Mothers

A frantic obstetrician and an excited policeman chased through Boston last week, expecting disaster when they caught up with Mrs. Rubina Hartman. A few hours after giving birth to a girl in City Hospital, Mrs. Hartman, 33, had dressed, visited friends, then gone to her home in suburban Roxbury. Nurses found the infant lying alone in Mrs. Hartman's hospital bed. No mania impelled her, the mother averred when doctor and policeman reached her. She felt well; she had work to do at home; she was going to do it; the hospital, she knew, would look after the baby and bring it to her in good time; as for bad after-effects to herself, why she was not one of those dieting, pinched-hipped, nervous women who needs a doctor every time she has a twinge. "I'm not going back to the hospital," said Mrs. Rubina Hartman.

Discovering that she was going to give birth before she could travel from her house to Chicago's Maternity Center, Mrs. Leonard Nelson telephoned there for advice. With the telephone receiver clutched to her ear. she then proceeded to do precisely what the alert obstetrician at the other end of the line told her to do. After eight minutes of this Mrs. Nelson cried that she had borne a son and started to hang up. A neighbor, however, snatched the receiver, yelled over the phone: "She's going to have a twin." The doctor: "Let me talk to Mrs. Nelson again." For five more minutes Mrs. Nelson followed telephoned directions, bore her second son, sighed. "Thank you, doctor," and hung up.

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