Basket Case

Today

Preparations for baby Donnelly are well under way. She already has one babygro and one hand-knitted cardie and I couldn't resist buying some cute little vests in Tesco the other day.

I've bought the Moses basket and am engaged in making a suitable lining or two for it. I find myself with an absurd feeling that if I don't stitch away night and day my grand-daughter will come into the world with nothing ready.

In My Day

So how prepared was I, when expecting Lizzie? To start with, I had a sort of superstitious feeling that to have a full layette, decorated nursery et al would somehow bring bad luck. Another thing was an almost total lack of money. When I brought Lizzie home from hospital I had: one babygro (Paul had to go out and hastily buy some more), nappies of the towelling variety, a carry cot with stand and wheels, a baby bath that shared the cot stand and some Playtex bottles. My Italian sister-in-law's mother knitted me some beautiful white blankets which stretched in a snuggly cocoon-like way around Lizzie. Later came the oversized leggings knitted by Jenny and a lovely crocheted floor blanket from Mamma.

I'm not sure I'd even heard of a Moses basket, outside the Bible, and nobody seemed to be stitching day and night on Lizzie's account. The bath soon became a useless relic as I discovered that Lizzie and I had a shared horror of using it, and that washing worked just as well.

And the other necessities? Well.we gradually bought what we could, as and when. My maternity allowance went on a spin-dryer, my month's back pay arrived just as Lizzie was outgrowing her first set of clothes. I didn't have a washing machine, and remember those nauseating buckets full of Napisan. I used to put the previous day's clothes into soak before going to work, rinsing and spinning them when I got home.

Well, she went neither naked nor dirty and gradually things eased up a bit.

The problem is, I saved those blankets for my first grandchild for forty years and now can't seem to find them; maybe I lent them to somebody.........