CHAPTER EIGHT
PARENTHOOD AND US
I became pregnant just two weeks after our wedding. When I told Sean that we were going to be parents, his face lit up like the lights of a Christmas tree. Nothing in life ever excited him as much as a baby. He adored all our children and tried to play as big a role in their lives as I did long before this became politically correct. From the first he helped me to bathe, feed, and dress them. I can truly say that the two of us were crazy about our babies and ready to sacrifice our lives for them.
I was working in the mail order department of a massive
Every morning at
It was my job and that of some fifteen colleagues with whom I worked in the department to write letters to people who ordered items they had selected from catalogues we had sent out at the change of each season. We had to tell them what we were short of, what had been dispatched to them, what we had ordered on their behalf and when they could expect delivery, what colours were out of stock and what have you. I churned the letters out like pancakes for the employer to sign. I worked until five, caught the train back at half past, arrived in my hometown by half past six and then often had to walk home for nearly a further half an hour.
When the car was running, things were better and Sean would fetch me from the station, but that poor car, bought second
hand from a mine manager by Sean in more affluent times, spent less time on the road than in the garage waiting for pay day when we could take it to a mechanic. It was a time of financial
hardship for both of us which would continue for a very long time.
I could not afford to lose this job and tried to cover up my interesting condition for as long as possible. The people I worked for were renowned for their enlightened attitude for differently abled. We had a woman with visual disability on the switchboard, a woman with mobility challenge in the accounts department and the lady who was in charge of the mail had just celebrated her eighty-third birthday. Most of the workers had reached their sixties and not a few of them their seventies. So fortunately when the situation of my pregnancy came to light, no-one turned a hair. My boss whose wife was expecting their first child allowed me to work as long as I liked. “You make me think of my wife,” he said, smiling broadly at the thought of her. “She is also pregnant and she fires up just the way you do. Simmer down!”
At lunchtime I was sent up to the warehouse nurse who lent me armfuls of glossy women's magazines before putting me to rest in a spotless bed in a white cubicle and waking me up five minutes before it was time to return downstairs. This is how I managed to carry on working for eight months.
Some of the senior ladies were disapproving of me because they thought me unladylike for working. One of them would say: “Who are you trying to kid that you’re only four months pregnant? I can tell you’re much further along. You can't fool an old hand like me. Why don’t you own up to the truth?”
In fairness to her I was swelling up like a balloon because the only thing that quenched my thirst was the king-size bottle of Pepsi I drank daily. I had no idea of the number of calories I was consuming.
I was concerned that my baby might be premature, because the people of today cannot believe how big a deal it was in those days to be married less than nine months before producing their first infant.
Another woman told me it was indecorous for a woman in my position to go out to work every day. “I never worked during my pregnancies,” she said, “and I had three lovely sons. I was a nurse and a doctor once told me that my family was the healthiest he had ever had as patients. But I would not have stooped to show myself outside while I was obviously pregnant.” Well, if I had not done so they would have had to take back our house, the car and the furniture.
One day, looking like a beached whale on legs, I walked outside and almost bumped into one of my acquaintances, walking with some other girls. She was supposed to be at university in Cape Town. I wanted to duck, because to crown the indignity of my billowing curves I was devouring a peach I had bought on a street corner after an interminable day at work and with an hour and a half more to go before I’d be having supper at home. She saw me, looked again, raised her eyebrows and and looked clean through me. I wanted the ground to swallow me up and was almost relieved to be ignored. But I made sure never again to eat a peach in the street and always saw to it that my hair was set and that I wore makeup.
A friend on the train who was also pregnant and made the daily train return journey with me, taught me to knit. We knitted our way through dozens of patterns. She was a switchboard operator and knitted more than me because she was allowed to knit at the switchboard whenever calls eased up. Our babies were due about the same time and her friendship brought me endless comfort. She was deeply spiritual and we had our love of God in common.
Sean and I were living on a shoestring, while trying to keep our various payments up to date. It broke my heart to give notice at work the day I was seven months and to take my departure a month later. My friend and I visited to and fro because she had also retired from work. She had her baby a week before mine.
I was exhausted after leaving home from seven to seven during eight months of pregnancy and slept away the last month. One day I kissed my husband goodbye when he left for the mine. Moments later he knocked. I thought that he must have forgotten his bag and opened the door. It turned out that he had spent the entire day at work and finished his shift, while I thought only five minutes had passed.
