| Mrs. Murfreesboro: Mrs. Boro finally joins that most special club ... grandmotherhood |
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By: JEANNE BRAGG, Post Columnist
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Posted: Sunday, May 3, 2009 8:13 am
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I joined a club last week that I’ve waited to be in for a long time.
On Saturday, April 18, 2009, I became a grandmother.
The Internet indicates that age 47-50 is the average age of a grandmother. I am 63. I have felt the time was way past due, and statistics have verified that.
My walking buddy and contemporary, Pat, has six grandchildren, with the oldest being 16. Knowing how badly I wanted to be a grandmother, she almost was embarrassed to tell me when she was expecting a new one. Not any more.
I never verbalized it to my children, as our parents didn’t to us, but I wanted a grandbaby.
On Saturday those wishes were fulfilled. At 8:39 in the morning, Baby Elizabeth Jeanne Warren was born at NYU Medical Center in New York City to our daughter Anne and her husband Chris.
The due date of baby (sex and details deliberately unknown) was April 27, and at the suggestion of our friend, Murfreesboro native Tom Lane, we stayed at his Connecticut home so we would only be a three-hour train ride away.
We celebrated our first night in Connecticut by having dinner with Jay and Linda, mutual friends of the Lanes, making plans for what we would do during the week (Mass on Sunday, visit Jay’s business on Tuesday, lunch on Wednesday). We forgot to put the cell phones close to our beds and awoke to Tom’s household phones ringing early Saturday morning. That’s when we first suspected something was up. When we picked up the phone, the caller was no longer there. But our personal text messages said: “Gone to hospital at 3:30 a.m.”
I was a wreck. I spilled coffee and couldn’t focus on anything. Tommy checked train schedules to the city. The 10:00 was full so we had to wait until 11:14. Jay took us to the train station; thus the adventure began. At the New London train station Chris texted: “Mom and baby are resting and doing fine: Will call when Anne wakes up.”
OKAY... SO WHAT IS IT? AND WHAT IS HIS/HER NAME?
Fortunately, they allow cell phones at NYU Medical Center (no doubt got tired of everyone breaking those rules) so all our calls went through. But when we got Chris, he said: “We want to wait until Anne wakes up so we can tell you together.”
Our next call was from a groggy Anne. She said: “We’re great, but Chris went to get something to eat. We’ll call later.”
We were near New Rochelle when we finally heard the news. It was a girl, 6 pounds, 14 ounces. She was named for her Aunt Beth (Jennings) and grandmother Jeanne and will be called “Jeanne (rhyming with ‘seen’)”
We all cried over the phone. Tommy and I cried the rest of the way into Pennsylvania Station. The passengers on the packed train didn’t notice anything amiss.
Things surely have changed since my babies were born.
At NYU Langone Medical Center (a teaching hospital) new mothers are treated in a “Post Partum” unit and nurses are assigned to take care of the baby in the nursery and the mother in her recovery. They also have a physician and assistant who check in daily called a Pain Management team. We may have these in Murfreesboro, but, again, it’s been a long time since I’ve visited a maternity ward so I can’t say. And despite the large scale of everything (patients, staff, visitors, etc) Anne could not have received better care.
With the exception of me having a terrible flu for a week, everything has been smooth sailing. Granddaddy has been pushed into a more active roll because a sick grandmother can’t help … but he has always been a better baby-tender and much better diaper changer than I.
Baby Jeanne is, of course, as beautiful as any grandchild ever born.
And we’re, oh, so very happy, to finally be members of this very special club.
‘Til next week. |
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By: Momma on 5/7/09
Welcome!!
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