean, but what impressed me above and beyond all else was that she actually picked up her feet when she walked. I told her what we could afford to pay, but 1 promised her a raise with the advent of Jake.

Eliza grinned, showing two rows of gold teeth.

“I knows you can’t pay for what you ain’t got.”

Right away quick 1 bundled her into the car and drove to her Norwalk home to pick up her bags and her boy friend. He said he’d follow us out to Weston and learn the way. Eliza’s face grew longer with the miles. “So far out, I’m sorta scared,” she shivered. “Somebody might get me.” 1 assured her that wasn’t likely at all and told her about our regular house that’s two and a quarter miles nearer town. She looked slightly stunned when she saw the Reiner estate, but 1 explained we were only looking after it.

Eliza took over like a veteran, and what a dinner she served! Biscuits light as a feather-they’re really too fattening for us but I hate to spoil such a gesture. Pat simply glowed.

To celebrate our lonely Hallowe’en I had carved a pumpkin face, complete with ears, my most ambitious art project so far, and had bought’ doughnuts and cider for a witching midnight hour snack.

But after that dinner we both fell sound asleep before the fire and only woke up for long enough to climb the stairs to bed. Being parents certainly takes the old night-life spirit out of you.

October 23

Big weekend ahead. Bob and Mary Hutton are coming out. She and I don’t get along too well and I really want to pour it on. Hope I can make Lucretia cooperate and wear her shoes.

October 24

This is a fine thing! Some dopey Joe called up when Peggy and I were out riding and this morning Lucretia told me to the accompaniment of her giggling cackle: “Pretty funny! Guess what Mrs. Irwin said over the ‘phone-wanted to know how soon you was expectin’. I told her you and I didn’t know nothin’ ’bout it! Heh-heh!”

I thought it was so uproariously funny I dropped an entire tray of night-before cocktail glasses I was carrying. “While I’m breaking things, Lucretia,” I said, hiding my face among the pieces, “I might as well break the news. I’m going to have a baby. Aren’t you delighted?”

She was so delighted you’d think someone had just dropped a caterpillar down her neck. “No babies for me! Reg’lar family work is all right, but no babies. Besides, I don’t like this big house nohow. I’m givin’ notice.”

So I kept Jake on the agenda and scratched Lucretia off. In stony silence I drove her to town, boxes and packages and paper bags and “Cleopatra’s Love Dream”. Then I headed for the nearest employment agency.

No sign of life. Only the janitor, who informed me: “The lady says to me, she says, why stay open? Everybody has gone to work in Bridgeport where they make good money. I’m going in the Army myself next week.”

At the other agency a little man peeped out of “Western Stories” to chirp, “Maybe in a month or so- Corne back in a month.”

Sacrificing next week’s gas I drove to Norwalk, where a flustered female was busy with three ‘phones. “Hello,” she said: “Hello-no, not today… Sure, I can get you- Hello! …Yes, we’ve plenty of girls- Hello! …Yes, I can get you a cook …Right away- Hello! …Yes- You’ll have to meet the prices they’re paying in the defense plants…”

Anyway, I don’t have to worry about Lucretia leaving her shoes off when we have guests.

October 26

I’m my own maid now and the only time I took off was a few minutes to be ill in. Couldn’t miss that. The guests arrived before the breakfast dishes were done or the beds made, but I just closed the doors and off we tore for New Haven and football.

Dinner wasn’t so bad. We had steak, my one culinary accomplishment, with canned Frenchfried onions, canned string beans, canned Frenchfried potatoes, and canned corn, plus salad and Lucretia’s apple pie left over from Thursday. And Pat-Pat who shuns dish towels like vipers (Oh, welll ) was actually shamed into helping with the astonishing stack of dishes my cooking seems to accumulate. But this morning’s breakfast! Whipping up scrambled eggs does no good to my morning stomach.

The guests went home after dinner. I had never tried southern fried chicken before and my peach dumplings are not the kind Lucretia used to make.

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.

October 9

God bless the country! Birds and squirrels don’t gawk. Maybe it’s all my imagination but I’m certainly learning what it means to be the “cynosure of all eyes” . Yesterday a woman got up to give me her seat in a crowded restaurant. I thanked her politely and to hell with the effort it cost me!

October 12

A pal of Pat’s–one, Ruppel-was here with his two boys for the weekend. I walked with them, skipped with them, even kicked a football around with them just to fool their dad.

After dinner we were sitting cosily with a scotch and soda, when Ruppel observed, “Friend of mine saw you in Lane Bryant’s yesterday-congratulations!”

Face, throat, even my ears were crimson. I’ve never been so furious…

October 14

Those dear little dresses arrived today and maybe it’s just as well, for even the Reiners’ scale-conservatively set six minutes slow - admits 117. I hate to think what the doctor’s scale would reveal. I also got around to those long-avoided measure,ments. How times have changed! Waist, 27 inches; Stomach, 34 inches; Hips, 40 inches; Bust, 34¼ inches.

