My Mom loved the Cartoon about the Flintstones. And in January of 1963 when Wilma announced she was pregnant, so was my Mom. And when Wilma had a red headed daughter in March, my Mom was hanging on every episode and wishing she'd would have a red headed daughter too, but her hair was black and my Dad was a brunette, so even though I had redheaded relatives, she didn’t think it would happen.
I was born in Cheyenne, Wyoming on July 9, 1963 into a world that still had JFK. My Mom wasn’t due for delivery until the end of August, and the baseball “All Stars Game” was on TV. It was a Tuesday and my Dad wanted to watch the game, so when my Mom told him it was time to go, he kept saying, “can you wait until the end of the game?” She did, but by the time the National League won 5-3 she was getting angry.
They got to the hospital and the Dr. tried to touch her and she screamed at him to keep his hands to himself. She says she knew that the moment she relaxed, it would be over and if he touched her, she would tense up. I was born within 15 minutes of arrival.
I was yellow and redheaded and soon my Mom heard a Dr. in the hallway saying, “kids like that would be better off if someone would line them all up and shoot them.” But no-one would tell her what was wrong.
Two days later they wanted to send us home and she kept saying, “No she is too yellow.” But they tried to tell her it was just a redheads complexion. She threw a fit and they did a blood test and freaked out. Suddenly I had to have a complete blood transfusion and my blood was too messed up to type so they gave me 2 ½ times my blood volume of type O- I had ABO hemolytic disease of the newborn but it had only recently been discovered and no one there had treated it before. They say I would have died jut a couple years before.
Any yet I lived, and they named me Dixie Dawn. My Dad had had a dream that he had a daughter name Dixie Anne but he didn’t want my initials to be DAM. My Mom was happy to have a girl as redheaded as Pebbles and often dressed me in animal print clothing with a ponytail on top of my head.
it's amazing how different our world now from that era, when people can just say insensible things and be regarded as funny. that doctor would have been fired, paid a huge fine and if the family had a good attorney, would have to re-mortgage his house and everything else as he'd be fleeced to death for saying something like that. nice start to the challenge, dixie. i'll be posting mine a little bit later.
so you're a miracle baby! I'm having a hard time imagining grownups watching cartoons... mine parents never watched any TV. But I personally loved the Flintstones. Everything was miraculous in that show.
@francoise even when I was ten, we only had two TV channels available. When I was born, the Flintstones were a once a week series that had the same feel as the live action shows of the era like The Honeymooners
I can't wait to follow your theme, Dixie! Such sweet baby pictures. What nice framing, as if we're looking through the pages of a book. Your conversational tone immediately made me feel a part of the family.
Adorable baby pictures and I loved your Mom's connection to "The Flintstones"--so, cute. Thank Heaven your Mom insisted, that the doctors do everything possible to save your life! Amazing, you were a miracle baby, for sure.
It's amazing how things we can't even remember define us in a way. You had to "fight" from the very start and many things throughout your life continued with that struggle. BUT you had one amazing and powerful thing going for you- your parents loved you no matter what and were the anchor in your world when everything else seemed upside-down. I apologize for being so late in getting to my "self-stories". I've been a bit of a personal struggle this week which required a lot of my time. But I have been faithfully uploading pictures and hope to really start writing tomorrow (Sunday) as the "crisis" has passed and life will resume with the daily routine.
September 7th, 2014
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