Throw yourself into something you love.

Having lost touch with my mother, I’ve lost touch with some of the funny, sad, and interesting family stories she used to tell. I recently asked my cousin to clarify a few things for me. I knew my grandmother (who we all called “Ma”, and died before I was born) had three kids – my mom, my aunt and my uncle. My mom read the Little House on the Prairie books to me a long time ago, and mentioned that they all lived like that. So whenever I picture Ma, she’s cooking over a fire, feeding and butchering her own animals, making biscuits from scratch, having her kids at home with all the pain, and danger, maybe with the help of a midwife. Or perhaps (although, knowing my grandpa, “Pa”, who has also passed on now, I can’t imagine this) my grandpa helping her himself. I also know she lost one boy. How old was he? Did that happen at home, too? How did they handle that?

My cousin knew our grandmother, and got to hear the stories first hand. She confirmed yes, all the kids were born at home (this would have been about 1944 for the youngest, my mom), and this was not a big deal at the time, out in the country. And in the South (they were all born in Arkansas) they held on to home birth a little longer. They did have a doctor who would do house calls. There were actually two doctors around, but Ma didn’t like one of them, said he was “careless and dirty”. When the time came for a birth, Pa went to get Ma’s mother (my great-grandmother) and then the doctor. Pa would walk around with his father-in-law (my great-grandfather) and try to check fences or work on something in the barn, both of them worrying all the time, but trying to not act like it. They’d stay close enough to holler at if something went wrong or when the baby was born. Ma said the doctor would put some ether on a rage and put the rag in a jar and she could sniff it when she needed it. She said it was “great stuff”.

Ma had my uncle with no problem, but my aunt was born with the cord around her neck. My mom was the easiest birth… my grandmother delivered her standing up! The doctor said if he’d known that would help so much, he would have delivered them all like that.

Sadly, the first boy they had was either still-born, or died minutes after his birth. He weighed about 14 pounds, huge. They named him Nicky, but his gravestone only says “Baby Young”. I’ve always thought it was a terribly sad story, and now that I had an ectopic pregnancy and lost a baby myself, I can’t imagine losing one so late, when you’ve carried him or her for 9 months, come up with names, decorated the nursery, etc. How did she deal with this, especially in the 30′s or 40′s with no support groups (other than church) no on-line resources, and having to work, work, work to keep things going at home?

My cousin says Ma was close to a nervous breakdown and her mother, my great-grandmother, told her to find the most difficult quilt pattern she could and make the quilt. Ma was crazy about quilting, sewing, and so on. And she was really good at it. So she did. She found a pattern, and poured her tears and time into that grieving quilt. And great-grandmother was right. When the quilt was done, she felt better. Pa wasn’t a man to show his emotions much, but he would say “Nicky dying ‘nearly killed us’”.

For my miscarriage story, information on ectopic pregnancy, what to expect and how to deal with loss, click here.

Have you experienced losing a baby? How did you cope? Who was your rock? Are you still struggling? Please share your story in the comments below.

photo credit: bluekdesign Unfortunately no one knows what pattern Ma’s quilt had, or what colors. But I know she loved red. She wouldn’t wear it. She said it was a color for loose women! But she put lots of it in her beautiful quilts.