Birth in Suburbia - Carol Falaki (well read books txt) 📗

just overheard,
although why she should need courage to talk to her husband she did not know.
She turned her thoughts to Helen, Nigel had promised to ring with news, no matter what the time of day or night. Should she telephone the labour ward, or wait? She opened the kitchen door and took her tea into the garden. The breeze was pleasant and its play on the grass and flowers, along with the arrival of a chubby industrious bee, alighting for a moment to investigate her dressing gown, unexpectedly brought a sense of continuity and peace. Her tea was hot and soothing.
“Get a grip, girl,” she said to herself. Today, she would talk to Sean. It had to be done, clear the air, and prepare the way for their baby. It was the right thing to do.
At seven o’clock she went back into the house to telephone the hospital. “I’m afraid I can’t give you any information on the telephone,” the voice at the other end said. “I will let Helen know you have telephoned, and ask her husband to ring you with any news.”
It was only after the telephone was gently clicked back into place that it occurred to Debbie that Scooter hadn’t got out of his bed. His usual habit was to go straight to the back door as soon as either she or Sean came down in the morning. She went over to his bed, and he looked up at her with sorrowful eyes, moving his front paw. Still, he made no effort to get up.
“What’s the matter, old fella’?” Debbie asked him, suddenly concerned. His skin felt hot, his nose was dry and she noticed his breathing was faster than usual.
Scooter had been her pet for nine years and had been through so much with her that she couldn’t bear to think of loosing him. It never mattered to Scooter what she looked like or how she behaved, unless she was cross with him - he loved her no matter what.
She brought his water over to him and he made an effort to sit up, he was definitely unwell. She would ring the vet's when it opened at eight thirty. Thank goodness Sean was home, he would be able to carry Scooter out to the car.
Debbie made a fresh cup of tea and sat in a chair, next to Scooter, with her foot inside his bed resting gently against his hot belly and wondering what next.

Ed was a midwife with many years' experience of the delivery suite. She went along to Helen’s room and met Amy coming out, an expression of concern on her face.
“Ed," Amy said with relief, “Will you look at this trace for me?” Ed followed Amy into Helen’s room.
Helen was lying on her side, and the syntocinon drip had been stopped again. Her baby’s heartbeat was 180 beats per minute and Ed could see that there had just been a short, but deep deceleration. The rapid heartbeat and the deceleration together
were a sign of foetal distress.
She said hello to Helen and Nigel and asked to look at Helen’s sanitary pad. “I’d like to see the colour of the liquor you are draining, if you don’t mind.” Helen nodded. She felt frightened. She could hear the change in her baby’s heart rate.
“It’s quite fast, isn’t it?” she asked.
“Have you done a VE?” Ed asked Amy.
“No, I was coming to call the doctor first,” Amy replied.
“I’ll ring him you examine Helen. Yes” Ed replied to Helen, “It is quite fast. We are going to get the doctor to come back to see you.” Then she left the room.
Helen was gripping Nigel’s hand. She buried her face in her pillow, too afraid to look at the expression on his face.
“You are still eight centimetres, Helen,” Amy said when the internal examination was over. “Also, your baby has opened its bowels, there’s meconium in your liquor which means it might be getting distressed. The doctor will be here shortly.”
Helen could only nod. To speak might mean losing the thin thread of control that held back her mounting sense of panic.
Dr Shah was with them in minutes, although it seemed an age, during which Helen focused on her baby’s heartbeat, willing it to be okay.
“What’s the position of the baby?” he asked Amy
“There’s a suture line in the transverse and the station is at the spines,” Amy said.
“What does that mean?” Nigel asked.
Dr Shah did not attempt to answer this question. Instead he nodded at Nigel and asked Helen if he could examine her again. “I know that Amy has just done that, but I need to be sure of things before making the decision about what to do next.”
Helen nodded and Dr Shah began to examine her.
“I can’t hear my baby’s heartbeat!” Helen proclaimed suddenly.
“It’s because I have taken the clip off your baby’s head for a moment. Amy, would you find the FH abdominally please?”
She did. It was still there, still very fast.
When he had finished examining Helen, Dr Shah answered Nigel’s question.
