A special milestone: Becoming a grandmother

This column is dedicated to all who have known the joy of becoming a grandmother, and to those who will become one someday.

The day after I became a grandmother for the first time, I was so full of joy and enthusiasm when I arrived for work at the Trumbull Times editorial office that the editor asked me to write a column about my experience.

Write a column? The idea took me aback. Previously, I had only written features, never anything personal like a column. But once the seed was planted, I discovered that when I sat down at the typewriter the words just seemed to flow.

As a result, a column headlined “All of a sudden I’m a grandmother,” was published in a February 1975 issue of the Times. It read as follows:

“We’re on or way to the hospital, Mom.”

My son-in-law’s voice sounded confident, elated. I murmured something inane like, “good luck,” and hung up the phone.

It was 6 a.m. I gazed momentarily out the window. The day was brighter than it should have been at this time on a February morning because the earth was covered with snow.

“I’ll probably go to the hospital in a snowstorm,” my daughter had declared prophetically. Her statement had been made on a sunny, warm day last June following the announcement that would change my status to one of grandmother-hood. It had all seemed so wonderful, so exciting and so far away at the time. But here it was, and it was snowing.

Hours earlier, before midnight, she had called to say she was having contractions, (“You don’t call them pains,” I had been informed), but she added reassuringly, “They don’t hurt, Mom, and the doctor’s told me to go to bed and try to get some sleep.”

I wondered how successful she had been. If she had slept, she probably had done better than I. The phone’s ring had been left on “loud,” but I had slept so fitfully that I was awake when it did ring.

It was three hours before this working grandmother-to-be was due at the office, but sleep was out of the question. So I turned to the morning routine in a perfunctory daze. My mind was elsewhere...remembering.

Several months into the pregnancy there had been another announcement: “We made this baby together, and we’re going to be together when it’s born.”

“Natural childbirth?” I queried.

“It’s prepared childbirth, Mother. All births are natural.”

Then came the series of classes and instructions for the parents-to-be, and a tour of the hospital labor and delivery rooms.

I watched them one evening as they practiced the breathing exercises. She was the player. He was the coach. They seemed so young, so unknowing, really, but so serious and enthusiastic. They were a team, and it was touching to see.

But was it working now? Was all their training and effort standing the test of reality?

I arrived at work with a mounting feeling of apprehension. Was I this concerned when it was happening to me 21 years ago? I felt so emotionally involved and yet so far removed.

Then the phone call came. To my amazement it was my daughter’s voice.

“You’re a grandmother. It’s a little girl.” Bubbling, exhilarated. “And it worked, Mom, all the way.”

I heard a little cry in the background. “Yes, the baby’s right here with me in the recovery room.” It was 10:25 a.m. My granddaughter was 15 minutes old!

A few hours later I joined the new parents in the hospital room. There was that team again, still enthusiastic, but not serious anymore, just very happy, brimming with self-satisfaction.

Back and forth their conversation flowed as they relived their accomplishment. Coming from the era when fathers-to-be drove their wives to the hospital and departed, I felt a twinge of envy.

I had actually never seen a baby being born, but my son-in-law talked about “controlled breathing, transition period, dilation” with the aplomb of a veteran.

“I couldn’t have made it without him.” My daughter said, eyes misting.

Then I was pressing my face against the glass of the nursery window, and my eyes were misting, too. It was like looking at a Christmas present you had wondered and thought about for months. Now you knew just what it looked like at last.

In the strange way that memory has of condensing time, I saw my little girl again more vividly than I had thought about her in all these years. But I had forgotten how small, how vulnerable they are!

The baby yawned and made a convulsive movement so typical of the newborn. The miracle of it all, to be functioning independently so soon!

I brought myself up short. Every grandmother must feel the same way, I thought. How quickly I had fallen into the mold.

This granddaughter’s birthday is Feb. 5; happy 35th, dear.

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