I was just taking a child’s temperature, when I became aware of the kerfuffle on the far end of the ward.
“Brenda,” hissed another junior nurse, “what are you doing?”
Bewildered, I looked at her terrified face.
“Taking this child’s temperature, of course,” I replied.
“Make yourself scarce,” she said, frantically gathering up the sheets she was changing. “Doctor’s here. Junior nursing staff are not allowed to be here when he’s on the rounds.”
Suddenly, I found myself being bundled unceremoniously into the milk room.
“This is ridiculous.” I giggled. “Who does he thinks takes temperatures and changes sheets? The hospital fairies?”
But she didn’t laugh. She looked half frozen in fear of a dressing-down.
I peeked curiously round the door as the doctor got to the little chap I’d been tending. The little lad was no more than three, and he had both legs in plaster from his feet to his hips.
The doctor picked up the clipboard, glared at the child, and then turned to the senior nurse by his side. “Temperature,” he boomed.
“Normal,” she replied.
“Bowel movements,” he barked.
“Twice daily.”
On and on they went, talking away over the little boy’s head without once looking at him and addressing him directly.
To them he wasn’t even a human being and therefore not worthy of being talked to directly. As I watched them, it occurred to me that they looked like they were having a business meeting, not caring for a sick child.
My blood boiled. The poor little treasure looked terrified and bewildered at the stern man in the white coat who used long words and never once deigned to look at him.
His lip trembled as they tapped his plaster cast and talked about breaking him out of it. I longed to run to him and scoop him into my arms, but I knew it would be more than my life was worth.
Finally the doctor turned on his heel and without so much as a by-your-leave or a single word to the boy stalked off down the ward.
I burst out of the milk room and ran to the boy’s side. The encounter had clearly been too much for him as he dissolved into floods of tears.
“There, there, poppet,” I soothed, wrapping him in my arms. “You’ll be right as rain in no time. Don’t mind the doctor. He’s just doing his job, which is to get you better and back to your mummy.”
His body relaxed instantly to my touch and big juddering sobs heaved over his little chest.
“That’s it, little lamb.” I smiled, stroking his forehead and planting a kiss on his head. “Better out than in—you cry as long as you want to.”
Suddenly, I felt the temperature drop a couple of degrees and I looked up and found myself staring straight into the chilly face of the ward sister. One look at her face told me she was not pleased.
“There is no place for high emotion on my wards, Nurse Ashford.”
“But I’m only trying to give him a cuddle and make him feel better,” I said, quivering.
“That is what his parents are for,” she said shrilly. “Now return to your duties this instant.”
Gently I took my arms away from the little boy and smiled at him.
“Cheer up, chicken.” I grinned.
I may have been smiling as I walked away from the little boy, but inside I was simmering with rage. What was wrong with these people? These were children first, patients second, not the other way round. Sick children needed love and affection all day long, not just at the hour of their parents’ visit.
What was so dreadfully wrong with showing love and affection?
Well, I’d show her. She may have thought I was properly put in my place, but did I do things her way from that moment on? Not for a second. Any chance I got, or as soon as the senior nursing staff’s backs were turned, I dished out love, cuddles, smiles, and hugs by the bucket load.
And do you know, it actually worked! I saw the children’s eyes light up when I came on duty, and I knew that my smiles and cuddles were just as effective as the medicine prescribed by the officious doctor.
If a child’s legs were madly itching under his plaster cast and driving him to distraction, I’d take a cold flannel and gently press it to his head to distract him from the itch. If she was missing mummy and sobbing, I’d sit and stroke her head and gently hum a nursery rhyme under my breath until she grew calm.
A plumped-up pillow and gently holding the hand of a listless little mite recovering from a stomach bug were miles more effective than antisickness tablets.
I learned that a nurturing, respectful touch speaks volumes to a child. By providing it to a sick child you are helping to release the feel-good hormone oxytocin in their bodies. Gently holding, stroking, and cuddling a child forges bonds of security and trust: it says you care and it boosts a child’s self-esteem.
I noticed that not once did that doctor look children in the eyes, smile, or talk to them directly. Why? All it did was to tell the children that they were not worth the effort and to build their sense of frustration and despair at not being heard. Well, while the doctors were handing out their form of medicine, I was quietly dispensing my own through nurturing touch.
I’m sure my reassuring smiles were contagious because when I was on duty I heard more laughter and less sobbing.
For every injection, scan, or dose of nasty medicine prescribed, I handed out my own by rocking, patting, soothing, singing, hugging, cheek stroking, and smiling.
No one told me to behave this way and daily I knew my behavior risked a dressing-down, but it came instinctively to me.
Another thing I learned was never to force a sick child. Although gracious, the senior nursing staff could be ferocious. Each child was forced to take his medicine whether he liked it or not. I’d watch as they insisted every child chug back every last drop of it and frown disapprovingly as it dribbled back down their chins.
Other times they would insist that every last morsel of food be eaten and then gasp as the poor child vomited it back again.
