Comfort for Small Victims

In a long and varied career, Mary Fenton picked cotton in Texas, worked as a secretary and a registered nurse, was a traveling corporate spokesman on food and nutrition for 16 years and supervised a 28-woman food service staff for a large Chicago-area high school. She is retired and cares for newborn babies, a skill she learned as a young girl. Fenton, 81, lives in North Hollywood.

I’m from many places. I was born in Kentucky, right on the banks of the Mississippi. In a few months my parents moved to Louisiana. My mother died when I was 4 1/2 and my father forgot about me. I was taken to Tennessee and I lived with different families. At 12 years of age I was taken to Colorado.

People knew that I was an orphan and that I was a good worker, so if they needed help they’d just take me in until they didn’t need help. I suppose one of the reasons I’m so interested in babies now is the fact that I was with a lot of families that were expecting or delivered and they needed help and this is where I would go for a time.

I came out here in 1985. I was retired, I didn’t know anybody here. I wanted something to do. For many years when I was a registered nurse, I took care of babies in private homes so I volunteered two days a week from 10 to 3 in the newborn nursery, at Women’s Hospital, University of Southern California.

It’s called Nursery 8-K. And it’s for drug- and alcohol-abuse babies, and it’s pretty sad because when they go through withdrawal they cry a great deal. It’s similar to a spasm type of thing, and naturally it frightens them. Many of them are very small and underweight. And of course you don’t know yet the degree of damage that’s done, because it depends on what kind of drug the mother was on and for how long.

I rock them, I feed them, I diaper them. I sing to them, talk to them, tell them how pretty they are, ask them what they’re going to be when they grow up. They say, “Here comes Mary to spoil our babies.”

Now, these are newborns, but you need to talk to them. You don’t just feed them automatically. I talk to them all the time I’m feeding them. Some of the social workers who come in and see me, they say, “Mary, you don’t know how much good you’re doing those babies when you talk to them.”

If the nurses come in and have to give them a physical or take blood or something, they start screaming, because they’re being hurt, they don’t understand. So I come in and I stroke their heads and say, “It won’t be long and it’ll be over. Grandma will hold you, Grandma will rock you.” It’s just a great feeling to know that I am there and can help them.

The people there at the hospital are so nice, and you cannot believe the care that these babies get. Those that have to go to foster homes and are adopted, if they can find somebody that gives them the portion of the love and the care that they get at that hospital they’ll be fortunate. ‘Cause it’s just tremendous.

Recently we had 56 babies born in one day, and a few days later we had 72. So you see, life and death are ongoing, and you never catch up, the need is always there. This is why sometimes it gets a little beyond us, I think, because we’re always looking forward to completing something. But with a situation like this you really are never finished.

I think I’ve done my duty in caring for babies, even though I didn’t have any of my own to care for. I raised two stepchildren, and they were very fine children. They’re grown, naturally. They live out here.

I’ve had a very full and varied life. Most of my life I’ve been happy, even when I didn’t have reason to be happy. A lot of people wouldn’t be able to weather the storm, I don’t believe. I had to make so many adjustments at an early age. I didn’t have any choice. You make the best of it. I’ve done that all my life, made the best of whatever came along.