Anna Louise Tittman Memoir - University of Illinois Springfield

Anna Tittman 1 153
wmn who had more natural milk than their baby could use or there vtas
sorne other reason that the baby had to be taken care of dtherwise, rpybe
the baby died. They would pay $or that.
There was one case on this. boat either when I was a post graduate
4
sfiudent
on it or when I was Head Nurse one of the years, when the baby, a o
month old baby had to have an operation, became they fomd that it had
what is called htwsusa~option. It is where the bowelt&lescopes, art of
the bml goes over the other part, of the bowel, and caws a lwnp P tmr,
a block so that feces can1 t .g& throw. Now the thing that they dc) for
that is remve that on a two mnths old baby. Now this vw when I u/as taking
a post Gduate course in Belleme-I won't stay on that. But tlhe resident
physician, a nice young man, not as young as mst FrJ;erns one sees in
these large hospitals, he was a resident mre than just
cay
hpving student training,
and he wanted to. He knew that I had been on the &+on Floating Hospital
and he said something about did they feed this type . He didn't
know about intusswaeption, that is he thought it was, h would have !given
it the remdy for intestinallindigestion, because there blood in the
stool. I got courage up, ordinarily a nurse doesn't tpll a doctor what's
what, but I said 'Would you mhd If I told you about a b4y in the Boston
Floating Hospital?" "No, ahead. " And it was his fine reception that
saved the babies life. I said, "Do you fYnd a twnor t h e anywhere in the
intestine?" He sald, 'Well yes, I do. I thout it was feces blocked. "
And I said, "Have you tho@t about intw@wception?" *ll, he knew what
that was from py wording. He said 'What did they do?" J s&d, "They
operated and remved that, sewed it up, and made everythibg alriat." Now
that doesn't seem so wonderful nowadays because they take- out everytihing
but your heart, ,and they've taken that out. I guess that man down in Houston
had done that. So everything but your kidneys, you up one kidney
but you can't [ghe up], both, and your liver never. operated, and
then the baby cam throw the operation, he cam to e said, 'What
do we feed the baby?" I said, "Mother1 s dlk. " And t in Bdlmiz
Hospital too. They didn't send a nurse out to get it we did in Boston.
They had the mothers that were going to feed the babie ey fed them from
their own breasts, right there. 'Ihey stayed all day or night. There
was a litble core of them, four or flve, that could take care of the feeding
of the babies, the ones who needed. So our baby got well. and went horn.
It was a tim when fresh air jn Bellewe Hopital was so iyrrport;ant thatathe
babies--I was on ni&t duty om mnth I guess it I had to bundle
up the baby and put hot water bags all around it, e enough to burn
it andLkpush it out or pull it out onto the porch in the ad of winter. It
seemd kind of hard but it was good for the babies. I b $ ught them in every
couple of hours to see that they were warmd up. That wa@nlt all I,did, I
had a big fifty-four bed ward, young babies down here and older chiqdren up
here. This was the admission dep&~~~for
the childre ? sick chi!dren.
Now we'll go back to the Bostcm Floating Hospital.
9. Would you have about flfty babies beds in this open #ck?
A. Ch, at least that.
Q. At least that. Well that gives E a rough idea.
A. Then sornetirres they weren't babies that couldn't wall
were walkab le .