Lois worked in The Cradle Nursery in the 1950s. Almost 70 years later, she shares her stories about what it was like to be a Cradle nurse, the baby formula she helped test for Mead Johnson and how her time at The Cradle helped with her own children.
Lois was a student at The Cradle’s nursing school from 1954-1955. “We had to complete 365 days of school,” Lois said. “I went out on casework as a nanny for about six months. After that, Ethel Mitchell, the Nurse Supervisor, offered me a job [at The Cradle Nursery] and I accepted”
She got a job in the diet kitchen, in charge of the infant formula. “Each baby was fed about six times a day,” Lois said. The Cradle’s Nursery capacity at that time was 60 infants. During her tenure, it was often full. “I felt I had quite a bit of responsibility for being 18 years old.” She also helped sterilize the babies’ clothing, bedding, bottles and the nurse uniforms.
According to Lois, Mead Johnson, an infant nutrition company that still exists today, donated the formula used by the Nursery while she was there. “We had cases and cases of it. I always thought that was just wonderful,” Lois said. She added that in 1956, Mead Johnson ran a test for a soy-based formula with Cradle babies in the Nursery. As a nurse in the diet kitchen, she was able to play a big role in helping run the study.
“We had a meeting, and they told me what they wanted the diet kitchen to do,” Lois said. For about six months, they gave half of the babies their regular formula and half the new formula. “This was the perfect place for them because every day the babies were weighed,” she said. After the trial, Lois remembers seeing her hard work pay off. “As I got older and had four babies, it was so good to see [the soy formula] on the shelf at the grocery store.”
Beyond the Mead Johnson trial, Lois shared other fond memories of studying and working at The Cradle. “We would fall in love with certain babies. There were 12 babies in our unit. And it was really strange, no one fell in love with the same baby,” she said.
“I remember I liked this one little baby. And the reason I think I liked her was that my fiancé was very tall. He’s 6-ft 3-in. And she was built just like I thought my babies would look. And it turned out that’s exactly the way they were,” she said. She got to see this baby placed with her adoptive family and still remembers that moment. “One of the nurses knew how much I liked her, so she let me carry her in. I got to see her parents and they were really tall. It was just perfect.”
Lois said she learned a great deal about caring for infants from Dr. Iwan Rosenstern, who was working with The Cradle at that time. “We all loved Dr. Rosenstern. He was wonderful to us,” she said. “He told us, only once, that he and his wife got out of Berlin before the Nazis took over. He had been in charge of a pediatric unit in Berlin at a hospital. He came to The Cradle and was excellent. He always was so cheerful and just was a very nice person.”
Lois left The Cradle in 1957 to marry her childhood sweetheart. “We’ve been married for 67 years,” she said. Even after she left, what she learned at The Cradle stayed with her. She credits Dr. Rosenstern for helping her diagnose some concerns with two of her own children when they were infants.
Lois also shared a time when she got a chance to meet two Cradle baby siblings in her area. Now adults, they thanked her for her work in the Nursery and they all reminisced about their special connections to The Cradle. We join them in thanking Lois and all The Cradle nurses who have cared for thousands of babies in The Cradle’s century-plus history.
