Uncle John’s Presents Mom’s Bathtub Reader (6 page)

Elizabeth Patton Crockett
(c. 1788–1860) was the second wife and widow of famed frontiersman Davy Crockett, who was killed at the Alamo. Elizabeth’s statue, sculpted in Italy in 1913, is a larger-than-life figure of Italian marble, located at Farm Road 167 at Acton State Historic Site in Texas. This site is something of a curiosity—it’s the smallest state park in Texas, occupying all of .01 of an acre! The statue is dedicated to “all pioneer wives and mothers.”

Mary Martin
(1913–1990), the American singer and actress, was best known for her award-winning Broadway performances in
South Pacific, Peter Pan
, and
The Sound of Music.
A 1976 life-size bronze statue by Ronald Thomason stands outside the Weather-ford Public Library in Martin’s hometown of Weatherford, Texas. Martin was the mother of actor Larry Hagman,
Dallas
’s J. R. Ewing of “Who shot J.R.?” fame.

Sacajawea
(c. 1787–1812), the famed Shoshone guide and interpreter for the Lewis and Clark Expedition of 1805, carried her infant son on her back during the journey. She has no fewer than eight statues dedicated to her in the United States. The most famous is the
heroic bronze monument by the sculptor Alice Cooper at the Portland, Oregon, Washington Park, erected in 1905. You can also find statues of her on the grounds of:

•
The North Dakota State Capitol in Bismarck, North Dakota;

•
The Bozeman Tourist Information Bureau in Bozeman, Montana;

•
Pioneer Park in Lewiston, Idaho;

•
Central Wyoming College in Riverton, Wyoming;

•
Breaker’s Point in Cannon Beach, Oregon;

•
Sacajawea Interpretive Center, Sacajawea State Park, in Pasco, Washington; and

•
On Sacajawea Street in Portland, Oregon.

So many honors for such an important lady! Sounds like a Sacajawea road trip is in order!

Mrs. Brown changes the way women have babies.

I
n 1977, Lesley Brown was a frustrated young woman in Bristol, England. For nine years, she and her husband, John, had been unsuccessfully trying to have a baby. They had gone from doctor to doctor, searching for help, but had found none. Lesley (like about 20 percent of infertile women) had blocked fallopian tubes, which in those days meant that there was no hope of her ever conceiving a child. Luckily, she was referred to a special gynecologist, Dr. Patrick Steptoe.

Conception occurs when an egg cell (ovum) is released from a woman’s ovary and travels through a fallopian tube, where it is fertilized by male sperm, becomes an embryo, and travels into the uterus, to which it attaches and where it grows into a baby. When the fallopian tube is blocked, the eggs can’t travel through the tube to be fertilized.

Still, hopeless as her situation seemed, after talking to Dr. Steptoe at Oldham General Hospital, Lesley felt a surge of hope. Steptoe, along with Dr. Robert Edwards of Cambridge University, had been experimenting with a way to fertilize the egg in a lab’s glass petri dish, a process called
in vitro
(in glass) fertilization, or IVF. So far, the
process had yet to make a woman pregnant, but the doctors hoped that Lesley would be the first success.

She knew it might be painful and could easily end in failure, but Lesley felt she had to grasp at what she saw as her last hope. On November 10, 1977, Lesley Brown took the first step in the process. Using a laparoscope, Dr. Steptoe removed an egg from one of Lesley’s ovaries. Dr. Edwards put Lesley’s egg in a laboratory dish that already contained John’s sperm. After the egg was fertilized, it was placed in a special solution created to nurture it while it divided. Two and a half days later, the newly fertilized egg was placed into Lesley’s uterus.

Lesley was overjoyed as she began to experience what seemed to be a perfectly ordinary pregnancy. But as each month passed without incident, controversy swirled around the woman from Bristol. The fears concerning Lesley’s pregnancy and the process of in vitro fertilization became more and more sensational. People feared that science had overstepped its bounds.

