Mom

by Dave Isay

  There were a lot of risks—not just the large chance of multiple births, but there were other risks, too. We said we wouldn’t go that far, but when it got down to Okay, if we want to have children, we’ve got to do this, we decided that we wanted them bad enough that we were going to give it a try.

  Dan: Mom-Mom, Pam’s grandma, prayed and prayed that Pam would get pregnant—she thinks she may have prayed too hard.

  Pam: If we ever write a book, that’s going to be the title: I Think I Prayed Too Hard.

  Of course when I first found out I was pregnant, we were elated—we couldn’t believe it. It actually happened on the second round of Pergonal, which was good for a number of reasons. One is, it happened. Also, Pergonal is very expensive and not covered by insurance.

  One of the first things we did was buy a little Nissan Stanza, because it would be a family car and with the hatch-back, we’d be able to put the stroller in the back and carry all the little things we’d need for our little baby.

  Dan: We got delivery of the Nissan Stanza about a week before Mom went in and got the sonogram. After that, the Stanza was worthless.

  Pam:At eleven weeks, I had gone in for a sonogram at the radiologist’s office—Dad was in the waiting room. The first radiologist came, did the ultrasound, and then walked away. Then another person came in with him, and they sort of talked to each other and they left . . . and then a third person. I was trying to ask what was going on, but they weren’t saying anything. So I started to get a little nervous, and probably by the fourth or the fifth person, I wanted them to let Dad come in, but they weren’t letting him. I saw them pointing to the screen like they were counting to five. So finally, Dan, you came back, and I went, “It’s a litter.”

  And you said, “What are you talking about?”

  And I said, “There are five babies.”

  Dan: I said, “What are you talking about?”

  Pam:They wouldn’t tell us anything; they needed to have the doctor tell us. So we went back to Dr. Grodin’s office, and he was a well-known fertility specialist. He had an office with this huge desk that was up high, and you sat down low in these little chairs. So you feel little and he’s big.

  Dan: It was like being before God.

  Pam: So we went in, and we’re sitting in those little chairs and a few minutes later he walks in and he’s looking a little green around the gills. I just looked up and went, “It’s five babies, isn’t it?” He just shook his head, because he’d been teasing us all along that the largest multiples that he’d had in his practice was triplets—just one set of triplets. Everyone else had been twins.

  Dan: Back when you guys were conceived there was nothing called selective reduction; it just wasn’t practiced at all. And so when Dr. Grodin said, “We see at least five embryos,” his question to us was whether or not you want to have five kids.

  Pam: The options were all or nothing.

  Dan: You’ve got to understand, we had two weeks to decide, and our questions were: number one, How dangerous is it for Mom to carry five babies? and number two, What were the chances of even having one viable baby? What are the chances they could all be very unhealthy? Either they don’t survive or they’re very unhealthy all their lives? So we thought about all of that in those two weeks.

  Pam: I think we were extremely apprehensive because it was such a high-risk pregnancy. I mean, we knew you were going to be premature, but we didn’t know how premature. So it was very scary. We thought, What are we going to do with five babies? One is hard enough, especially never having done this before. And you can’t exactly go to your next-door neighbors for advice.

  Dan: Yeah, “When you had your quintuplets, what’d you do?”

  Pam:And even people with twins—it’s a totally different thing. But we agreed that we were a good team, and we have a strong, solid relationship. Having a baby puts a strain on a relationship, and having multiple babies puts more of a strain on a relationship. We knew ours was strong and together we could do it.

  We went to see Bubbe and Pop-Pop, my mom and dad. We were just coming from the doctor’s office. I mean, I was terrified; I was in tears.They tried to soothe us, but they were upset and worried like we were. And then we went to see Grandma and Pop-Pop, Dad’s mom and dad, whose reaction was, “Oh, wow! One baby is a joy—so this is five times the joy!”

