BOGO or 2-fers

It was MANY years ago, about fifty.

I lived in Connecticut, was married to a sailor in Nuclear Submarines and had 2 little girls ages 5 and 1.

We had about one year left in the service and we’d be done. 

Done!

Free!

and Hooray!

I didn’t like the Navy life…..I didn’t like it real bad!

I respected the military, I did. (honest Karen!)

I just didn’t like being part of it and being owned by it.

We had just about enough time left to give it one more shot at having a boy baby and the Navy covering the cost.

My husband was gone on a submarine….. where to?  I had no idea.  

Secret. 

Just gone.

Our life for the past 5 or 6 years had been…..he’s home, he’s gone.

Home for about 2 1/2 months then gone on a sub somewhere for about 3.

I struggled with that kind of lifestyle.

Being young and still in love, after being gone for 3 months, well…..you can imagine the homecoming!  

Lots of “down time.”

Just before my sailor was due home, I read an article in the Reader’s Digest.  

It was about how to determine the sex of your baby or….how to make a BOY!

Seems over the centuries, there have been all sorts of formulas.

I was looking for a fool-proof one.  

Aristotle advised that having sex in the north wind would create a boy.

Um…..no!

Some European peasants thought wearing boots to bed made a boy.

I don’t think so!

And even here in rural America men hung their pants on the right side of the bed if they wanted a boy.

No offense but…..dumb!

In 1961 a discovery was made by Landrum B. Shettles, an OB/GYN at Columbia-Presbyterian Medical Center and an Assistant Professor of clinical OB/GYN at Columbia College of Physicians and Surgeons.  

It had to do with….. well, the environment inside the female. 

An acid environment inside the female was favorable to the male sperm lasting longer than the female.  

OK.

Simple, right?

Make an acid environment. 

But, there was more.  

Dr Shettles presented a 5-step plan with an 85% success rate to produce a boy baby.

85%?

I am IN!

Step 1 was to time the “togetherness” as close to ovulation as possible.

Step 2, immediately preceding the “togetherness” thing there should be a douche consisting of 2 Tablespoons of baking SODA to a quart of water.

Step 3 & 4 had to do with a few in-depth details. 

Step 5 was the biggie….no more “togetherness” until the very next cycle.

Abstinence?

No “togetherness” for a month and he’s only home for 2 1/2 months?

Talking my husband into, after not being together for almost 3 months, to have one go-round and then NOTHING for a month and then he’d be leaving a month later?

Fat chance on that one! 

That was probably gonna be the deal breaker.

There was gonna have to be some  serious convincing goin’ on.

I’m not sure having a son was that big of a deal to him.  

I mean,  I was the one with the boy names picked out every time.

Well…..

First night home….budda-bing.

Steps 1 & 2 completed.

Next 3 & 4.

Step 5…..I don’t know how I did it and I’ve on-purpose forgotten what I promised,  but I did get him to agree. 

In the morning, I noticed the can of baking POWDER on the kitchen counter!

NO!  

CRAP!

How the HELL did I do that?

I decided to forget about the little mix-up, just kinda go forward with the plan anyway. 

I wasn’t gonna tell and I wasn’t gonna ask for another shot at it either.

Nope…..onward, that’s all. 

I could only hope…..baking SODA? baking POWDER? what the heck?

And then….. I was pregnant and I began baby boy dreamin’.

We said goodbye and back on his little boat he went, but THIS time for the last time.

It was bittersweet….. hurry and go and, NO, don’t go!

It would all be over the first part of October.

My no-longer-a-sailor-but-a-civilian husband would be home and discharged the very first part of October and our son would be here waiting to meet his dad.

I did wishful thinking…..positive wishful thinking because well, there wasn’t much else I could do.  

Nobody, including the parents knew the sex of their baby until the first breath on this planet was taken.  

Everybody was surprised at the same time.

But, I knew he was gonna be a boy.

I did the formula…..well, pretty close anyways!

I wasn’t even sad that I was having my last baby all alone, no husband, no family, nobody.

I was looking past all that.  

DISCHARGE FROM THE NAVY that’s all I could think.  

This was my third pregnancy and by far, the very worse. 

First off the weight gain was nuts.

I wasn’t eating.

I mostly couldn’t eat, it made me sick.

But I was gaining weight.

I was going to a team of four civilian Obstetricians.

3 of them were fine.

One was a jerk.

A jerk because he was crude and rude and had zip-point-zero manners…..bedside or other.

I always tried not to be seen by him but every once in a while,there he was…..Dr Rude-Crude!

On one visit, he didn’t even LOOK at me.  

He walked in and over to the counter, read my chart and STILL without looking at me announced that if I kept up the weight gain I would be a PIG before the time I delivered!

A pig!

He told a pathetic non-eating, weight-gaining miserable pregnant lady that she was gonna be a pig.

Back then, Norwich, Connecticut had little take-out pizza shops on every corner and I’m not foolin’…..every corner. 

I was pretty low when I left the doctor’s office thinking that I may turn into a pig.

And then I guess my defense mechanisms kicked in.

I pulled over to the first corner with an available parking spot.

I bought two pizzas and put them next to me on the passenger seat and lifted the top from one of them.

Screw it.  

If I was gonna be a pig, I was gonna be a pizza-eaten pig!

From that moment on, I didn’t worry that much about my weight and I didn’t care what Dr Derelict called me

One evening I asked my neighbor girlfriend to come over and help me with something that had been bothering me.

Things didn’t feel right

It felt…..too much.

I couldn’t explain it any more than that.

And so we sat side by side, trying to identify different body parts but we always came up with…..too many.

I tried not to think about it. 

My imagination could get pretty crazy.

You might wonder why I never mentioned or asked my doctor about it.

