Fall of 1965 to Summer 1966: I think I have the flu, go to the doctor, the one who had fitted me with a diaphragm as means of birth control. He diagnoses the flu and puts me on some kind of medication. He takes some urine?, I think, for a pregnancy test, just in case; calls me a few days later to say the pregnancy test is positive and I need to stop taking the medicine and go to an OB/gyne; he refers me to Dr. Pildes, on Michigan Ave. in Chicago. Ed and I go to Dr. Pildes who confirms the pregnancy, and Ed feels like a hero. I am delighted and also very nauseated. Ed asks the doctor if my feeling so sick is normal, especially because some of the stuff that induces the nausea seems so crazy, like the deep blue color of some towels we had, or the soot that comes in through our apartment window in Hyde Park. The doc says it's all completely normal; he asks if there is anything at all that I would want to eat....I can't keep anything down....I say, "persian melon"? He tells Ed to go find me some persian melon.
I am desperately nauseated for the first months of the pregnancy. At one point I lose 7 lbs. in a week, and the doc puts me on an anti-nausea drug (not one of the dangerous ones), in suppository format, and tells me to keep soda crackers at my bedside within easy reach so that when I first wake up I won't have to move anything but my arm to get the crackers and eat them, then lie still for some time before getting up. I'm to use the suppositories immediately after meals and go to bed and try to sleep. This regimen allows me to get through the first months, after which the nause tapers and is gone from the fifth month on.
April 9, 1966: Gregory Scott, Sharon's baby, is born in San Francisco. Prior to his birth, Sharon had thought she would adopt the baby out through Lutheran Services, but after he is born, she wants to keep the baby. Sharon is hospitalized at UCSF for schizophrenia. There is discussion between Sharon, the family, and doctors about what to do for the baby. For a while the baby is hospitalized with Sharon, but she proves unable to care for him.Helen takes the baby for a time, in foster care, until Sharon is stabilized and out of the hospital. Sharon tries to take care of Gregory on her own for a time but panics and calls Helen, who comes over and sees the baby with crib marks on his side, indicating he has not been picked up or turned in his crib for some time. Sharon is again willing to give the baby up for adoption, but the family, whoever that is at this point--I was not involved--does not want her to adopt the baby outside the family. Helen and Walt agree to take the baby, and eventually adopt him. Sharon is intermittently hospitalized, lives at home, I think, when not in the hospital.
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