One of the funniest lines from the movie Gone With the Wind is when Prissy admits to Ms. Scarlet, “I don’t know nothin’ ‘bout birthing babies!” My own confession is similar: “I don’t know nothin’ ‘bout rearing babies!” For you folks from north of the Mason-Dixon line, “rearing” means caring for, feeding, bathing and otherwise raising a little buddle of joy.
With a diploma freshly mounted on my Wall of Me awards, the State of Florida certified me as a professional educator and know-it-all childcare expert. Coupled with two years of teaching, this young mother of 25 truly believed I was more than prepared to enter the wondrous world of motherhood. How hard could it be?
We newlyweds moved away from our Jacksonville home in my eighth month of pregnancy with our firstborn. The only friends we had were my husband’s boss and his wife, lovely folks who never had children. Since my mother lived 5 hours and hundreds of dollars in phone calls away, I had no one to counsel my novice parenting.
Today young parents have a multitude of resources for infant care. Bookstores shout to new mothers and fathers with information from diapering the baby to identifying what each cry means. Then there’s the internet flooded with sites and influencers who answer any and all questions. On-line gurus offer baby care advice for free.
I turned to the one and only source of information available in my day, Dr. Spock.
This pediatrician’s The Common Sense Book of Baby and Child Care became my Bible. Baby is spitting up-What should I do? Baby’s passing gas-Now what? She’s crying too much-Help me! Thank goodness for Dr. S’s sage advice, which carried me through my first four months of baby business.
Then came that sweltering August day in Panama City sans AC. My sweet infant girl was screaming in pain. Her usual pink bottom now covered with a violent diaper rash of mean red welts. Dear omnipotent Dr Spock-What’s your plan?
“To treat this rash, let your baby spend time without a diaper, especially at nap time.”
My baby girl’s sleepy time of two hours turned into three. But she wasn’t sleeping when I passed the nursery. She was making the sweetest gurgling music. Mama loves the sounds of a happy babe. I let her play awhile while I finished household tasks impossible during her awake time.
On my second pass in front of the doorway, I got the whiff! I ventured into the Little Chamber of Horrors. The odor was overwhelming.
I wondered: Is it too late for me to escape and enter a convent as a Catholic nun?
There she was. My beautiful darling sitting in the center of her crib smiling like the Cheshire Cat. The little cherub was covered with brown icky goop that should have landed in her would-be diaper. In her ears. Between her toes. On her head. And of course on her little rear, stinky brown covering the red rash. On a positive note: the wooden slats on the crib were cleverly painted with Marc Chagall creativity.
A real Pooperama!
My scream was a shot heard around the world. My neighbor ran over when she heard me cry for help. “Did something happen to the baby?” Julie asked. “See for yourself!” I blurted out through tears. “She seems quite content,” my friend joked.
The joke was definitely on Julie as she bathed my excrement-covered child in the bathtub. I dragged the crib out to the carport. Bundled up the sheets, bumper pads and stuffed animals and tossed them into the trash. Hosed down the bed and scrubbed all the surfaces until my hands were raw…where did I put those rubber gloves?
Eons later, the evil deed was done. My neighbor went home. I dressed the baby now sweet smelling in a frilly pink frock. I grabbed a cup of coffee and crashed on the rocker with the miniature artist in my lap.
The door slammed open with an Archie Bunker roar “Where’s my lunch?” Thoughts of certain divorce filled my head.
Not for Baby Daddy.
For Dr. Spock.
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Living my personal mission statement, “Each One, Teach One,” my greatest blessing is being the mother of two, grandmother of three and a lifelong educator. A graduate of UF and UNF, I am the former principal of St. Paul’s Catholic School in Jacksonville Beach, Florida and executive director of Tree Hill Nature Center in Jacksonville.
Since retirement my avocation is now my vocation – freelance writing. The technical writing of past professional life evolved into more creative genres of poetry, short fiction and memoir. My goal is to invoke the entire spectrum of human emotions in my reader: longing to laughter, pain to promise, despair to discernment.