One
Saturday morning he had gone to work when I went into labour. There were five hours to go before he was
coming home because he worked fewer hours on Saturdays. I put a meal into the oven and cleaned the
house. I got pains but they were not nearly as severe as I had expected. My suitcase for the nursing home had been ready for weeks. When Sean came home, the meal was standing on
the open door of the oven. I had burned
my hand with the steam as I opened the tin. He would not wait but took me immediately to
the maternity hospital.
During my labour, Sean sat by my bed, holding my hand. "Just try and stick it out," he said. "Once our baby is born you and I will never be lonely again."
The doctor came in and sent him outside. Shortly thereafter Nicolette was born. I was totally relieved for suddenly all pain was gone. I heard a smack and then my baby started crying and her voice sounded as if she was singing an aria like a little prima donna in La Scala. I wasn’t surprised when by the time she was twenty her voice became exceedingly sweet after she had been trained by a singing teacher. I had known she would become a singer the moment she was born. After all, wasn’t she a scion of the Nooij and Hogenhout families? Later I found out that Sean’s father had also been a gifted singer who had entertained many an audience in Ireland. Sean himself could not keep a note. Alas, that never stopped him from lifting his voice in song at good moments.
Joy filled me: “Is it a boy or a girl?” I asked. “A girl,” the doctor said and I wanted to float to the ceiling with joy. They called Sean and he looked at Nicolette, as did I. It was two o’clock in the morning, nine months and two weeks after our wedding day. Oddly enough, the majority of my subsequent infants were premature.
Next morning I had the ward in stitches. Two new mothers introduced themselves to me and they asked me how I had experienced the confinement. “Let’s put it this way,” I replied. “I’m very happy this experience won’t be repeated for at least ten and a half months.” And I still can’t see why that made them nearly roll off from their beds with mirth.
At
ten in the morning my parents arrived on their way to Mass at the
church of Our Lady of Mercy around the corner. My mother breathed: “That is the most
beautiful baby I have ever seen!” Sean, Elly and
Miekie took the baby to church where she was baptized straight after Mass by the parish priest.
Elly was her godmother.
I thought I had known what love was before she was born, but this little creature, who became daily more adorable, had me in the palm of her little hand,
My mother went to the shop and bought three tiny lengths of gingham material in red and white, green and white and black and white before going home and cutting three proper little girl dresses on Oma Nooij’s electrical Singer machine wedding present. Nicolette picked up very little weight and by the time she learned to walk she still wore those little dresses.
The sisters at St Mary's Maternity Home at Springs spent a lot of time teaching us how to take care of our babies. Sean
fetched Nicolette and me from the maternity home on Easter Saturday.
“There goes the little guinea pig,” the matron said, and she wasn’t far wrong. Over her little night dress, our daughter wore a matching bonnet, jersey and bootees, all wrought by my nimble fingers on the seven twenty from our home town and the five twenty from Joburg. She looked adorable. We had bought a second-hand cot and on one of its corners I casually slung the baby's outdoor outfit - jersey, bonnet and the bootees I had tied together on the cot post. Sean and I had a good laugh about that but the smiles were soon wiped off our faces.
It
was one in the afternoon when we placed her into her cot after which I
gratefully got into my bed. Then she
started crying and her piercing screams went on until eleven o’clock that
night. Nothing helped. Sean went to Easter midnight Mass as
exhaustedly Nicolette fell asleep and I did likewise. On the way out he made a little quip: “I’m
going to ask Nicolette to put on her little jacket, bonnet and bootees and put
her on the path in the front yard to leave the house. I’ve never heard so much noise!” The idea of that tiny little creature
marching down the front path made me laugh, despite my anxiety.
At ten in the morning the next day my former library colleague, loaded with presents, all of a very useful nature, came to visit. Nicolette was awake again and just as unhappy. “I can do nothing with this baby. She’s been crying and crying.” My visitor, who was expecting her third child in four years, was already an experienced mother.
“Where’s
your pram?” she asked.
“I
haven’t bought a mattress yet.”
“What
about a flat hard pillow?”
I
managed that and she changed the baby into clean clothes, and laid the child down.
"Poor little soul," she commiserated, rubbing her hand gently. "She's come out of such a little space and now you abandon her in that massive cot. No wonder she's feeling insecure. There you are, my little love. That's right."
Before she had covered the baby, Nicolette was asleep. When my former colleague had left, all I could think was God bless her.
Nicolette and I adored each other and I could not bear to think of ever leaving her behind and going back to work. Although we missed the money, I was getting a little unemployment allowance from the State, although that soon came to an end. When it did there was a massive tax demand and we barely survived. But Sean and I, being first generation immigrants, were both able to live frugally.