I did!

It was one of the three nicer docs.

I just kinda asked him for reassurance.

Could there possibly be more than one baby in there?

All these years later, I can still hear his response…”there’s one small baby in there.”

 Well, who was I to question the words of the expert so I never spoke of it again. 

I dismissed the idea of twins and fought the thoughts of my little boy with too many limbs, heads and butts.

It was a Monday evening the end of September.

It was time.

My Navy girlfriend came quickly and took my two little ones home with her as we had planned.

She also had my list of people to call and notify.

My neighbor’s husband had agreed to be the driver-to-the-hospital-guy when it was time.

BUT it happened on a Monday night!!!!!

Monday Night Football was on TV and he was a football FREAK.

I believe had he thought about it, he would have put in a waiver to the agreement refusing to take me on a Monday Nite.

Fifty years ago, there was no recording it for later.

He was NOT happy!

He even tried to persuade me to just sit down, cross my legs and WAIT!

A labor pain hit.

He drove the 15 miles to the hospital like a we were on the Indianapolis 500 track and then a screeching halt at the entrance door.

I struggled trying to get me and my overnight bag out before he decided to just run me over.  

Before I’d even begun to tackle the flight of stairs to the entrance and in pretty heavy labor, he peeled rubber and left me in a cloud of exhaust.

I had made a deal with my doctors.

I was gonna be there all alone.  

No one to coach me through it or share it with me.

So, the moment my son’s head was delivered and safe, I wanted to be knocked out.  I’ve never been an advocate of pain and well we all know…..childbirth HURTS!

The doc who was on call that night kept his word, the baby’s head emerged and out I went.

Next thing I knew, someone was kinda sing-singing…..”it’s time to wake up, come on, open your eyes.”

I lied there quiet, enjoying the feeling of floating on clouds.

The singing voice continued wanting the woman,  I assumed on the gurney next to me to open her eyes.

She sang …..”you have twins.”

“Awww that’s nice,” I thought.

“She had twins.

Why doesn’t she answer?”

Just as I was wondering why, I felt hands shaking my shoulders.

“Wake up, wake up. Your babies are  here.”

Was that ME she was shaking?

Was that ME she was talking to?

ME?

I opened one eye and the nurse was standing smack over me.

“Me? I have twins?”

“Yes, you do.”

Wow!

How the heck?

Well, it could be good…..two little girls at home and now two little boys.

“Two boys?” I asked.

“Noooo” she sang.

NO?

NOT TWO BOYS?

“One boy and one girl?” 

“Nooo” 

NO?

NOT two boys?

NOT one boy and one girl?

Two more girls?

Four daughters? 

I now had four daughters?

I wasn’t totally out of my drunken-like anesthesia sleep.

Maybe I was still up in the clouds just hearing weird stuff.

But, it was my voice….. “I don’t WANT two more girls.  I already have two.”

The nurse came closer to my face…..“Shame on you,” she almost scolded, 

“You have two beautiful, healthy little baby girls.”

“Nooooooooooooooo”!!!!!

As I was being wheeled to my room I wondered the same question slug-in-the-knee ice skater, Nancy Kerrigan, wanted to know years later,  “WHY ME? WHY ME?” 

The gurney stopped.

We were at the Nurses Station.

“You have a phone call,” the nurse announced.

She stretched the phone cord and placed the receiver to my ear.

It was my best friend, she’d gotten the delivery call.

I heard her voice, very seriously.

“You realize if you do that one more time, you’ll have SIX kids…..SIX, like a half-a dozen eggs in a carton.”

Nope, that wasn’t gonna happen. 

It only took seconds for my decision on this subject to be made.

I was done.

I was SO done that even if Jesus showed up and promised one more time would bring a boy…..I WAS  DONE!

After I was settled in my room and in between periods of the nurse coming in and  trying to kill me with two-fisted kneading on my pathetic, tired uterus…..it all began to sink in.

No boy…..ever!  

I thought about the 5-step formula, the 85% thing.

Did baking POWDER instead of SODA do that?

I looked down on their sweet little faces, one in each arm.

Who are you?, I wondered.

Certainly not Eric Edward.

I needed two more girl names.

I didn’t HAVE two more girl names!

The nurses told me I didn’t need to hurry and for the present, they were BABY A and BABY B.  

I thought about it.

There was no one to help me decide.

WHO were these two little ladies gonna be?

Before I decided, a social worker paid me a visit.

Again I remind you this was 50 years ago.

Twins were a serious, big-deal happening.  

I mean, having twins was BIG!

Triplets were close to unheard of and for sure multiple births more than 3 at a time were beyond rare and they didn’t usually live longer than a day or two.

This was way before fertility drugs.

The Social Worker highly recommended that from their beginning, they be given their own identity, including not dressing them alike and not rhyming twin names.  

Rhyming twin names?

I still didn’t have ONE name, let alone two that rhymed so that was fine with me.

OK I wouldn’t rhyme them but they needed some kind of little distinction. 

The middle name…..I’d give them both the same middle name.  

Ann, I liked that.  

Now all I needed was their first names.

Three days after they were born, I took Amy Ann and Melissa Ann, my two little baking POWDER biscuits, home with me.

I don’t remember how we got home.

I’m guessing it was the same crazy neighbor who brought me, in a much better frame of mind.

It wasn’t a Monday night.

And so it began.

I undecorated the nursery which was kinda boy ready.  

Took the little football out of the cradle and replaced it with soft baby dolls.

My neighbors and girlfriends were wonderful.  

As I already mentioned, twins were a real rare happening so everyone wanted to see them and everybody pitched in and helped me feed and change them.  

And then the “fun” began.

TO BE CONTINUED, hopefully next Friday!