Famous surprise baby is doing well (1915)
Famous surprise baby is getting along fine!
Mrs Gibson calls on little one who so startled her family by coming
by Idah McGlone Gibson
Chicago — March 27 [1915] — “There, isn’t she a beauty, my surprise baby?” said Mrs Virginia Jackson, who five weeks ago startled her family, the doctor and the reading world by giving birth to a child with no knowledge that she was going to become a mother.
“She is just the sweetest baby in all the world,” she continued, as she put the surprise baby in my arms.
“And you love her just as well as another other mother loves a child?” I asked. “She doesn’t seem like a foundling that came to you as a sort of prize package in which you drew the capital prize?”
“I know what you’re thinking about,” she said. “It is that old tradition that the reason a mother loves a child more than the father is because of the long weary months before its birth when half-sick, she still works, plans and fears.
“No mother ever loved her child more than I do my darling surprise baby who was so considerate of me that she did not worry me with thinking and wondering about her until she just was in my arms.
“Why, if all women could have the long fearsome months of gestation eliminated and were able to bear children while in twilight sleep, there certainly would be no trouble in raiding those large families that Col Roosevelt talks about.”
Mrs Jackson is doing perfectly well; is taking care of baby and doing her own work.
And that surprise baby is a wonder! Its blue eyes and queer little smiling mouth seem to be forever saying in real Americanese, “Well, I just put one over on dad and mother this time.”
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Publication: The Pittsburgh Press
Publication date: March 28, 1915