  So we went back to Dr. Grodin, and I think he saw that we were leaning toward continuing the pregnancy. He said if anybody could do it, I could: I had everything going for me that could be going for me.We learned much later on that the other doctors in his practice pulled him aside and told him he was out of his mind—that he should have just told us right off the bat that we should have aborted the whole pregnancy—

  Dan: Because they knew this is a high, high, high, high risk. At that time, I think there were eight recorded sets of quintuplets ever that survived.

  Pam:We didn’t come home all at once with five babies. After you were born we’d been told by the hospital that we’d have a staggered homecoming because you were different weights and had different health issues that needed to be overcome before you would be able to go home from the hospital. As it turned out, we got two babies home on July 28 and two more babies on July 29. Then Elliot stayed an additional five weeks.

  Dan:When everybody was home and nobody was sleeping through the night yet, two of you guys were on one feeding schedule, and two others were on another feeding schedule—because we got two one day, two the next day. And then Elliot, five weeks later, he was on the third feeding schedule. If you do the math, we were feeding babies twenty-one out of twenty-four hours a day. And we didn’t want to bottle-prop because we thought it was very important to hold each and every one of you, each time you were being fed. That meant we never, ever slept.

  Pam: And then Dad stayed home from work for the first year.

  Dan: Mom had been working at the Food and Drug Administration since she was seventeen years old, and she had a good career. She was making more money than I was, and we figured it made sense that I’d stay home. So that’s why Mom went back to work and I stayed home for the first year. But I had huge amounts of help because Bubbe had set up a volunteer group. Anyone who said they were willing to come by and feed, she’d schedule them: “You’ll be here Wednesdays at two o’clock to four o’clock and feed these babies.” She had it all scheduled.

  Shira: So Mom, how was it when you first went back to work?

  Pam:Well, on the one hand, I kind of felt like I was missing out.You always worry that you’re going to miss the firsts— but you know, if I didn’t see the first step that you took, I still saw the first step that I saw that you took, and that was just as special. On the other hand, I think I benefited from it. Because I honestly looked forward to coming home and being with you every day. It was really, honest-to-goodness quality time.

  Dan: We wouldn’t answer the phones, we wouldn’t see people, we wouldn’t do anything. It was just you guys, Mom, and I.

  Pam: I think I enjoyed it more because I had that break during the day where I was doing other things besides taking care of babies—because when we were with you it was intense . It was all babies: there was no time for anything else.

  Dan: But you kids were so much fun.You were always, always laughing, always giggling, always something going on.

  Pam: We loved the activity. We still do. The house is always full, and people come and go. One of our fears when we first found out was, How do you love five babies all at once? We wanted to make sure everybody got equal attention. But it was not a problem.

  When you were infants it was a little hard because you’d be feeding a baby and then you’d want to sit and cuddle and just have a little bit of quiet, one-on-one time. You’d want to contemplate their fingers and toes, and we couldn’t do that when there were four other infants. When you got older, then we were able to break it down a little. Even just a trip to the grocery store—whoever went to the store would take one or two. And even that half hour
of one-on-one time was special.

  So we would try to do things like that to the extent that we could. When you got even older, you would go and spend the night at Bubbe and Pop-Pop’s. Maybe two or three of you would go, and we would keep the rest at home. It was just amazing if one baby was gone, how much easier it was.

  Shira: If you could do it over, would you have done the same thing?

  Dan: In a heartbeat! I know Mom agrees with this too. You’re our kids—I mean, that’s a given. But you’re our best friends, honest to God. We would rather be with you all than pretty much anybody else. And that’s about you guys, because I don’t think a lot of parents say that about their kids. It’s a reflection of our children.

  Shira: Well, you guys give us all the credit, but really we turned out the way we did because of you, because of how you raised us.

  Dan: We don’t see it that way. We think you raised us—you outnumber us!

  Shira:Thank you for all you’ve done. [laughs] I don’t know how you did it.

