A Spoonful of Sugar

by Brenda Ashford

  6:00 AM: Arrived at house. Mother and baby were often still in hospital, so I was shown to my room by staff or granny. Unpacked and put my uniform on.

  6:30 AM: Tidied room and checked I had all my equipment.

  7:00 AM: If there was an older sibling, I would get toddler up, washed, dressed, and ready for a breakfast of bread with butter and jam, or cereal. Grace would then be said at the end of the meal. Once toddler had requested to get down from the table, he would be allowed down.

  8:00 AM: Potty time. I always have set times for potty training. If managed, I expressed great delight and encouragement. If not, then I said, “Better luck next time.”

  8:30 AM: Teeth cleaned and hands washed. I played with toddler on my hands and knees in nursery.

  9:00 AM: Mother arrived home. Encouraged mother to rest, and I took her tea and breakfast in bed.

  9:30 AM: Sleeping baby was gently placed in new cot in my bedroom.

  9:00 AM TO 10:00 AM: While baby asleep, mother resting, and toddler happily playing I made beds, did laundry, washed nappies.

  10:00 AM: Fed baby. If toddler old enough and anxious to help, I allowed toddler to help nurse the baby, with my supervision of course.

  10:30 AM: Baby fed and put in his or her pram and placed in garden to sleep in fresh air; if wet out, then in cot. District nurse may visit (they visited every day for ten days). After that, responsibility handed over to me and I would take baby to clinic to be weighed and measured.

  11:00 AM: If no cook, then I prepared lunch and sterilized used bottles. Gave toddler drink of milk, then put down to rest in bed for an hour. Most toddlers would sleep for an hour until lunchtime. I then made up feeds for the next twenty-four hours, did the washing and ironing, and cleaned the nurseries and bedrooms.

  12:30 PM: Lunch.

  2:00 PM: If fine, I took both children off for a walk, fed the ducks, or collected different colored leaves, picked blackberries, collected acorns and wildflowers.

  3:00 PM: Fed baby. Mother may have woken by now and come to feed baby, too, and spend time in nursery with toddler.

  4:00 PM: Ate a simple meal: jam sandwiches, slices of cheese, milk to drink, followed by sponge cakes and jelly. Encouraged toddler to eat a piece of ripe apple after every meal. Toddler washed hands.

  5:00 PM: Toddler and baby with visitors or parents for the hour after tea, while I prepared for the children’s bath time.

  6:00 PM: Bathe toddler and top and tail baby. After bath, toddler into nighties or pajamas and I read to him or her. Then I encouraged parent to read a second story while I tended to the baby and fed evening bottle.

  7:30 PM: Children asleep, so I caught up on ironing, sewing, and mending.

  10:00 PM: Took baby through for parents to do last feed of the evening.

  11:00 PM TO 6:00 AM: If baby still under three months, I would do three to four hourly feeds through the night, but for babies older than three months and getting sufficient feeds through the day I would just offer a drink of water or a pacifier and settle baby back to sleep, to wean off milk feeds through the night. I usually had most babies sleeping through the night by six months.

  IT WAS 7:30 AM, AUGUST 1956. Courtfield Gardens, South Kensington, London, in the royal borough of Kensington and Chelsea.

  I had just arrived at my new home and was about to report for duty. What a magnificent place to lay my hat!

  The beautiful Georgian period town houses arranged in a square around a private garden spoke of money and refined elegance—a thoroughly British abode, a stone’s throw from Buckingham and Kensington Palaces and the smarter districts of Mayfair and Knightsbridge.

  The Clean Air Act had just been passed in Parliament in response to London’s Great Smog of 1952, which killed twelve thousand poor souls, and for the first time in years the air felt clean and fresh.

  Just a few years ago you might not have even been able to see the lampposts that dotted the square through the pea soup fogs that cloaked London in a thick green layer of smog.

  It may have been August, but a light drizzle fell over the square and it felt most refreshing on my face.

