Life Is Not a Stage by Florence Henderson (big screen ebook reader .TXT) 📕

wallet in a tight fist. And I didn’t have a big enough track record to have leverage to demand more. Ira probably made more than I did. Times were different.

Ira said, “We’re not going back to him.” So I found another doctor who would be covered by insurance. Dr. Myron Steinberg at Mt. Sinai Hospital turned out to be a great choice and would come to be with me through each of my childbirths.

Throughout the pregnancy, I was still in Fanny. Morning sickness was hard, especially on matinee days. The whiff of the makeup was enough to nearly make me pass out, but I was determined not to give in to that sort of thing. Any time to go and lay down and rest was taken advantage of until each wave passed.

David Merrick was not thrilled when I left the show seven months pregnant. He would have preferred that I did the matinee, had the baby, and been ready in time for the evening performance.

Barbara was born on November 9, 1956. In those days, they knocked you out as you got into the final stages of labor. You woke up to find a baby in your arms. It was long before the natural childbirth movement, but back where I came from, home delivery without much medical intervention was commonplace, as I had witnessed with my older sister. I felt like a sissy. It wasn’t fair. I should have been fully awake and gone through it. A few years later, I bought a record that taught me the Lamaze breathing techniques. So by the time the third and fourth children came along, I did it naturally. Far better!

I felt confident being a new mother...for about a minute and a half. All that so-called experience taking care of my sisters’ and other people’s kids did not count for much when I was suddenly holding my own in my arms. In fact, I came to realize that I was closer in spirit to being a baby myself. Suddenly I felt like I was back to the beginning. The anxiety started to build, a slow burn at first that quickly became an all-consuming blaze. Would the baby die? And what would happen to the baby if I died? And what was going to happen to my career?

It didn’t help that the baby had a stomach problem from the outset. From the time I got her home from the hospital, Barbara was losing weight. She could not hold down food and would projectile-vomit. Following doctor’s orders, I had to be up at all hours of the night giving her short feedings, no more than a half ounce at a time, making sure to burp her after every time. Some drops were also prescribed that helped her stomach relax.

Understandably, I was not sleeping very well at night. Speaking from this experience, I advise young women today that you have to sleep when the baby sleeps and let everything else go. Added to the problem was that I was not eating enough. I had watched my nutrition during the pregnancy, but now I had no appetite. Half the time I was probably running on fumes because I was not keeping my blood sugar up. But it was all a symptom of a bigger problem.

Ira was always very supportive of my career, but like many men of his generation, he was not very hands-on when it came to baby care. One day, we drove over to Brooklyn, and when we got back to 55th Street I asked him to hold her for a second while I got some stuff together. In the blink of an eye, she threw up all over him. Was it a bit of payback for all of his wonderful nights of sleep? I had a good laugh about that.

Around this same time, they wanted me to come out to Los Angeles to do Fanny with the Civic Light Opera. Despite being a new mother, I was still very career-driven, but I was torn because I felt I needed to be with my child, so I turned down the opportunity. Again, there were no role models around to show me that there was a way I could do both. Ira knew how both family and career were a priority for me, and trying to protect that, he gave everything the benefit of the doubt. My own childhood baggage around my mother ramped up the intensity about being there for my baby. Damned if you do and damned if you don’t, it was another no-win situation that I had to tough my way through in the beginning days. In the years to come, it became easier to integrate motherhood with work. Sometimes the children even got small parts in the productions I toured with or in programs or commercials as they got older, which they absolutely loved. They even performed with me in Las Vegas.

Ira went out of town for a show, and I was alone with the baby for a stretch. I had plans to do so many things to fix up our apartment. Clear as a bell, I can remember reaching up in a high cabinet to put away some dishes when—boom!—I was hit with it for the first time, the perfect storm.

Postpartum depression was not a well-known clinical term in the vernacular of the late 1950s, even though the syndrome no doubt affected the same twenty percent of all new mothers then as it does now. Ironically, Ira’s uncle was a prominent obstetrician who was speaking out about it at the time. Dr. Ronsheim made the news when he was called in as an expert witness at a woman’s trial to explain why she killed her baby. This syndrome can take many forms, but what all sufferers have in common is an inability to think properly. Luckily, I didn’t harbor negative feelings about the baby. Instead I was simply mired in a state of profound sadness, stuck in an empty, bottomless pit.

Had I