Free The GI Bride by Iris Jones Simantel Page A

parents’
house one Sunday and I almost had a heart attack. About forty people were crowded into
the living and dining rooms and they all shouted, ‘
Surprise!
’ I
hadn’t a clue what was going on so I just stood there, shocked, and gaped at
everyone.
    ‘What’s going on?’ I asked
Bob. I knew it wasn’t a birthday party and it was the wrong time of year for any
other celebration.
    ‘It’s a shower,’ he said,
with a huge grin. ‘Presents for the baby. It’s what people do here.’
Oh, Lord, I thought. These Americans are so weird! Fancy making all these people who
hardly know me buy gifts for a baby who isn’t even here yet.
    Bob’s family certainly had surprised
me. I was almost knocked off my feet which wouldn’t have been easy to achieve,
given the size, shape and weight of me. Even my usually sensible husband had begun
teasing me about my pregnant self.
    Until that moment, I’d had no idea
what a shower was. We didn’t have them in the UK back in those days well, not that
kind anyway. The only showers in England were more like torrential downpours.
    I couldn’t believe my eyes when I saw
so many people gathered, and with all those gifts too. Even people who were unable to
attend had sent something. All we had leftto buy was a pram. I still
hadn’t felt much warmth from Bob’s family in fact, mostly what I felt was
disapproval, impatience or resentment but when it came to gifts, they were tops.
    By now, I had given up my job and was trying
to enjoy our new apartment, but it wasn’t easy. I had no friends nearby, and Bob
was still working long hours, including most Saturdays. He would come home from work
exhausted, eat his dinner and fall asleep before we had any chance to engage in
conversation. I was desperately lonely. My only activities were the now more frequent
visits to my obstetrician, talking on the phone to my friend Barbara McCarthy, or Bobby,
as I now called her, taking short walks, cooking and cleaning, and re-organizing the
baby’s room, which I did every other day.
    I loved putting the tiny baby clothes in the
drawers and arranging the stuffed toys and other paraphernalia. I often took all the
little things out to look at them if the truth be known, it was like playing house. But
this was no game because I was about to become a mother, and soon. Oh, how I wished my
own mother could have been there to help me, not that she ever had in the past but I
knew she loved babies and I was sure this would have brought us closer. It would have
helped to talk to her on the phone, but that was impossible too: Mum and Dad still
didn’t have one.
    I was supposed to be due before Christmas of
1955 and everyone thought that, since I was now enormous and, believe me, I was it might
be sooner rather than later, but Christmas came and went with only slight twinges that
we thought might be labour pains but werenot. Then we hoped the baby
would at least have the decency to arrive before midnight on New Year’s Eve so
that we would have the benefit of the 1955 tax deduction. With this in mind, dear Dr
Crown sent me to hospital to have labour induced. The contractions started, but then
they stopped again and the doctor sent me home, feeling very disappointed. New
Year’s Eve came and went, and by now I was so uncomfortable I had to sleep sitting
up. I had gained at least fifty pounds, perhaps partly because my mother kept telling me
to remember I was eating for two. After six months’ morning sickness, I had really
begun to enjoy my food, especially ice cream, and looked as though I’d been eating
for four.
    By 4 January I was still showing no sign of
going into labour, so the next day Dr Crown sent me back to Columbus Hospital (on Lake
Shore Drive in Chicago) to be induced again. This time it worked. Oh, boy, it certainly
did. I thought it would never end. A strange thing happened while I was in the labour
room: a man I guessed he was medical staff came in to examine me. All he did was fondle
my