The Midwife's Child

Jed listened to them all and then shifted his position slightly, his demeanour one of calm confidence. ‘OK, Fiona, I want you to listen to me. Are you listening to me?’

Fiona’s sobbed lessened sl

ightly and she nodded.

‘Right.’ Jed’s voice was firm and authoritative and it seemed to work. Fiona calmed down a bit more. ‘Where did you have your first baby? Which hospital?’

Fiona told them and Jed nodded to Brooke. ‘See if you can get hold of some notes, will you, please?’

Brooke did as he asked and by the time she came back into the room Fiona was much calmer and Jed was still talking, his voice steady and reassuring.

Fiona sniffed. ‘So you’re saying that if I don’t stay in hospital the baby is at risk again.’

‘I’m saying exactly that,’ Jed agreed, his eyes still fixed on the frightened woman. ‘I don’t know why your first baby was stillborn because I don’t have your hospital records. Sometimes we can’t always find a reason.’

‘It was their fault—!’ Fiona began, and Jed closed strong fingers over the woman’s hand.

‘For the sake of the baby you’re having now, it would be best if you tried not to think about it. The most important thing is to concentrate on what is best for this baby.’

‘Is there something wrong with him?’ Fiona accepted the tissue that Brooke handed her and blew her nose hard. ‘You’re telling me he’s going to die and it’s my fault.’

Jed gave her hand a squeeze. ‘I’m not telling you anything of the sort! Your blood pressure is very high and we need to deal with that, but I also need to do is a complete examination. Because you’ve had no antenatal care at all, I need to find out how pregnant you are and how the baby is. Will you let me do that?’

‘Are you a consultant?’ Fiona looked at him, her eyes swollen. ‘Only I don’t want any junior doctors messing around with me. I know they’ve got to learn but they’re not doing it on me.’

‘Yes, I’m a consultant. I’ve been doing obstetrics for twelve years.’ Quietly Jed ran through his c.v., giving her details of where he’d trained and the research that he’d done.

‘That’s the best hospital in the world, isn’t it?’ Fiona murmured as she listened to what he said. ‘So you must know what you’re doing.’

‘I certainly hope I do.’ Jed gave her a gentle smile. ‘So now you know more about my credentials than my own mother, will you trust me?’

Fiona bit her lip and gave a brief nod. ‘OK.’

‘Good.’ Jed glanced at Brooke. ‘Let’s get an ultrasound done and take some blood. I need plasma urate levels and a platelet count, and we need to check her urine again. Now, Fiona, wriggle down the bed so that I can feel the baby. Have you any idea when your last period started?’

‘Tenth of July,’ Fiona answered promptly, and Jed nodded and moved his hands over her abdomen, barking out more instructions to Brooke and his SHO who had arrived and was hovering expectantly.

‘Can you check the EDD, Brooke?’

Fiona scowled. ‘Don’t use jargon! What’s EDD?’

‘Expected date of delivery,’ Brooke explained gently, checking her calculator. ‘And yours is the sixteenth of April.’

‘Which would make you about 36 weeks now,’ Jed said, rummaging in his pocket and pulling out a tape measure.

‘What’s that for?’ Fiona frowned and Jed gave her a wink.

‘It may not look very hi-tech, but it’s a surprisingly accurate way of checking how pregnant you are.’ He quickly measured from the top of her uterus to her pelvis. ‘Now all we need is a scan. Is the baby moving around?’

Fiona patted her stomach and started to look more relaxed. ‘All the time.’

‘Good. Right. So now let’s deal with that blood pressure.’

They spent the rest of the morning sorting Fiona out and by mid-afternoon Jed had decided to try and induce labour.

‘You have a condition called pre-eclampsia,’ he explained to Fiona, strands of dark hair flopping over his forehead as he spoke. Brooke stared at it for a moment, remembering all too well how it had felt underneath her fingers. ‘The only real treatment is to deliver the baby, and as you’re already thirty-six weeks pregnant we’re going to do exactly that.’

Fiona looked scared. ‘You’re going to operate?’