October 15

Braved New York again this nice cool day to buy some baby’s things. Peggy gave me a list of necessities for the “little stranger”, as the baby department clerks insist on calling him, and I added others from my volume on “Infant Care”. My idea was to go about the whole business very eB1J ciently, list in hand and clerk at the other elbow. But it didn’t work that way at all. What is this unaccustomed shyness that confounds me at odd moments? I got to the store all right and started picking out the “little things” (everything in blue, of course); but when a clerk arrived I meekly handed her the things and said: “Wrap them as a gift, please, and send them.” And I gave my own name and address.

So instead of buying everything in one store, I ended buying “gifts” in ten. I wonder if they thought it queer my buying three dozen diapers “wrapped as a gift”.

October 17

Businesslike, that’s me. This morning’s second breakfast put the idea in my head, and when I got on the bathroom scale, when I caught a glimpse of myself in those full length mirrors, when I looked at the W.P.B. chart-that settled it. Besides, I’m only gypping myself. Look at the price of hand-knit sweaters! And blankets! And everything! It’s time my family began to share the joys of motherhood.

So I wrote:

“Dear Muz: Sorry I haven’t written, but I’ve been so busy rushing around I just haven’t had the time. Look-Connecticut is at its best in the Fall so I’ve decided not to come to Chicago. Instead, you come here and see the lovely golden trees and our beauteous swimming pool. Anyway, the rest will be good for you. You’ll need it, for, Snooks, get out the knitting needles-you’re going to be a grandmother.”

Then I added a whopping lie: “The blessed event will be in late April.” That will keep them from fussing and worrying around the first, and I won’t let anyone tell them until I call from the hospital and break the news myself.

October 7

Into New York, just Pat and me, for a blowout.

We had dinner at Louis and Armand’s; then to the Ballet Russe. We stayed at the Ambassador-far too much money, of course, but it was our first big night in town in quite a spell. This morning a beautiful luscious breakfast in bed, and all wasted!

Pat went on to an important conference with the president of the advertising agency and I went on to an important conference on maternity clothes. I started out with the proceeds of the first rent check from my tenants and rushed off to pay a charge account at Saks. Little did I know that when Pat cashed the check for me he had appropriated ten dollars! I blithely paid the whole bill, thought I had ten dollars left, and wandered into the maternity section to tryon something chic.

A hot sticky day, just to make a liar out of the calendar, and the horrid sack-like wool numbers I pulled on and off made me sicker than the heat. The professional appraisals of the clerks and their sugary, “About three months, aren’t you, dear?” almost finished me-or so I thought until I saw the dresses. Then it really was touch and go. I’d as soon wear sandwich boards that proclaimed “Pregnant” in neon lights.

There seem to be four kinds of maternity advertising: (I) Bunched in front, with eleven yards of extra goods on stout elastic, for future frontage; (2) Bunched all around on a ribbon drawstringbeating the little mother to it by providing plenty of spread here and now; (3) Bunched again, and enormously bloused on top (”This gives you balance, dearie, when you pop below”); (4) Dresses and jackets, combining all the worst features of (I), (2), and (3)’

I wondered idly what the “pop” business was, but dismissed it. I wouldn’t wear such if I popped all over, and, anyway, I really don’t think I’ll get very much higher.

At that point I needed fresh air and a bowl or two of tomato soup, so I opened my purse to freshen up-and, 10, I had one nickel between me and starvation.

I rushed into a sizzling ‘phone booth and called the advertising agency. Patrick was in the president’s office and the conference couldn’t be disturbed. Tearfully I begged the operator to have him call me at the ‘phone booth. “It’s practically a matter of life and death,” I pleaded. That scared her, so she called the holy of holies and Pat called me right back. I could tell from the stilted conversation that he was talking right from the center of things, but I wept until he promised to come and rescue me.

He tried to be nice, remembering my delicate condition, but by the time he found me in the middle of the maternity section with the stares of the clerks centered on him, the strain was beginning to tell. He gave me the money he had gypped me out of and rushed off. “Good thing some of us aren’t pregnant,” I heard him mutter.

Refreshed and heartened by my beloved soup, I began a tour of every store in the city. Not anyvhere could I find a dress that wasn’t planned for the whole nine months’ spread, and that on a practically gargantuan scale. “Why?” I begged in vain, “why can’t you make some dresses that really do conceal-even if they could only be worn for the first few months? Nearly every woman buys two or three maternity dresses. She could wear one at first that’s designed to conceal and later on buy another that just plain stretches. Why start off looking like the blessed event was on the brink? The heck with a dress that will ‘give’ later on-l want to look smart now!”

I’ve never seen such awful stuff. Jackets, jabots, fluffy, ruflly collars.

Something ought to be done, too, about the calculating looks of those damn clerks and their fiendish, “About the third month, isn’t it, dearie?”

