'Sometimes it was tough to watch them go'

By CASEY COLLIER
Gloria Boudreaux smiles with knowing eyes.
Ahead of her making any remarks, one is first met by her eyes, which greet with surprising, familiar warmth. It sets one at ease.
Perhaps that is one of the things which contributed to making Boudreaux so in demand as a nursing assistant, and then nurse for almost 40 years.
She claims not to know the reason for her career. She claims that she was only being sought after to do a job that others wouldn’t do at the time; and maybe that is true. But, her compassionate eyes give reason for pause before one’s wondering if there is more to the story, and if some people are just born to be healers.
Boudreaux, now 92 years old, came from Camperdown.
Her father got a job in Franklin when she was 13. So, the family moved “into town.”
She never graduated high school. But Boudreaux went to work at St. Anne’s Hospital as a nursing assistant in 1946, after moving back to Franklin, having married Lannace Boudreaux, World War II veteran.
“I was supposed to be on the floor working,” she said, “and they put me wherever they wanted, wherever I fit in. So, they put me in the hospital with the babies for private duty, when a baby needed more care than the others. I was a personal (caregiver) for those that were really sick at birth. So, if their lungs weren’t good at that time, they needed special care to get better.”
Boudreaux says she was sent to the homes of many new mothers with their newborn babies. One former patient of Boudreaux’s was premature, reportedly weighing just shy of two pounds at the time of care.
She recalls that child in particular, a baby boy, who she nursed to a healthy weight.
“He had a bassinet, an oval-shaped bassinet, and I used to go and get milk from his mother, when she was able to give it,” Boudreaux said. “It was a lot different from now.”
She doesn’t remember exactly how many sick babies she cared for over her career, but she’s sure it numbers in the hundreds.
“I kept them in my care. I gave them their bottle with special medicine in it, or sometimes a plug of some kind, where they’d mix everything together,” she said. “I had doctors’ orders, of course. I didn’t do anything on my own. As they got better, they went to another place. They had to grow. A lot of them stayed (with me) for six to eight weeks.”
The babies’ doctors would give her the medical paperwork prescribing care, and logging activity. Boudreaux would bring the paperwork back with the well child, once the treatment was complete.
She said, “A lot of people didn’t want to work with sick, sick babies like that.” Hence, it fell to her.
When she started working at the hospital, Boudreaux said she preferred to work with adult patients. She said she was like most other aides in that regard. But, “they put me where they needed me, and the longer I worked there, the more I learned to like it,” she said. “I loved to nurse. Even when they would cry, I loved it, because you knew they were better. You knew they were ok, if they could make sounds.”
“I saw many (babies) delivered outside the hospital,” she said, elaborating that sometimes, the ambulance would be forced to pull over to the side of the road, where the woman in labor would deliver her baby on a cot in the back of the vehicle.
When asked if she ever got attached to her patients, Boudreaux said, “Oh yeah, very much so. Sometimes it was tough to watch them go.”
She went on to say that often, when off-duty, the mothers of the children she had cared for, sometimes with the babies in tow, would see her while out in town, yet kept their distance.
“They never seemed to care about what it meant to me,” Boudreaux said. “But, I know how hard it was. I wanted to keep up with them, but it was hard for me, because, they wanted to go their way. They were busy mamas, and some of them had never had babies before. Some of them had babies but they didn’t want them.”
When asked if any of the babies, or the mothers of the babies she cared for ever came back to visit her, Boudreaux said, “Hardly any of them did.”
She said she knows of some who still live in Franklin, who were parents of the babies she helped, as well as adults who were once her patients, themselves.
Recently, Boudreaux was visited by the formerly premature baby to who she had brought his mother’s milk to his bassinet. His name is Kevin Dimiceli, born Feb. 24, 1965.
When he heard that he was being sought by Boudreaux for a reunion, he found his way to her house, to pay that visit.
As a nursing assistant, Boudreaux continued to work at St. Anne’s Hospital, as and after it changed to Franklin Foundation Hospital. During that time, she became a registered nurse.
She retired in 1980, and went on to pursue another career, as a seamstress.
She specialized in prom dresses, gowns, alterations, and even made baby bonnets.
However, Boudreaux said she had always been interested in making clothes, even when she was a nursing assistant.
“I know how to sew anything. So, I made little clothes for the babies when they were so small they couldn’t fit into any,” Boudreaux said. “You know the small squares of cloth—paper towels? I took one square, one paper towel, and you know that’s not big. Well, I made a little vest.
“It was hot for them in the incubators, you know. So, I made a little vest and some little short pants, with just two or three buttons on it. And the mamas didn’t know how to sew. So, they were so excited when they’d see that. Lots of times, when they went home, they’d use that little outfit to bring the baby home. And at the end of the road, when it was time to go, they’d ask me if they could have it, and I’d say, ‘yes’, and they’d be so thrilled; because, you couldn’t buy anything that small to fit (the premature babies), they were so tiny. I made a vest and short pants out of one little paper towel.”
“They need personal care, when they’re that little and they’re that sick,” Boudreaux said, “and a lot of people didn’t like that, taking care of sick babies, but I wanted all the babies I could get.”
Boudreaux said that at first, she only made one baby bonnet, but that that bonnet was used, specifically for christenings, and would then be returned to her care until the next candidate was in need. After that, she made more, and would sell them for $15 per bonnet.
She remembers making a bonnet and gown for a premature baby to be christened in, and that the father of the baby was so proud, that he wanted to preserve the bonnet. So, he found a suitable container, comparable in size to that of the contents of its charge. Boudreaux chuckled as she recalled that a Mason jar was what, in the end, did the trick.
Her chuckle turned to a wince, as she rubbed her finger joints.
“I can still sew. But, it takes me longer, because I tire easily now,” she said.
Just as the visit draws to a close, and the pleasantries of hospitality have smilingly ushered open the front door, one need not look for that knowing gaze of Gloria Boudreaux, because it carries the visit to its end. Whether she knows she does it or not, is another story.