I Have a History with Diapers

I grew up with 350 babies that needed their diapers changed. It started in 1958 when I was seven years old. My parents already had three sons (me and my two brothers). My parents decided to take care of foster babies until the babies could be adopted. The first baby was named Christopher. Then Andy.

We did not know that my mother had an unlimited capacity to take care of babies. A hundred foster children came into our home, into our arms, and then out to the homes of loving, adopting parents. Then another hundred babies came into our home; then another. My parents adopted one of them, Patricia, in 1959. Then we adopted another, Kris, born in 1965. Then another, Nikki, born in 1978.

But babies kept coming into our home, and they all needed their (cloth) diapers changed. And each one needed a bottle. And you know, those were the days when you heated “baby formula” on the kitchen stove. We were heating a dozen bottles at a time.

It went on for fifty years. Fifty years of sleeping babies in bassinets. We kids had to be quiet during nap time, and one baby or another was always sleeping. Fifty years is a long time to stay quiet in the house.

So this is my public praise to my mother and my father for taking care of 350 newborn babies and placing them into loving, adopting homes, and for themselves adopting three sisters for my brothers and me. You won’t find parents any more like mine; they had a gift from God to get up in the nights to fix baby bottles and to change diapers and to sing crying babies back to sleep. I have forgotten many of those babies’ names, but I think my mother remembers all of them. Sometimes they come by to say hello, to say thank you.

Hope you have heroes –  heroes who made a difference in other people’s lives. Here’s to my heroes, my mother and my father, Robert M. and Marilyn L. Blincoe.