  Pam: Before we had children, it was just the two of us. We were married for eight years, and we were busy. I mean, every night of the week we were doing something. I don’t know what we were doing, but we were never home. And then after you babies were born we were very busy, but we weren’t doing any of those other things, and in fact could not even remember what those things were. But it wasn’t important to us. What was important to us now was just being with you guys. Those other things must have just been time fillers—because this is the real deal!

  Recorded in Olney, Maryland, on April 19, 2009.

  SARA GLINES, 61 talks with her husband, GREG GLINES, 62

  Sara Glines: I grew up on a farm in Randolph, New Hampshire, which is a very small town. My family’s been there for seven generations, and our kids are the eighth generation. I grew up in the house where my dad was born. Our closest neighbors were almost half a mile away.

  I got pregnant when I was sixteen, and nobody knew. I kept it a secret from my parents and my sisters, and I didn’t tell anybody at school—nobody knew except for the father. I had just lost a bunch of weight, so I didn’t look pregnant—I just looked like I was putting my weight back on. I knew I was going to break my parents’ heart, so I didn’t want to tell them. I thought, Maybe I’ll miscarry. Of course, that didn’t happen.

  I stayed home from school the day I went into labor. My parents took me to the hospital, thinking it was appendicitis, and when I got there, of course, it was not. When my parents told my younger sister, who was away at school, that I had just had a baby and that she was an aunt, she said, “Well, if you think that’s bad, she smokes, too!” [laughs] And I think my dad was far more upset with the fact that I smoked than I had just had a kid!

  I had Mark a month after I turned seventeen. The father’s name was Bruce, and his mother was dead set against us getting married. That was pretty traumatic. I can remember sitting in the living room at the farm, and it was myself and Bruce, his mother, my mother, and their priest—they were Catholic, we were not—telling me what a bad person I was for ruining his life. His mother refused to sign the consent forms for us to marry. A good friend of my parents was a minister in a Congregational church, and he found a state where you can get married without parental consent if you are the father of a child. So when Mark was two months old, Bruce and I went down to Dover, Delaware, and we got married. The marriage didn’t last, as one would expect. We stayed married legally I think five years; we were actually together about three.

  Having Mark was exceedingly difficult, life altering, and a blessing at the same time. He was just a wonderful, wonderful baby—he’s been wonderful all through his life. From time to time people have asked me, “Would you do it again?” And my answer has been, [crying] “As long as I could have the son I have, yes!”

  I decided that as a single mom, I needed to do something other than working as a waitress—so I decided on mechanical drafting at the community college in Berlin. Actually, I was the first female to go through the college’s mechanical drafting curriculum, and I just found engineering fantastic. I ended up being the first female to be hired in the paper mill in a technical position.

  You and I met in the community college, when Mark was nine. We were living together a while when we told him that we were getting married. He said, “That’s great! I always wanted a dad—now I can have help taking care of mom!”

  Greg Glines: And then son number two has another story to tell. . . .

  Sara: We talked about having another child. The three of us sat down, and you and I said, “We’re thinking about having another child.” And Mark said, “That’s great—I never wanted to be an only child.” So I said to the both of you, “So all three of us are going to bring this child up?” “Yep, that’s fine.” And I’m thinking to myself, Right. But anyway, we went through the pregnancy, and I continued to work at the paper mill.

  I remember one day I wasn’t feeling all that great, and I drove myself home. It was about noon. I called you at maybe three o’clock and said, “I think you better get home.” I was obviously in labor, but it wasn’t a big deal—my water had not broken. It was March 15, the Ides of March. We were traveling to the hospital, and the road was full of frost heaves. We hit a frost heave, and my water broke. I’m thinking, I’ll never make it to the hospital. But I didn’t dare tell you.

  Greg: We had a Ford Fiesta, and you had kind of pushed the seat back a little bit. You started taking your pants down, and I said, “Sally, what are you doing?” And you said, “The baby’s coming!” And I said, “No, it’s not.”