  Setting down my leather case on the white stone steps leading up to the mansion house, I shook out my umbrella and sighed happily.

  The Conservatives had won back power from Labor in 1951 and taxes were low.

  London was booming and industry was thriving for the first time since the war. British factories churned out cars in their millions, steel and coal production was soaring, and further to the east of London the docks employed thousands of men all toiling ceaselessly.

  Huge oceangoing vessels loaded with produce sailed majestically in and out of the bustling docks.

  London felt like the center of the world.

  Women continued to gain in power and strength around the world with more and more countries granting them the right to vote.

  The National Childbirth Trust (NCT) had just been established in 1956. Up until then women were given little or no information about pregnancy and birth and just blindly followed their doctor’s instructions. Now, for the first time, they had support, advice, and guidance. Ultrasound scans were just around the corner and a woman didn’t have to suffer needlessly with a life-threatening birth. She could have a cesarean section instead! The Americans were stirring things up, too!

  Sexual Behavior in the Human Female by American author and sex therapist Alfred Kinsey was published in 1953 and caused huge controversy.

  Here in South Kensington, however, there were no sexual revolutions, civil rights movements, or record-breaking attempts made that I knew of! Genteel peace and prosperity prevailed. The only sound was the clanking of glass milk bottles as a milkman tootled past standing up inside his refrigerated truck.

  “Good morning to you, ma’am,” he said with a smile, politely tipping his little white cap.

  “And a good morning to you, too, sir.” I beamed back. People were so polite and courteous in those days and it was commonplace to greet a stranger like a friend.

  From the inside of the mansion, however, a different greeting drifted down the steps to meet me. The distinctive mewing cry of a newborn baby rang out and I smiled.

  Before I knocked on the imposing door I took a moment to pause and reflect on my purpose here.

  I was to be nanny to two-week-old twin girls and their poor exhausted mother.

  I was here to make this the happiest home it could possibly be.

  Since leaving the Barclays’ fifteen months previously, I had already stayed in four private homes, caring for young children in three, and in the fourth looking after two young boys so their parents could go on a skiing holiday. With each job I had become aware of a growing need inside me.

  I started in a home where the mother was frazzled, burned-out, and in dire need of help. I left behind me, I hope, a happier and more fulfilled home.

  I can’t have been doing too badly, as word had got round that I was open to short-term bookings, and now I was booked solid with short placements for new mothers for the next nine months!

  This was my new calling. Nowadays you would call it troubleshooting, but back then I liked to call it good old-fashioned common sense.

  Going from home to home to get new mothers on their feet was teaching me so much. With each home and family I worked for, I realized what I loved more than anything was getting the family on their feet and creating the happiest home I possibly could. Sprinkling a little of the magic that I had experienced in my own childhood was proving most gratifying.

  I had enjoyed a blissful childhood and home life filled with love, laughter, and rich cooking smells.

  I had puzzled many times over the ingredients for such a perfect recipe for a happy home. It needed to be a place with parents who worshipped their offspring. Throw in some stability, a dash of routine, and respect. Sprinkle some fun and imaginative games and stir well.

  A vital ingredient in this recipe I had since concluded was the mother. As long as the mother is hap
py, the household will be happy. The mother truly is the heart and soul of a family.

  So why, I reasoned, couldn’t I re-create that recipe in homes around Britain?

  I wasn’t alone in my thinking. Magazines in the 1950s were full of articles encouraging women to return to their traditional roles as homemakers. They promoted the idea that feminine virtues were most important and that motherhood was the most important role a woman could occupy. I agree with this.

  I am all for a woman working if that is what her heart desires—one must follow one’s heart, after all. But whether a mother is in a part-time or full-time role, she must be happy if the home is to be content and full of love.

  After all, the world would be a much happier place if people tried to fill their houses with love.

  Some people just needed a little reminding, that’s all.

  With that I rapped the heavy black lion’s head knocker twice on the mansion door.

