"Rosemary.
Oh, the trauma of that birth. It was September 13th, 1918, a Friday, and the influenza pandemic was tearing through Boston. Rose's obstetrician was running late, attending to Boston's sick and dying, and the nurse who arrived wasn't permitted to give anesthesia. It was Rose and the nurse alone in her bedroom.
As Rose's labor progressed, her pain intensifying, the baby making her way through the birth canal, Rose desperately tried not to push but was physically unable to -- despite the nurse yelling at her to stop, stop, stop! She clamped Rose's legs together and pushed the baby back inside. All this pain, Rose kept telling herself, was God's cost. First suffering, then joy.
The nurse, trained in obstetrics, could have delivered this baby. But this was yet another thing women weren't allowed to do, because that meant earning money that otherwise would have gone to the doctor. If Rose's nurse were to deliver Rose's baby, then Frederick Good, the otherwise occupied obstetrician, would not be able to build Joe Kennedy his standard $125 fee.
And so this capable nurse, upon seeing the baby crown, felt no other option but to put her palm on that tiny head and shove the baby back inside, holding her there for 2 hours.
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When Rosemary didn't make her milestones--when her little sister Kick, eighteen months younger, began outpacing her---Rose and Joe knew that something was very wrong. The perfectionists and them were loath to admit it, raising their ever-growing family with militaristic fervor. The children were weighed everyday and kept trim and athletic; quizzed on economics, geopolitics, world religions; taught to ski, sail, and swim, each child's progress detailed on index cards, with only one outcome acceptable.
'We only have winners in this family,' Joe and Rose would say. 'We don't allow losers.'"
~ Maureen Callahan
Page 236
Ask Not: the Kennedys and the Women they Destroyed
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