Birth in Suburbia, Carol Falaki [electronic reader .TXT] 📗

also wanted some reassurance that everything was alright. Apart from the fluid leaking there was no sign she was about to go into labour. Leo offered to drive
them, but Maggie declined.
“We might be there a while,” she said, “and you are too distracted to drive us safely.”
Reluctantly he gave Liz and Maggie a hug and went to watch the sport with Harry in the living room.
“Women’s stuff,” Harry said. “Best let them get on with it.” Liz kissed her dad and collected her bag while her mum telephoned the labour ward.
When they arrived the labour ward was fairly quiet, the midwife told them. Liz was monitored for half an hour or so. The baby’s heartbeat was fine. Liz was wearing a sanitary pad, given to her by the midwife when she put her on the monitor; An hour or so later it was wet. The midwife looked at it and confirmed Liz did not need speculum examination to prove her waters had gone, because it was so obvious.
“Definitely spontaneous ruptured membranes, I’ll have to get the doctor to see you,” she said.
“Why’s that?” Liz asked her mum, after the midwife had gone.”
“They may offer to start you off, with a drip, to get your contractions going, because you’re not having any.”
“I don’t have to though, do I?”
“No, you don’t,” Maggie stressed.
“The midwife said your baby is fine from the look of the trace, and she said most women with pre-labour rupture of membranes will go into spontaneous labour
within 24 hours. You want to be at home, don’t you?”
“Yes I do,” Liz said. “I don’t want the drip if I can help it. I’ve heard that the contractions can be harder to handle, and I’d have to spend my whole labour on a monitor. I’ll go home and wait.”
The doctor was very pleasant when she came and explained to Liz her options. She could come into hospital and they would start her off, with a syntocinon drip, or go home and come back the following day if nothing was happening, or before if she was worried about anything. She seemed especially concerned to make sure that the fluid, or liquor as she called it, was not smelly and that Liz did not have a temperature, explaining that any sign of infection, such as those she described, would warrant action.
“It has a metallic smell,” Liz said
“That’s fine,” the doctor reassured her. “What I mean is a bad smell, a sign of infection. If you are not sure call your midwife or come in to have it checked.”
While they were waiting in the admission room Liz remembered that Helen had been admitted to the unit that day to be induced.
“Can you find out if she has had the baby yet, Mum?” She asked Maggie. “I know nothing was happening yesterday because I saw Nigel at the front of the house. He looked quite glum.”
Maggie went to investigate and when she discovered that Helen was still upstairs waiting for her
labour to really get going they decided to go and visit her for a few minutes.
“Won’t it be strange of we are both in labour at the same time?” Liz asked her mum.
“ I think Helen might be a little fed up by now, Liz, and if she thinks there’s a chance you might have your baby before her, that is certain to make her feel more miserable.”
“You’re right. Perhaps if we just pop in and wish her well but not say anything about my waters having gone, we can take her some flowers from the shop here and just say we were passing.”
By this time it was two thirty. Liz and Maggie, flowers in their arms, met Helen and Nigel as the door of the lift they were waiting for opened. They stepped out of the lift. There was a midwife with them. Helen looked very uncomfortable and leaned forward to support herself on a rail during a contraction. It was a daunting moment for Liz, although Helen was unaware. Liz lost her voice; she touched Helen’s arm.
“We are going to the labour ward,” Nigel announced proudly; his face looked drawn. “Helen is three centimetres at last.”
“Well done, Helen,” Maggie said, and Helen, having recovered from the contraction, whispered: “It’s about bloody time. You can swear when you’re in labour, can’t you?”
“Is that the best you can manage?” the midwife asked.
“No, I’m saving the best for later.” Then she was off again with another contraction, leaning on Nigel this time.
Maggie gave the flowers to the midwife to hold.
“We’ll be thinking of you. Don’t forget to let us know, when you can,” Maggie said, and they watched them enter the labour ward.
By the time they arrived home Leo had left, with a promise to come back later, which he did, with Tom, a bottle of wine, and some chocolate.
It was a strange evening. No one could settle. They played scrabble and kept the TV on. Every time she felt a trickle Liz would go to the bathroom to inspect the colour of her liquor. Leo was on full alert and reminded her of a hawk, and she told him so.