Instinct told me this was wrong. Surely we should trust a child to know enough about what’s good for his or her body. I never forced a sick child to eat a mouthful more than he or she wanted.
They’ll eat when they’re good and ready, I reasoned. Instead, I stroked their heads and administered little sips of water, or I joked with them.
“What’s your favorite food?” I’d say with a smile.
“Jam roly-poly” was often the response.
“Close your eyes and imagine you’re in a pudding factory,” I’d say. Children have vivid imaginations and love games. Soon little eyes would be squeezed tight and I’d spend ten minutes walking them round the factory, telling them tall tales of rooms filled with lakes of custard and chocolate rowing boats.
Soon they’d be like Charlie in Willy Wonka’s chocolate factory and have quite forgotten that I’d been popping in little mouthfuls of tapioca into their mouths and not gobstoppers.
A silly face would often have them in fits of giggles and make them quite forget that a second ago their mouths had been clamped shut when I’d held out a spoonful of cod-liver oil.
“Upsy-daisy, hold your nose. Swallow hard, and down she goes,” was another old favorite that always seemed to help the medicine go down.
Every day my confidence as a children’s nurse grew. Thank goodness it did because throughout the rest of my life I have continued to behave this way with small children, sick or otherwise.
The love-starved wards of Great Ormond Street were building my resolve to never fail a single child and be the best possible nanny I could. Children everywhere were being failed, even at the so-called highest levels, and a nanny dispensing cuddles was vitally needed.
Children needed and still need affection. It builds pathways in the brain, teaches them important lessons about love and trust, and reminds them how to behave like a civilized human being. In many ways I suppose I have lots to be thankful for to th
e nursing staff of Great Ormond Street circa 1939. I knew how not to be around sick children.
Thankfully, holistic care is now taken seriously by the medical profession—and I daresay a nurse who never looked at her patient or smiled would be instantly dismissed—but it shows the restricted and narrow-minded thinking of the day that smiles were all but banished from the wards.
How fortunate we are that things have moved on: the benefits of touch through massage, acupuncture, and the countless other alternative therapies now available are actually used alongside conventional medicine. I still say there is no greater medicine than a smile.
Of course, the only downside to my hands-on care was that I had less time to do the practical side of my job. There were dozens of daily repetitive tasks that had to be carried out by the junior nursing staff, including the endless washing and making up of formula; clearing of bedpans; washing out of potties; bottle washing; soaking nappies; washing floors; changing sheets; taking temperatures; feeding babies; changing nappies; and serving and clearing up of breakfast, lunch, and tea. Instead, I forfeited my breaks and just worked straight through.
Reading a story to a sick little angel or taking the time to play trains with a boy with his leg in plaster was more important to me than getting a cup of tea and a breather. I was fortunate enough to be able to walk out of those wards at the end of my shift. Those poor little scraps in their hospital beds couldn’t.
The trickiest of all my daily tasks and the one I dreaded the most was feeding the cleft palate babies.
There were four of the poor little mites, all under the age of three months and all at various stages of surgery.
Their feeding was left to the less experienced hands of one Brenda Ashford.
When I was first allocated the task, I wasn’t too daunted. I had fed my brother his bottle all the time when he was just a babe in arms.
Surely it couldn’t be that difficult, right? Wrong.
I spent hours trying to feed those poor little babies. I was never taught or shown how to, just left to get on with it. The milk would bubble out of their noses or come gushing out of the sides of their mouths.
All the while their little faces would grow red with frustration and hunger as they roared for food. It was so distressing and heartbreaking. At night their cries echoed in my ears.
I didn’t dare tell the ward sister I felt uncomfortable doing it. I would doubtless have been sent off with a flea in my ear.
Once it was assigned to a junior nurse, but I heard her mutter to her colleague, “Let the Norlanders do it.” After that I knew my place.
The memory of this has stuck in my mind over the remaining seventy-three years because it shows how little we knew.
Today, the job of caring for a newborn with a cleft palate is considered tricky and given to a specialist in the field with appropriate training, but back in 1939 it was left to girls with very little experience.
As far as I was concerned it all just compounded my sense of failure at the hospital.
Or maybe it was simply because we were living in a very intense bubble. Time off would, perhaps, have given me some perspective on the situation but, as at the Norland, there was very little of that, and the wider world didn’t permeate the intense order of the hospital wards. Half a day off a week and every other Sunday seems to be the rule that governed my working life right up until I retired.
I saw things changing by the 1960s and 1970s as workers’ rights came into play and people began to expect, and indeed demand, more time off; but by then my work ethic was so deeply ingrained that I continued to work the hours I always had.
When you have never had much time off, you don’t miss or expect it. Hard work and long hours were expected of everyone back then, and people just got on with it without grumbling.
Perhaps we were made of stronger stock? Who knows—but we very rarely complained.
Back then, spending my life on the wards, in common with most of the doctors and nurses, seemed the absolute norm. Having a social life wasn’t why I went into child care!