1 ended up the day with a red corduroy dress that is the only decent maternity dress in town. I don’t even mind the elastic or the extra yards in the middle of the front, for all the rest is a simple tailored shirtwaist type. I also bought a black wool that I despise, but it was the simplest black dress I could find. I cheerfully paid an extra fee for some three yards of extra material to be removed.

October 4

Dinner at the Boss’ with Leopold Stokowski as guest of honor.

Stokowski, all pink and white, can be the most charming man in the world if he puts his mind to it, and he sure put his mind to it tonight. I sat at his right at dinner and basked in his special smiles. Charm oozed out of him like toothpaste out of a tube. Instant and unfailing as a lighter of my cigarettes he even agreed with me on a minor musical matter. I had to fight an urge to interrupt with, “Look, buddy, I’m the gal you had kicked off a train. Remember?”

Back in my Hearst reporting days Stokowski had the Santa Fe Chief stopped at a whistle-station in Iowa just to have me forcibly ejected. I had boarded the train, per instructions, to try and get the harassed maestro to comment on his reported engagement to Garbo. I guess I was a bloody nuisance.

October J Exactly six months to go. I’m beginning to avoid full length mirrors.

Is it a bulge I see before me? Did this arrive overnight, or have I been letting the zipper of my slacks slip down a half inch or so a day? Now, at any rate, it’s two and a half inches from closing. This makes the trousers pull up in front, so that the legs are short and show my socks, hill-billy fashion. Guess I’d better buy some maternity clothes. Then I can continue to fool-only who is there left to fool? Only my family and I keep getting letters that say, “When are you coming home, snooks? Everyone has been calling, and I’ve told them we expect you any day ….

October 1

Went back to the doctor, as ordered, now that the critical “period” is over. Besides, I had to find out what effect no pills and much tomato soup was going to have on Jake.

Wore my slacks, for an unmatronly touch. How many days has it been now that I haven’t been able to get the top button closed? Can’t seem to remember when that started.

Again the waiting-room scene. The same girl with the smart suit was there and she and I fell into a very gay and sophisticated chit-chat about the places we were going and the things we were doing-a conversation that put us another plane or two above the heads of the gals around us. We both knew we were being nasty and we knew we were lying like mad, but we couldn’t stop once we’d started. We got sort of drunk on it. We covered every fashionable night spot in town, dashing from luncheons to fittings to hairdressers. We dreamed up games of golf, and Smart Suit went so far as to describe a new evening gown she was thinking of buying.

The doctor was his usual nonchalant little self.

He tossed off my worry about lack of appetite with another “Just wait.”

I slipped in a careless reference to tomato soup and how was it going to affect Jake’s development. It didn’t seem to worry him, but he did urge me to eat sugars and starches often, if in minute quantities.

I weighed in at 117. The scales at home must have lied.

“No bulge yet,” I said smugly. “Just wait,” said he smugly.

Can’t say that I’ve spent any sleepless nights worrying about the pains of childbirth, but come April, I want nembutal and all the etceteras hours before anyone else gets ‘em. I have a campaign mapped out to convince the doctor that I need special care. “Doctor,” I said, “I haven’t been sleeping. I wake up in the middle of the night in a cold sweat, dreaming of the horrors of having a baby. I just can’t stand the thought of pain!”

“Probably not a cold sweat.” He was back in the swivel chair position. “You’re probably too warm at mg t. on t use so many covers.

“But I dream horrible dreams. I wake up screaming! I never could stand pain.”

“What do you eat before going to bed?” “Nothing,” I said. “Just a little tomato soup. But it takes me hours to get to sleep. During the day it isn’t so bad. Then I can forget. But at night I see visions of me screaming in agony. And it’s all your fault.”

The swivel chair came to attention. “My fault!

What do you mean?”

“Well,” I said, “this ‘comfortable as possible’ business. Why don’t you put our poor souls at rest and say that there is absolutely no pain? If in the end there is some-a little, I mean-at least we’ve enjoyed nine months of blissful ignorance. If you’ll forgive my saying so,” with my sweetest smile, “you ought to be more psychological.”

“And have women gunning for me if they feel a pain or two? No thank you!” He buttoned up his professional manner. “We do have some wonderful results with modern methods. In many cases women have been completely out during Iaborthe later period of hard labor, that is. They’ve had a very easy time. In any case it works to some extent during hard labor and, of course, you know nothing about the actual delivery. Then you are completely anaesthetized.”

“But you mean in some cases this dope doesn’t work?”

“Well, that has happened.”

“Look, why don’t you try it on me now? Then I’ll know whether it works or not and I’ll not have to spend any more sleepless, dream-filled nights. The very thought of pain, Doctor-”

“I could give you the stuff,” he admitted, “but I have no way of duplicating the pain. You see it’s the force of the pain that returns you to consciousness through the nembutal.”

That was when I began to wish I had never brought up the subject.

“At least,” I said in a small voice, “I won’t know anything about the actual process of having a baby.”

“That’s right. Now, if you’ll just step into the other room.”

Again he poked my stomach, took my blood pressure, and made a note or two in blue on form 678B 37-41.