  The man of the house was one Mr. Gordon. He was a consultant obstetrician and gynecologist. Mr. Gordon was a man of few words, but as I was later to find out he was possessed of a kind heart, which would come to my rescue.

  “Do come in,” he said gruffly. “Babies this way.”

  He led me through to the day nursery, where the new mother was sitting with her twins.

  “Oh, I say,” I breathed. “Aren’t they beautiful. You must be so proud.”

  “Yes,” murmured the quite clearly exhausted woman.

  “Now.” I smiled cheerfully, taking off my summer coat, folding it carefully, and putting it out of sight. “Let’s get one thing straight right away. I don’t know what you’ve heard of Norland nannies, but I am here to do whatever you need me to do. Whatever you would do in the house, I must be prepared to do. Be that wiping down the kitchen, doing the ironing, feeding the baby, or making a cup of tea. I am here to serve you. ‘Happy mother, happy babies,’ I always say.”

  Her eyes suddenly grew as wide as saucers. “Really?” she gasped. “Oh, what a relief.”

  “And we’ll start now,” I said, rolling up the sleeves of my white summer overall dress. “What would you like me to do?”

  “Well,” she said, her face wrinkling into a frown, “I’m getting in a muddle with their feeding times. It’s so hard to keep track of it. This beastly baby brain. I can’t make head nor tail of things at the moment.”

  “Don’t worry.” I laughed. “You’re not alone.”

  I wasn’t the least bit surprised to hear this. All new mothers struggle with getting their babies into a regular feeding pattern.

  I pulled out a notepad and pen.

  “Four hourly is the best way from my experience. As it can be so tricky to keep track of, particularly with twins, we can write it down here. Are you breast- or bottle-feeding?”

  “Oh, bottle-feeding,” she exclaimed, as if there couldn’t possibly be any other way.

  I wasn’t much surprised to hear that either. Most of the mothers I came across these days seemed to want to bottle-feed instead of breast-feed. I encouraged them to try breast and if they didn’t like it to use the bottle, but I never pushed it either, especially not if they were adamant. That wasn’t my job; besides, as every good nanny knows, you aren’t there to comment or judge. Women make their own decisions, the ones they feel are right for them.

  I had a sneaking hunch it had something to do with the war. During those terrible years women lived with so many restrictions hanging over them, rationing, followed by blackouts and conscription. Life was one long rule book.

  Now the war was over and women had been enjoying their freedom. They wanted to be out at coffee mornings, bridge clubs, golfing with their friends; and breast-feeding does curtail you somewhat.

  “I’ll show you the twins’ nursery,” said Mrs. Gordon, leading me up the corridor.

  Back in the 1950s parents never slept with their babies. Co-sleeping simply didn’t exist, and babies were mainly put straight into their own nurseries from birth. Nowadays, the thinking is drastically different, and experts recommend that babies sleep with their mothers in the same room for the first six months. Parents didn’t worry as much and monitors, alarms, and video linkups hadn’t been dreamed up. I didn’t worry about the child in another room, but I was concerned I might not hear her when she woke.

  “If it’s okay with you, I’d rather have them in with me,” I said. “That way I can hear them when they wake for a feed.”

  “You’ll feed them in the night?” she asked, simply agog.

  “Like I say, I must be prepared to do whatever you do. I do think it’s best for mother to do the last ten PM feed, though, with the father. It’s so important for bonding—and often the only time father sees the child if he works—but I am happy to do the rest of the feeds.”

  She nodded enthusiastically.

  “And now,” I said with a smile, “how about we make you a nice cup of tea and you go back to bed for a nap. New mothers need their rest, you know.”

  Gratefully, she handed me the twins. “Thank you, Nurse Brenda,” she said.

  “Just doing my job,” I replied. And so at Courtfield Gardens, South Kensington, we all settled into our new roles.

  Over the coming days I hung back, watched, and listened. Every new mother is different; and using my instincts I try to get the feel of the house so I can be supersensitive to its balance and rhythms.

  I am always thinking … thinking and watching.

  In many ways a good nanny must be like a mind reader.