“Amy is right about the position. What it means is while your baby has been trying to turn to an anterior position the widest part of his or her head has become wedged against your pelvis. You are still not fully dilated. In view of this, and your baby is showing signs of distress, I think we should perform a caesarean section, Helen, but I need to talk to my boss, Miss Charles, to confirm this.”
The time was five minutes past seven AM.
Helen felt frightened, and Nigel later told her
she appeared to panic. Her fear, she remembered, was for her baby, not herself, and for the lack of control she had over her circumstances. Yet inwardly Helen experienced a sense of calm and of separation, as if it was someone else was experiencing all of this, and not her.
Dr Shah left the room. Amy was there, and the senior midwife, Ed, who had been in earlier, and other people came in; people she had never seen before.
Amy tried to reassure Helen, but her words were diluted by the actions, and words, of the unknown others, who introduced themselves briefly and then did things, like take blood from her arm, shave the top inch of her pubic hair, and ask her to sign consent for a caesarean section. It appeared Dr Shah's boss had agreed with him that that was what she needed.
Another person, the anaesthetist, checked her epidural; asking Helen if she would like to be awake for the section, and when she told him she would, he sprayed something, which he said was cold on her stomach and asked her to move her legs, which she couldn’t. Then he adjusted something on the machine at her side.
“It seems okay but I’ll check it out in theatre,” he explained. “If the epidural block is not adequate, though, I will have to give you a general anaesthetic.”
Amy took Helen’s nightdress off her, trying her best to maintain some of Helen’s modesty, while at
the same time threading her drips through the sleeve, and dressing Helen in a white cotton gown.
Although her legs were numb Helen was aware that they were being tugged and pulled, and glancing down she saw a young girl, possibly a student, struggling with a white stocking which she eventually pulled up to Helen’s thigh, the girl then smiled at Helen and said: “One down, one to go,” and started to apply the second stocking.
“Is she catheterised?” Ed asked Amy.
“Yes”
“Have you checked her arm band?”
“I’ll do that now.”
Ed then gave Helen some sticky clear medicine from a pot.
“It’s an antacid," she explained. “Don’t worry we’ll have your baby out very quickly. It will all soon be over.”
At the same time someone was moving the bed. There was another stranger, a smiling man in blue theatre clothes, pulling the bed and unlocking the room door to allow the bed out. Amy and the student pushed the drips.
“My baby,” Helen said.
“We have unplugged the monitor until we get you into theatre,” Ed said. “As soon as we are in there, we’ll listen in again. Nigel, bring your camera, just in case they have to put Helen to sleep; so you can get some photographs of your baby in the first few minutes for her.
“Bye the way,” Ed added, “that is Bob at the bottom of the bed, good at steering isn’t he? He’ll be in theatre. There’ll be a lot of people in theatre.”
There were lots of people in the operating theatre. Nigel was asked to wait outside while they got Helen ready. He was given a green gown and some disposable plastic overshoes to wear. Bob explained they were to keep his shoes from spreading bacteria into the theatre.
Back in the theatre, the student midwife, who introduced herself as Gemma, stood by Helen and held her hand while the anaesthetist adjusted her epidural.
“You can ask me anything and I’ll try to explain,” she said to Helen.
Amy used a sonic aid to listen to the baby’s heartbeat while at the same time the anaesthetist sprayed Helen’s stomach and lower chest asking all the while:
“Can you feel this? Is it cold? You shouldn’t feel any pain at all,” he told her reassuringly. “But you must let me know if you experience any discomfort and I’ll have you off to sleep as fast as you can wink.”
A screen was raised, between Helen and her stomach, by tying a sheet to the drip stands either side. All around her people were busy. Then she felt herself being tilted sideways, towards her left side; the operating table was moving.
“You’ll stay slightly tilted like that to prevent postural
hypotension,” Gemma said, and then decided to abandon the medical terminology, she added: “It’s to help stop your blood pressure from dropping.”
“Has someone bleeped the paediatrician?” Helen heard someone call, and looked at Gemma, who explained: “We always have the paediatrician in for an emergency section.”
“Can my husband come in?” Helen asked, feeling a sudden pang of fear for her baby, and the need for Nigel’s hand.
“I’ll get him,” Bob said, and placed a stool beside the theatre table, close to Helen’s head.
Dr Shah, now in his theatre gown, came and said hello, followed by Nigel, but Helen had to look twice before she realised it was him - he looked like another one of the theatre staff.