Name/Title
AU Ward, Margaret Lynn [Harris] - XXXX-XX-XX - 'Midge'Entry/Object ID
1991.1.5Context
MIDGE
By Margaret L. Harris
After five children, the youngest ready to go into nursing, I got pregnant. There goes the lovely places my husband and I had planned to visit. I was forty and one-half and my husband was forty-five and one-half. It was like having your first one all over again.
After we got over the initial shock, especially the older children, we heard, "Mom, what will our friends say?" They were afraid of what the kids in school and their parents would say. They would have a lot of kidding to take.
We told them that it was God's will and to just hold up their head and look proud and that we would go through the same, a lot of kidding. So let's get busy for the blessed event. It gave them time to do things, make things. There was lots to be done.
Things came along pretty well until the fall and a song came out, "Open the Door, Richard." First they started singing the song, driving us crazy. "Then call the baby Richard if it is a boy." Then way in the holidays when the papers told what the merchants were giving for the New Year baby, they upped their programs and we heard, "Open the Door, Richard," we certainly agreed that we wished it was all over.
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Early on January 8th I started having labor pains. They were twenty-seven minutes apart. Nothing to get excited about, but as they went on, I would get pains, they would stop, get them again twenty-seven minutes apart. We called the doctor, told him what's what. He said I "had better go to the hospital, that late in life babies were unpredictable."
When we reached the Staten Island hospital they put me in a labor room and being it was war time (1946) most of the clocks were being fixed. The routine was, the nurse would stick her head in the door and ask how many pains since she was in before? Finally she decided to dilate me and break the water bag. Then the time flew. My doctor was in his office and another doctor was scrubbing up. In the middle of things my doctor strolled in. They said, "Come on out, get busy." He really rushed over and ordered a [???] to be put at the bottom of the delivery table.
I felt relieved. You know every woman wants her own doctor at a time like this. I had an ether cone for every pain and I knew what was going on. All of a sudden things stopped and the doctor said, "Look at that." Nothing more was said. I was cleaned up and put in an empty labor room. Finally the nurse came in, apologized, and took me down to my room.
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I laid there a long time wondering. After a long while, my husband came in. He told me the whole story. The baby was born with a Spina Bifida at the base of the Skull. Dr. Becker told my husband that they didn't do much operating on something like this, but he knew a doctor who was, with quite a lot of success.
Had we considered operating? We talked a while, then decided on an operation. Early the morning of January 17th my husband and daughter (Helen) took Midge from Staten Island, all bundled up, to Columbia Medical Center, way up in N.Y.C., quite a ride, but Helen said Midge was good as gold. When they arrived, Dr. Munson was waiting to examine Midge. She had an emergency Christening in the other hospital.
She came through the operation beautifully. They found out that they had to excise a portion of the cerebellum. It controls balance. It left a large scar, but as she had a head of long curly hair that would eventually cover the scar.
When we finally brought Midge home from the hospital the kids were all happy, we were a family again. She was so tiny, she looked like a doll. She only weighed four pounds at birth.
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We started teaching her things as soon as possible. We exercised her arms and legs in the crib. We also exercised her back.
God was good to Midge, and us, for a year and sixteen days after Midge was born, God presented her with a baby brother. Everybody was thrilled with Skip. The family had been reduced, Vern and Dotty were married, and Helen was entering training, but with the help of practical nurses we got along fine.
We figured that God meant for Skip to be a pattern for Midge to follow and learn the hard way to learn things that came easily for so called "normal" children to learn. I never really knew when one of the others learned to turn a door knob or put on a light switch. All of a sudden —— one day, he or she was doing it. But you appreciated it when you watch a handicapped child do it.
She tried to do what Skip did and got so many bumps when she fell we would say, "Oh bumpee, get up." Later, when she fell, she would say, "Oh bumpee," herself, get up, and go on with what she was doing.
We taught her colors by naming the color of whatever she was putting on or handling. We got colored glasses and would tell her to put the red poker chip into the red glass. She loved that one.
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Although Midge was educationally retarded, she never forgot a name or place where she was. Outside of algebra, you couldn't catch her on much.
We taught her at home and when she was eight years old she entered the Public School's Special Class. She had a wonderful teacher, Tom Nelson. She learned much from Mr. Nelson.
When she was fourteen she had to leave Special Education because she wasn't ready for high school.
