“This is an Estimate of the Cost of Your Pregnancy” – My Parent’s First Investment in Me

I have many family papers from my parents that I have not gone through for a while.  Today I was hunting for a particular item among my English family papers, which I could not find, but through that searching, I came upon this paper, the doctors’ estimated costs for my birth.

This paper first shows a $100 deposit needed by 6/15/50 for the hospital – about a month and a half before my birth.  The notice then covers the doctor’s fee of $100 for a NORMAL pregnancy and delivery – which mine was – with other charges of $7.50 for an x-ray and $12 for lab work.  These doctor charges were then totaled to $119.50 and presented as the “Total MINIMUM charges” followed by a statement that arrangements for payment should be made through the business office.

The notice is not dated, and the one-fold of the paper suggests that it was not mailed.  Perhaps this estimate was given to my parents when my parents together first visited the doctors’ office to begin preparations and payment for my birth. If this visit was sometime in late January 1950, my mom would have been in her third month with me.

Now below the doctor’s signature, there are handwritten calculations showing both the hospital fee and the total doctors’ fee divided by seven – I imagine the calculated approximate number of months before I was to be born from February 1st.  I suspect my parents and the doctors thought I would be born in July, as my mom once told me I was two weeks late, a side remark made in the context of me always “taking my own sweet time” in doing something I was supposed to do, or some other parental assertion along that same line.  However, I, of course, do not remember that part precisely.

The monthly payments, using simple division, were calculated right on the paper at $14.30 a month for the hospital, and $17 a month for the doctors’ fee.  I can’t definitely determine if the first payment was made at the time these payment arrangements were made, however, I think so, as the next notation is a handwritten note at the bottom that seems for an appointment I assume for my mom, at 1:10 for Wednesday, February 1st, which is a Wednesday in 1950.

One interesting observation about the entire paper is the differences in the handwriting.  The handwriting of the information on top is cramped and not polished and appears to be the same hand working the monthly payment amount.  The doctor’s signature is grandiose and almost theatric, perhaps very appropriate and fitting for a doctor of the time.  And the third writing, recording the appointment, I easily recognize as my mom’s writing, precise, practiced, and elegant, so much like my mother. 

This is also a good example of my mom’s drive for precise “financial” planning with usually not too much to plan with in the first place.  My mom, once we had a second car, usually picked up my dad’s paycheck on payday, every other Friday as I seem to remember, and when I was real young and not in school or during the summer, she took me and any younger sisters with her to the sand and gravel plant where my dad worked.  The people in the office were always nice and friendly and always took a special interest in us children and talked to us, and everybody and everything about the office fascinated me.  

We picked up my dad’s check and then my mom took the check to the bank and cashed it, always adding something to our savings.  We then went home, and, at times, I would watch my mom divide the money up into envelopes she had labeled for groceries, gas, church, etc.  My dad once told me when I was a teenager that everything they had was due to my mom’s being good with money.  I’m glad my mom was good with money from early on, because here with this estimate of the cost of my birth, they were paying for me to be born!

When I was interviewing my mom about our family history decades later, I remember her telling me that she had stayed three days in the hospital after I was born – I think that was routine at the time – and before my dad and she were allowed to take me home, they had to make the final payment – which they did!  Good work, mom and dad!

Now even with a payment plan, this was still a lot of money for my parents.  My dad had to build the first house on our property, the “little” house, paycheck by paycheck, while still paying rent for the small house they lived in, and that was a difficult financial time for my parents.  By the time I was born, my parents and my older sister were already living in the small house, which had to be completed and livable – mostly defined as having a working toilet – to build up equity before the bank would approve a loan.  So at least when I was born, my parents had the loan, and were building the “big” house in the front of our property and there are photos of me when I was about six or seven months or so in a crib placed in the outside dirt between the two houses, and the big house looked almost livable. (Link to post with photo below) This is another example of my mom being good with money, and my dad working hard to provide for us, and that was very good, because there were four sisters coming after me!

February 4, 1947 – Went to the Trading Post & Bought Babies Crib & Mattress. Bought a Pair of Shoes, 3 Baby’s Vests, 2 Set of Babies Wash Towels. – Writing In The Shade Of Trees

As I wrote this posting, looking back on my birth, and what it cost my parents – what it really cost my dad and mom – before they were able to take me home, I was thinking that I hope my parents thought their initial costs for me was a good investment.  However, as soon as that thought came to mind, I realized that my dad and mom never thought along those lines.  My dad just worked hard his whole life, and my mom planned and used what little we had to give us as good a home life as possible – she always stayed up late at night making my sisters pretty dresses for Easter and Christmas, and other events.  And they managed to feed us, pay the mortgage, send us all to Catholic school, and eventually pack all six of us kids into an aging station wagon and take us camping to Sequoia or Yosemite for my dad’s one-week paid vacation.

And so, I am thankful for my parents making the payments so they could take me home – yes, their initial investment in me – and in continuing to give me a home.  A home where I had a life with an example of a Mexican American father who worked hard his whole life to support us. And a life, through his own large family, where we experienced and learned the joy and life of a larger, caring, interesting, and initially largely Spanish-speaking extended family. A life so abundantly blessed with the wondrous world off freshly made warm flour tortillas with a little butter and salt, and Christmas Eve tamales at my Aunt Chencha’s small wood sided house in San Fernando, a small town of 2.37 square miles, surrounded by Los Angeles, and the small town where I was born in a small one-story hospital in 1950. 

And from my English mom I learned – me and my sisters, we all learned – dutiful love, strength of character, and pride of self, through the work – the constant work – of our mom, who never saw her parents again after arriving in California – my birth bracketed by her mother’s death three years before I was born, and her father’s death three years after.  A woman, who when she first arrived in the San Fernando Valley, was intoxicated with the permeating blooming perfume of the citrus covered Valley in the winter, and who suffered, always suffered, through the blazing heat of the Valley during the summer and the stifling, suffocating, and sun-obscuring smog of the Valley during the fifties and sixties, as we were all being born and growing up.

My sisters and I, all six of us, are thankful for the initial investment of our parents in paying for us being born, yes, but we are even more thankful, eternally thankful, for the investment of their faithful love and care in our lives throughout their lives, for through them, the good in us we possess, we have acquired through them.  Good job, dad and mom!  Thank you…forever.

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Family Non-Fiction – Writing In The Shade Of Trees