Many pundits considered it immoral to create “test-tube babies.” The doctors were condemned for tampering with nature. There were worries about monster babies or the government creating breeding farms like those in Aldous Huxley’s novel
Brave New World.

Then, nine days before her due date, Lesley developed toxemia, and Dr. Steptoe decided to deliver the baby via cesarean section. On July 25, 1978, Lesley and John had blonde-haired, blue-eyed Louise Joy Brown. Her birth was so special that it made the cover of
Time
magazine
.
If every baby is a miracle, Louise was a bit of an extra miracle—
after all the dire warnings, she was healthy and normal—not a monster baby at all.

Lesley’s famous pregnancy brought new hope to hundreds of thousands of infertile mothers. Since 1978, proud parents have had more than one million babies through the use of
in vitro
fertilization. About 1 percent of babies are born with the aid of IVF and doctors think that the numbers will go higher as the technology continues to improve.

In 2003 Louise Joy Brown had her 25th birthday. Despite all the publicity that surrounded her birth—and still surrounds her birthdays—Louise has confounded critics by brushing off celebrity and remaining as ordinary as the day she was born.

“I just get on with my life,” Louise has said. “Just normal—I just plod along.” Engaged to be married, she is a Bristol postal worker who, as the press likes to pun, now makes “deliveries” of her own.

Louise also has a younger sister, Natalie. Their proud mum showed her faith in technology by once again relying on IVF for Natalie’s conception.

R
emember all those classic plays with all those classic moms who did all those classic things? Test your knowledge with our little Literature 101 multiple-choice test. No fair peeking at the answers either.

1. The Play:
Medea
by Euripides, 431 BC

The Plot:
Medea is a sorceress and the daughter of a king. She betrays her father and kills her brother to help Jason, the man she loves, steal the Golden Fleece. The two settle down together in Corinth and have two sons. All is well until Jason abandons his family to take up with the Corinthian king’s daughter.

What’s a mom to do?

__ A. Kill everybody. Kill Jason’s new bride, the Corinthian king, and your two sons.

__ B. Get liquored up and crash the wedding.

__ C. Knit sweaters for your sons from the GoldenFleece.

__ D. Have your grandfather provide a chariot drawn by dragons and hightail it outta there.

__ E. Both A & D.

2. The Play:
Oedipus Rex
by Sophocles, c. 424 BC

The Plot:
Jocasta, the queen of Thebes, is upset because the Delphic Oracle has prophesied that her husband, King Laius, will be murdered by their own son.

What’s a mom to do?

__ A. Go on the pill.

__ B. See a midwife about herbs that will ensure the birth of a girl.

__ C. Hand your son over to a shepherd who will take him away and kill him.

__ D. Declare the oracle a fraud and have the king pass a decree that outlaws it.

__ E. Get a second opinion from the Psychic Hotline.

3. The Play:
Hamlet
by William Shakespeare, 1603

The Plot:
After the death of her husband, the king of Denmark, Gertrude marries Claudius, her late husband’s brother, who becomes the new king. Her son, Hamlet begins acting oddly, claiming he’s seeing ghosts and insisting that Claudius had a hand in his father’s murder and that his mother’s quick remarriage is unseemly. Is Hamlet crazy or is there a method to his madness? Gertrude can’t tell if he’s faking or not.

What’s a mom to do?

__ A. Kill your son and new husband. Rule Denmark by yourself.

__ B. Consult an elderly windbag for advice.

__ C. Hold a séance to consult your dead husband.

__ D. All of the above

__ E. None of the above.

4. The Play:
Titus Andronicus
by William Shakespeare, 1587

The Plot:
Tamora, queen of the Goths, has been taken prisoner by Roman general Titus Andronicus, along with three of her sons and her lover, Aaron. Once in Rome, Titus has Tamora’s eldest son sacrificed to avenge the deaths of some of his own sons during the bloody war against the Goths.

What’s a mom to do?

__ A. Trick Titus’s surviving sons into falling into a pit and be blamed for the murder of the emperor’s brother.

__ B. Have your lover trick Titus into chopping off his own hand.