Darren was lying across the top of the bed, holding both of Kathy’s hands. ‘Hang on tight...you’ve got this...’
Maggie could feel the curve of the baby’s back beneath her fingers and then the lump of the tiny shoulder. She locked her hands by weaving her fingers together and then put the heel of one hand just above the shoulder. As Kathy’s next contraction gathered strength and she started to push, Maggie pressed down on the baby’s shoulder. Joe was applying traction. At one point during the tense thirty seconds of effort, Maggie and Joe held eye contact with each other. They co-ordinated a rocking motion as Kathy’s contraction began to recede and, finally, Maggie could feel the movement beneath her hands as one shoulder and then the other was freed.
‘Keep it going,’ she urged Kathy. ‘Just a little bit more... Baby’s coming... Push, Kathy...push...you can do it...’
And there was the baby, in Joe’s hands. Looking...alarmingly limp. Maggie reached for the clamps and sterile scissors from the birthing pack roll. They needed to cut the cord fast if resuscitation was needed.
‘Is he okay?’ Kathy was trying to push herself up onto her elbows. ‘What’s happening...?’
‘He’s breathing,’ Joe told her. ‘And starting to move. I’m just going to check his heart rate.’
The baby was moving and screwing up his little face as though he wanted to cry but couldn’t find the energy yet. They were both good signs but his colour wasn’t great, with his extremities a dark shade of blue, and Maggie wasn’t sure that his breathing was adequate. Joe wasn’t looking too worried, however. He was smiling down at the baby as he dried it off with a soft towel.
‘Hey there, little guy. You going to tell us what you think about all this?’
Maggie had the cord clamped and the scissors in her hand but, if an urgent resuscitation wasn’t needed, she didn’t have to rush.
‘Darren? Do you want to cut the cord?’
‘Apgar six at one minute,’ Joe told her. ‘Heart rate is over a hundred but the resp rate is on the slow side and he’s pretty blue.’
By the time Darren had cut through the cord, the baby was starting to make sounds. The first warbling cry came a few seconds later and Kathy burst into tears and held out her arms.
‘Can I hold him? Please?’
Again, Maggie and Joe shared a glance. And a smile this time. This situation was under control now with the emergency delivery successfully managed. Kathy still needed careful monitoring because she was at more risk of a postpartum haemorrhage after the complication with her baby’s delivery, and she needed to transfer to an obstetric unit as quickly as possible. But keeping the baby warm was also a priority and the best way to do that was to have him skin to skin with his mother and to cover them both with warm blankets.
It was Maggie who scooped up the infant to place him in Kathy’s arms and, as she felt the weight of the newborn in her own arms and against her own breast, she felt oddly close to tears. Because it was a reminder of that ache of emptiness she’d been so aware of earlier when she’d been thinking of the baby her friend Fizz was going to have?
No. These were more like tears of joy. How precious was this new life? Especially this one, after giving them all a fright on his way into the world, but all babies were just amazing and the joy of being part of a delivery was something that would never grow old.
This was more than a purely professional satisfaction, however. Maybe there was an echo of that ache of longing. Of the emptiness. Not in her arms that were still full of this new life but somewhere further down in Maggie’s body—in the space where a baby of her own might grow one day.
Her smile was definitely a bit wobbly as she helped Kathy move her clothing and gather her baby onto her chest.
‘He’s just gorgeous,’ Maggie murmured, stepping back to let Darren get close to his wife and baby for a few precious minutes of family bonding time as she and Joe got packed up and ready for the transfer to hospital.
Darren sounded a lot closer to tears than Maggie was. ‘Looks just like his daddy, I reckon,’ he said. ‘How ’bout that?’
Maggie checked her watch as she rapidly assessed the baby again before turning away to give this brand-new family just a moment of relative privacy. ‘Apgar score eight at five minutes,’ she told Joe.
He nodded, grinning, and then stripped off his gloves and unclipped his radio. ‘Andy? We’ll be ready to go inside ten minutes. Crank up the central heating in the cabin, we’ve got a baby to keep warm on the way home.’
Darren overheard him. ‘Will there be room for a dad in the helicopter as well?’
‘Sorry, mate.’ Joe shook his head. ‘It’s going to be a bit crowded. You’ll need to follow us by road.’
‘Don’t worry,’ Maggie added, to soften the blow. ‘We’re going to take very good care of both Kathy and the baby.’
* * *
A medical team, including Fizz Wilson, was waiting on one side of the Royal’s rooftop helipad to take over Kathy’s care as soon as they landed and lifted out the stretcher.
‘Third stage happened en route,’ Maggie told Fizz. ‘Oxytocin was administered on scene after the birth but I would estimate blood loss with the delivery of the placenta was still around three hundred mils with ongoing but slower loss now. She’s on her second litre of normal saline. Blood pressure’s one hundred and five over fifty.’
‘I feel fine,’ Kathy said. ‘Just a bit tired, that’s all.’
But Fizz took note of the low blood pressure and the urgent need to control any ongoing bleeding.
‘Let’s get moving,’ she instructed the ED staff with her. ‘Maggie, can you bring the baby, please? We’ve got a paediatric team waiting for him downstairs.’
Maggie followed Kathy’s stretcher with Joe walking beside her. ‘I could get used to this,’ she said.
‘What? Having full-on cases with successful outcomes? That’s two today.’ Joe was smiling. ‘I could get used to it, too.’
‘No... I mean this...’ Maggie looked down at the tiny sleeping face visible amongst the folds of blanket in her arms. ‘Carrying a baby around. I think I want one.’
Joe made a shuddering sound. ‘Rather you than me, mate. Hey...’ He increased his pace as the stretcher was slotted into the rooftop elevator. ‘Is there room for us in there, too?’
They squeezed in.
Fizz was right beside Maggie. She had her gaze fixed on monitor screen of the life pack, taking in as much information about Kathy’s condition as she could, but she slid a quick sideways glance at the baby a moment later.
‘Any problems?’
‘Not at all. He was a bit flat to start with but he picked up quickly. Apgar score was ten at ten minutes.’
Fizz was smiling as she turned back to her patient. ‘He’s so cute,’ she told Kathy. ‘Have you decided on a name yet?’
‘I like Aiden,’ Kathy said. ‘But Darren wants him to be Patrick, after his dad. We decided we’d wait and see what suited him more.’ She twisted her head, trying to see her baby’s face. ‘I think he looks like an Aiden, don’t you?’
Maggie smiled. ‘Aiden’s a great name.’ But so was Patrick, she thought. One of her favourite boy’s names, in fact. She wondered if Fizz and Cooper had already started discussing possible names for their baby or if they knew whether it was a girl or a boy.
The elevator doors opened again as they reached the ground floor and Fizz stayed by the head of the stretcher as it was swiftly rolled towards a resuscitation area in the emergency department. Kathy would have no idea that her doctor was pregnant, Maggie