“You are watching me even when you are facing the other way, your eyes have moved to the side of your face.”
Tom thought this was hilarious and called him Hawkeye all night. Leo was not amused. “I am just concerned, I’m looking out for Liz,” he said.
Liz telephoned Debbie, who knew Helen had gone to the labour ward, but was astonished, and envious, to realise that Liz was also going to have her baby before her.
“How is Debbie?” Maggie asked.
“She sounded okay, but I think she is good at putting on a brave show. I’m sure she must be really fed up.”
“You should have asked them round,” Harry said.
“I did, Dad, but Sean was working at the computer. They are going out Monday evening to celebrate Debbie’s birthday.”
It was eleven thirty, and only after Maggie had insisted, before Tom managed to drag Leo out of the door.
“Liz needs to get some rest,” Tom said. “She’s got a big day coming.”
“I’ll let you know as soon as anything happens,” Liz told him. “If it does, Leo, you can come and boil kettles if you want, but you’re not coming in to where the action is, you’ll have to stay with Dad in the kitchen, or wherever I’m not.”
“It’s a deal. See you later or tomorrow.”
Liz was exhausted, but there was still no sign of a contraction. The only thing she managed to do through the night was trickle clear liquor, and poo for England.
“Where the hell is all this coming from?” she said to the bathroom mirror when she woke to go to the loo for the fourth time at three thirty a.m.

Three thirty a.m. and Helen had just had her epidural sited. She felt like she had entered heaven after being in hell. Numb from her stomach down and only just able to wiggle her toes, she looked around the room. It was like seeing it for the first time. The lights
were on full and the room was littered with the debris of the epidural procedure, which Amy, her midwife, was tidying away. Her bag and shoes were on the floor in the corner and there were a couple of trolleys containing packaged equipment and a large machine which, Amy had told her, was the baby rescuscitaire; adding that it was quite common for a baby to “need a whiff of oxygen" when it comes out.
Helen had a drip connected to her arm and another drip taped down her back to where the epidural had been put in.
The one in her arm was to strengthen her contractions, and the other, into her back, was to stop the contractions hurting. They were being run through two machines on a stand beside the bed, and had been set to regulate the drugs as they were pumped into her. In addition there were two bands around her stomach for the monitor recording her baby’s heartbeat and her contractions, and the catheter that the midwife had put in to empty her bladder because she had not been able to wee.
She had no knickers on, and had been dribbling fluid constantly since the midwife had broken her waters, not long after she had arrived on the labour ward.
Her TENS machine lay discarded on the window ledge and the gas and air mask hung over the chair. She didn’t need them any more.
Nigel reclined in a large chair next to the bed,
sipping hot tea. He looked exhausted, but Helen knew he could in no way be as tired as she was at this moment.
When she was told that she was three centimetres and could go down to the labour ward she had felt almost elated. Suddenly, with the knowledge that she was actually in labour, Helen felt better able to cope with the contractions she was having, even though they were regular and strong. Then, since coming to this room, on the labour ward, she had worked so hard to try to remember her breathing techniques, to relax, and do all the things she had read about. She had spent the past 13 hours hoping that there would only be a few more contractions to go.
With the syntocinon drip, used for induction of labour to stimulate contractions and which had been started after she had come to the labour ward, her contractions were now coming every two to three minutes and lasting for what felt like a long time.
Some time back, she couldn’t remember when, she had been given a diamorphine injection, which Nigel told her had caused her to talk gobbledegook. She didn’t care. It had helped her through a few hours.
She had tried to change position a number of times but found it too painful to move. When she did move, Amy had had difficulty trying to record her baby’s heartbeat, and she was finding it increasingly difficult to cope with the contractions.
The decision to have an epidural had been made after Helen’s last internal examination.
“I’m afraid you are only seven centimetres,” Amy had said. The negativity of her statement fed Helen’s sense of disappointment. She had been six centimetres three hours and a lot of contractions ago. Amy explained how a graph was used to chart the progress of labour and the graph was demonstrating that Helen’s labour was progressing slowly.