  Sara: But I was right! So at that point you’re steering the car to the side of the road, and you reached down and you caught Kevin before he hit the floor of the car while I reached over and pulled on the emergency brake so we wouldn’t roll down the hill—team effort! Then I asked, “So what are you going to do now?” And you said, “Well, I’m going to call an ambulance.” I checked his eyes and his nose and his mouth, and he was doing just fine. It was really chilly, and I lifted up my tunic and put him against my body so that he could have as much body heat as possible.

  You ran to a nearby hotel to call an ambulance, and I asked you to get towels. You came back with the towels, and I wrapped Kevin up in those as best I could—

  Greg: Our friend at the hotel had explained to me that calling an ambulance was not the way to do it—she said, “Drive your ass up to the hospital! Right now!”

  Sara: So you started doing that. And it was really neat because it was about five o’clock, and as we’re driving to the hospital I’m waving to all the people who I work with because they were on their way home. So we get to the hospital, and the emergency room doc got in on the driver’s side. I just rolled Kevin over, and they clamped the cord and cut it. They took Kevin in, and then they took me.

  When we got into the hospital and got everything all settled, the birth certificate came. I looked at it, and for place of birth it said, “En Route.” I said, “I’m not signing it.” They said, “Well, you have to.” I said, “No, I do not. I know where he was born, and he was born in Randolph.” So I called the capital in Concord, and the little gal there said, “Oh, Mrs. Glines, you’re going to have to sign it.” And I said, “Oh, no I’m not! Let me talk to your boss.” So I talked to him, and I said, “Are you telling me that if I had gotten out of the car and laid on the ground covered with snow, his birthplace would be Randolph?” And he said, “Yes.” Well, that did it—there was no way I was signing that birth certificate until it was changed. And it was—to “En Route, Randolph, New Hampshire.”

  Recorded in Berlin, New Hampshire, on June 14, 2009.

  TIA CASCIATO SMALLWOOD, 58 talks with her daughter, CHRISTINE SMALLWOOD, 27

  Tia Casciato Smallwood: When we were in high school, my friends and I would talk about being teachers. But when I went to college, I decided to major in economics, and I started taking finance and accounting courses. I had this great professor—this wizened, just
miserable old man at Rutgers. I had him for first-year accounting, and I was the only woman in the class. When I showed up in second-year accounting and business law, he said to me, “Miss Casciato, you are the only woman that has ever gotten this far in my class, and I will make sure every day is a living hell for you.”

  He used to grade us on our class participation and how we would answer questions, and he said to me at the beginning of every class, “I hope you prepared, Miss Casciato, because the most difficult question of the period will be yours.” I had to fight to even enroll in these classes. I said, This is crazy, and I really became very much of a feminist.

  In my senior year, I couldn’t get a job interview. I think I wrote eighty letters. I remember saying to my dad, “I don’t know what I’m going to do if I don’t have a job.” He said, “Well, you went through your savings, so I guess you either have to live on the street or you’ll have to come back home.”

  Finally, I got an interview at Johnson & Johnson. I owned one dress: it was a minidress in shades of red and pink with these big block geometric squares. And I had tights and heels on. My hair was really long, no makeup, and I was thin. I walked in, and this guy interviewed me for fifteen minutes. Then he said, “You need to stand up and turn around.” I said, “What are you talking about?” He said, “Stand up and turn around.” I stood up and I leaned over his desk and I said, “I don’t need this job that much.” And that’s when he said, “You’re hired!”

  They offered me this job for $7,020 a year, $135 a week. I called my father and I was crying: “You know, Dad, there are guys from Rutgers who are getting offers at J&J doing the same kind of work I am for $11,000 to $12,000, and they’re going to pay me $7,000.” And he said, “It’s a really good company. You are really good, and you need to know that somebody will recognize that.You should take the job.” I did, but I remember being really, really insulted. That was the way it was, and I think you know my feeling: I think it’s like that today, only it’s much more subtle.