A Difficult Birth

The year Uncle Bill died we bought larger house on Hawthorne Street to make room for new baby—James Hamilton Benton, Jr.
That house on Hawthorne has always been painted white with green shutters.
My favorite piece of furniture is the chaise lounge that James gave to me the summer I was pregnant with Jim. I gave the lounge to Jim recently, and we are trying to get it recovered at this point. It is in Bartlesville, and we have talked to the person who said she' d do it.
Jim was born on September 23rd, 1948 and the doctors kept knocking me out to keep me from asking questions, I think. His lungs didn't expand properly at first, and they didn’t have oxygen then.
Our pediatrician, Sam Cunningham, was a fraternity brother of James’ and real close friend from Galveston days. He was there to take the baby to the nursery with James and they began emergency procedures immediately. He and James were in that nursery with our six-weeks-premature baby night and day.
I remember very little about those days until about a week later when it was time for me to go home. I had not yet held my baby, and I didn't want to leave him. But, I had to do what the doctors said.
I stayed at home two or three days, and they said Jim could come home when he weighed six pounds. Don't know what his birth weight was, they were too busy keeping him breathing to bother with weighing and measuring. They were afraid the lack of oxygen would damage his brain or lots of other things.
The baby just slept and it was hard to get him to drink from his bottle. Finally I convinced them that I could do that better then the nurses, and I just demanded that they let me have my baby.
We took him home.
Mommy Bent came to help, and she looked after Carolyn's needs, and I fed our baby. We tickled his feet and did everything we could think of to keep him awake to drink his milk. He began to improve. I held him and fed him night and day, and finally he began to act like a normal baby.