Three new mothers
The clock on my computer reads five am. It’s Australian time, but it doesn’t much matter. I did night shift last night. I’ve been awake for nearly thirty hours. The witching hour of five am seems more fitting than midday.
I have tried to sleep. I lay in my bed. I lay in my bed and I listened to the woman upstairs, walking over her creaking floorboards, my creaking ceiling. Creak, cree-eak, creak, cree-eak. I tried to ignore it but I couldn’t. I tried to block it with earplugs but I could only find one. Like people, they work better in pairs. I gave up, and got up. And now I sit here, in front of my computer, at five am. But it’s the right time. It’s the kind of time when new mothers are awake, and it’s mothers that are on my mind, three new mothers, and me.
Shortly after four this morning, I met Josie, and her husband Bob. Josie’s placenta had implanted too low. Even with cesarean delivery, she was at risk of bleeding, or hysterectomy. So when her contractions started, two months early, she was rightly terrified. Josie, Bob and I talked. We talked about anaesthetic options, we talked about transfusions, and while we were wating for the paediatrician to talk about prematurity, we talked about things unrelated, things like holidays, their toddler at home, my apparently amusing accent, all distractions from their current predicament.
I had just administered Josie’s epidural when my pager went off twice in quick succession. I didn’t have time to answer before I heard an anonymous but anxious command from outside.
“We need you in the other room NOW. Uterine rupture.”
Suddenly Josie wasn’t my only patient and she certainly wasn’t my sickest.
I ran next door. The room was filled with people, and the noise of their frenetic activity made it clear both mother and baby were in trouble. As a bass note to the cacophony, I could hear the foetal heart monitor. Normally a baby’s heart hums along. DUBdubdubdubdub. But in this baby, like the winding down of a wind up toy, the heart was slowing, and death was circling. Dub..dub…….dub…………dub.
The patient was already on the operating table. Someone wheeled her bed away, the puddle of blood on the sheets so substantial, it was dripping onto the floor. The surgeon pulled gloves on, washed skin still wet beneath, and draped the patient, ready for incision. I made my way to the head of the bed.
- Hello, I’m your anaesthesiologist. Do you have any allergies?
- Can you open your mouth for me?
- OK, I’m going to put an oxygen mask on your face. Take some deep breaths for me, I’m going to get you off to sleep so we can get your baby out.
Fighting to get the mask off, with the only words she spoke, she asked me
- Will my baby be alright?
I think she knew, from the noise in the room, that I couldn’t answer that. I held her hand as I injected the drugs and said all that I could,
-We’ll look after you.
And we did. The blue and floppy baby that emerged from her bloody womb soon gave a weak cry, then lay pink and placid in his cot. The surgeons repaired the tear while I stabilised her blood pressure, learned her name, Janey, and her medical history.
I took Janey to the recovery room, and went back to Josie and Bob. Josie had fallen asleep, Bob was still talking, making nervous jokes with the nurse left in there to mind them. And finally, after so much waiting, we began. It was entirely uneventful. A small but healthy baby girl was born shortly after six thirty. There was minimal bleeding. They named her Basia and both parents cried when they first saw her.
Now I did say there were three new mothers on my mind, and I’ve only introduced two. The third new mother isn’t a patient, she is a very dear friend back home. I know her baby’s name and weight, sent by text message. But I can’t tell her story. I wasn’t there. And sometimes I wonder why I’m here, at the birth of children of strangers. But I shouldn’t think about these things now. I need to sleep.
Tags: Canada, Expat life