  What does mother like? How does she like to do her washing, fold her clothes, hold her baby?

  Does she want me in the room or is she craving space to bond with her baby?

  And the same goes for babies. No two babies, including the twins I was caring for now, are alike.

  Some love to be stroked; others are supersensitive to touch and would rather be left alone. Some will sleep at the drop of the hat; others I will have to push round in the pram to get them to go down.

  Each household is so different, and part of the thrill of a new job was sussing out the lay of the land so I could support the mother.

  New mothers all have something in common, though: aside from exhaustion they are all sensitive. With so many hormones raging around their bodies it’s little wonder.

  That’s why I made sure never to take over or appear to be telling them what to do.

  What’s worse than an interfering nanny in the house telling you what you’re doing is wrong? I should find myself out of favor rather quickly.

  If a mother is floundering with changing a nappy or can’t get baby to take the bottle, I would never say, “Don’t do that” but rather “Have you tried doing it this way?”

  Eye contact, gentle encouragement, smiles, rest, and support are all that is needed to get a new mother up on her feet.

  Soon Mrs. Gordon and her twins were flourishing, and we had a lovely little routine in place.

  The color was coming back into Mrs. Gordon’s cheeks, and even Mr. Gordon seemed relaxed when he returned home from the hospital to find a hot home-cooked meal waiting in the dining room.

  The way to a new mother’s heart might be through gentle support and sleep, but the way to a new father’s heart is definitely through home-cooked puddings.

  Steamed suet pudding with apple and custard usually hits the spot, but from my experience spotted dick or bread-and-butter pudding works just as well.

  I quickly realized Mr. Gordon was like all men, my father and brothers included. Place a bowl of something hot, stodgy, sticky, and smothered with custard in front of him and he’d stay quiet and content for hours.

  “Damn fine pudding this, Nurse Brenda.” He’d sigh happily, scraping up the last bit of custard from the plate.

  “Eat up, eat up.” I grinned. “New fathers need their strength, too.”

  This house was shaping up to be a very nice, happy household indeed.

  I’d only been there a few weeks when I took the twins out to the
gardens in the square for some fresh air so the Mrs. could get her afternoon nap. Sitting on a bench, I got chatting to a fellow nanny.

  When I’d joined her, she’d been staring into the middle distance with her eyes glazed instead of watching the two young children in her care. A “park nurse,” Mrs. Whitehead would have called her—untrained and undisciplined.

  “Don’t you mind not having a social life?” she grumbled with a sour face. “It’s Saturday night tonight and I’m stuck in again. I never get out in the evening.”

  “I don’t mind really,” I replied, tucking the blanket up under the twins’ chubby little faces.

  I often saw nannies huddled together chatting, possibly trading secrets, but I preferred to keep myself to myself and watch over and interact with my charges instead. I was quite certain Mrs. Whitehead had long since retired and would no longer be pedaling the streets of Kensington, spying on errant nannies, but still, I had to make a good impression, and one couldn’t do that by sitting gossiping.

  As I parted from the disgruntled nanny and pounded the streets of Kensington, the children fast asleep in their pram, I thought about it.

  Did I mind not having much of a life of my own? Did I mind spending tonight, Saturday night, like every other night? In bed … on my own with only two babies to keep me company.

  I thought long and hard. Honestly, no. This need inside me to create a perfect home life for others was so strong it was all consuming. I just wanted to replicate my happy home life in as many places as I possibly could.

  The enjoyment and satisfaction I got from my work far outweighed the need to go and socialize.

  So far I had received more love from little babies than I had in my own, somewhat disastrous, encounters with men. But as I was busy building a home full of love and stability in Kensington, dark storm clouds were building overhead.

  Unbeknownst to me, twenty miles away in Surrey, my own home was being torn apart. All that I cherished and held dear had been destroyed in one single, devastating moment.

  The call came just after I’d put the twins down to sleep and a short while after Mr. and Mrs. Gordon had left for a dinner party.