DR. ALISHA BRUMLEY SUTTON
The monitor felt tight on Lish’s belly. Her doctor suspected a mild placental abruption, a slight pulling away of the placenta from the uterine wall. Sometimes blood could pool in the space between the two and that was why she was bleeding yesterday. It had been almost twenty-four hours and the baby’s heart seemed steady and strong, but Lish could still feel her abdomen tighten every few minutes, and she had a localized pain on her left side that must be where the abruption was.
She knew enough about obstetrics from her medical school rounds on these very halls to know that if the baby continued to look strong and the pain subsided, she’d be able to go home late today. If the baby fluctuated too much, she’d be here until the fetus was strong enough to be delivered. Of course, if the child went into distress, that was another story altogether. One she didn’t want to think about.
The steady sound of the baby’s heart rate as it moved across the monitor reassured her. Each child she had delivered had been strong and fully developed—able to hold on her chest, skin to skin, and nurse within minutes after their routine deliveries. In fact, she had practiced her Kegels so much with Mary Jane that she didn’t even need an episiotomy. What a relief. She was jogging around The Battery within two weeks after that delivery, and she could wear her size four jeans by the end of the first month. As a pediatrician who had treated many sick babies, Lish understood how fortunate she was. With both Andrew and Mary Jane, her milk production was plentiful and her children seemed to thrive from the moment they left the womb.
Stronger than the contractions and the localized pain was the emptiness in her belly. With the exception of half of the last third of Mary Jane’s waffle, she hadn’t eaten anything in almost twenty-four hours.
“Darla,” she said to the nurse who came in every hour or so to check the monitor and take her temperature. Lish made it a point to learn the nurse’s names right away. They are the ones who are on the ground doing most of the work; they are the ones who are around to save your life at a moment’s notice. “I’m starving.”
Darla gently cocked her head to the side. “You know you can’t eat anything until we’ve observed the baby for twenty-four hours.” She checked her watch. “You’ve got six to go.”
“I know,” she said. “But how about a Popsicle or even a few ice chips? I’m afraid I’m going to be sick if I don’t eat.”
Darla grinned and nodded as she walked toward the door. “Let me see what I can do.”
Drew should have been back by now. He had to make his rounds and check in at the lab, but he had traded schedules with Dr. Willis so he could be off for the next day or so. Where was he?
Lish was thankful that Anne had offered to go to Babies R Us. She knew Della was aching for another child, and she didn’t want to have to send her to the baby store. But if the baby came this week, Lish needed a car seat to take her home in. Mary Jane had had reflux so bad, she must have spit up on their old car seat a hundred times. The cover was worn out from all of the washing, and Drew insisted they throw the whole contraption away when she graduated from the infant seat into a forward-facing one.
Now Lish closed her eyes for a moment. She was thankful for Della too. Della could handle the kids. She could handle them for a year if she had to. Poor Della. She was the brightest and most capable person Lish knew, but she and Peter had trouble making ends meet.
She checked the “labor and delivery” file Drew had brought from home. In it was the article she wrote for the paper about the importance of creating a birth plan. She had delivered both Andrew and Mary Jane without any anesthesia, and she’d avoided the usual grogginess and headaches some of her friends had complained of postpartum. With each birth, Drew had had one of the nurses immediately snap a photo of the mother-child bonding after he rested the baby on her chest, and these photos were framed and hung in their bedroom as a reminder of the momentous occasion.
Besides her husband, she didn’t want any family in the room for several hours. They would both need time to connect with their beloved little one. Then, by the afternoon, the rest of the family could meet the new arrival. First her children, who would be anxious to meet their younger sibling. She wanted Drew to take a photo of their faces at their first sight of the baby; she would put them in a frame she found at Metropolitan Deluxe that read “my family” and hang them in the nursery as well. Now she read the closing of her column,
While I’ve encouraged you to go with the flow during much of your pregnancy, in this particular case, you can’t plan or be specific enough. If you don’t have a vision, you will be frustrated and powerless, and your first hours with your baby will be decided by well-meaning medical professionals and family members who may not fully realize what this initial bonding means to you and your child.
Lish put down the article and looked out the window as an extremely sharp contraction began. She heard the baby’s heart rate slow on the monitor and there was suddenly a warm pool beneath her. Blood. She pressed the call button for the nurse just as Darla walked in with a Popsicle on a tray.
Darla dropped the tray and ran out in the hall. “She’s hemorrhaging!” she called down the hall to the nurse’s station.
Lish’s eyes clouded over, but she could still hear Darla and the others.
“Fetal distress,” Darla said, her voice trembling as two other nurses crowded around and checked the vitals.
“Get Dr. Hunter and Dr. Chang,” another said. “This is going to be a crash C-section, and it may have to happen right here.”
“We’re with you, Dr. Sutton. You’re going to be okay.” Lish nodded, but she couldn’t open her eyes. The sound of her baby’s heart in distress was deafening. She heard a nurse paging Drew, and she was aware of a cool swab being rubbed across the lower half of her belly. The last thing she felt was the tube scraping the back of her throat as the anesthesiologist shoved it in.