Perhaps I was overpossessive of my job and should have made more of an effort—perhaps I would have got a boyfriend if I had—but I loved my job, so I never hankered for a life outside.
In any case, student nurses didn’t want to socialize with us “untrained” Norlanders, so most evenings I sat in my room reading or simply fell asleep exhausted. I was so focused on my children and trying not to get into trouble that I quite forgot we were slap-bang in the middle of a seething metropolis, one that was about to undergo one of the most devastating events in its history.
I was busy at work with the babies one morning when the ward sister approached me.
“You and the rest of the Norlanders are to report to matron’s office immediately,” she said.
I hurried down the corridor after her and waited to be announced to the matron. Once we were all ushered inside, the matron opened her mouth to speak, and seconds later, all my worries suddenly paled into insignificance.
Matron’s usually composed face was ashen. Her voice when it came was strangely stilted.
“At eleven fifteen this morning Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain speaking on BBC radio announced the news that we are at war with Germany. The hospital is being evacuated. You are to go home immediately and await further instruction from the Norland.”
We sat in deafening silence before getting to our feet, thanking matron, and then returning to our rooms to pack up our belongings.
The unthinkable had happened.
As I exited the hospital, blinking in the sunlight, I took great gulps of fresh air.
For a good few minutes I stood stock-still on the pavement, my head spinning. Everything had happened so fast, I felt as if I’d been dumped there by a whirlwind.
I must have been the only person in London standing still. The streets were a teeming mass of bewildered people, all scurrying around like worker ants. It was a strange sight to behold.
Catching the tube and then the train on my own would usually have been a thing of great fear and uncertainty, but I took this journey in a total daze. Even my feet seemed to move with a life of their own.
It was gone 10:00 PM by the time I alighted at Leatherhead station in Surrey, but despite the dark, the streets here were teeming with life and activity, too.
Brick dust and mortar hung in the air from where people had started adapting old outhouses into rest centers. In my absence many people, predicting the outbreak of war, had already erected Anderson shelters in their back gardens. Trucks trundled past, loaded with green stretchers and blankets. First aid posts and air raid shelters were springing up all over the place.
Civil defense plans were already bursting into life. Everyone had been expecting it, had seen it coming. Suddenly, I felt a little foolish. With all the arrogance of youth I had been so immersed in my life that I had failed to see what was going on in the wider world.
Wearily, I let myself into the kitchen, much to the surprise of my mother and father.
“We’d have collected you if we’d known you were coming back so soon,” Mother said.
All the boys were still at school on the Isle of Wight and Kathleen was in London. I sat at the table with only Mother and Father and drank cups of hot sweet tea. We didn’t want to go to bed; I doubt anyone did that night.
A few days later an air raid siren was installed in the center of our community, and it was quickly agreed that a trial run was necessary.
Nothing could have prepared me for the noise. I was helping Mother peel potatoes when it sounded. My knife dropped into the sink with a clatter.
The siren’s haunting wail left us speechless. I could feel its sickening drone right down in the pit of my tummy. Paralyzed with fear, I stayed rooted to the spot.
Mother put her arm round me to comfort me, but this was one fear she couldn’t banish with a cuddle.
People huddled down in shelters. The world watched … and waited.
Nanny
’s Wisdom
A SMILE IS THE PERFECT ANTIDOTE.
All children adore smiles, particularly sick little children.
I always made a point of smiling at all the children on the ward. After I saw a gruff consultant or a stern matron staring down at them, I figured that a little kindness and a soft smile would be just what they needed to raise their spirits. It cost nothing but it counted for a lot.
BANISH SORE THROATS.
Over-the-counter cough medicines are expensive and in my opinion rarely work. There is no replacement for gargling with warm salt water. It really does work.
CHAPTER 5
NIGHT, NIGHT, SLEEP TIGHT
HOTHFIELD PLACE
HOTHFIELD, KENT, ENGLAND
[1939, AGE EIGHTEEN]
Twinkle, twinkle, little star, how I wonder what you are!
Up above the world so high, like a diamond in the sky
When the blazing sun is gone, when he nothing shines upon,
Then you show your little light, twinkle, twinkle all the night.
—NURSERY RHYME
Schedule
7:00 AM: We woke and washed. We bathed only twice a week, fortunately, as it was freezing cold in the old servants’ quarters where we had to bathe.
8:00 AM: Breakfast of porridge downstairs in what was the library.
9:00 AM: Lectures in psychology on Froebelian principles and child education.
11:00 AM: Practice of education. Taught children how to read, do basic sums, first stages of maths, and experience being in a classroom.
12:30 PM: Lunch. All students and children ate together in the library in a riot of noise.
2:00 PM: Older children went to play and babies were put in cots to sleep.
4:00 PM: More lectures.
5:30 PM: Tea of bread, butter, and jam. Milk and water were the only drinks available.
6:00 PM: If I was in charge of the baby room, I would be there, but if not, I studied and wrote up lecture notes.
A Spoonful of Sugar Page 8