An Irish Country Welcome by Patrick Taylor

Author:Patrick Taylor
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Tom Doherty Associates

20

He Turneth It Upside Down

Barry sat in the observer’s chair, watching and listening. An errant beam of early-September sunlight through the surgery window warmed him, and he relaxed into the chair. There really wasn’t much for him to do. Sebastian was clearly well versed in routine antenatal care and Barry wondered why it was necessary to supervise the man. Barry shrugged. His job was to supervise, and he’d do his job.

Sebastian seemed to have abandoned his habit of wearing his Old Harrovian tie, presumably understanding he’d not be seeing a schoolmate here in rural Ulster. Instead he wore a plain green one, a Donegal tweed sports jacket, and a plain white shirt. Stethoscope in ears, he was in the middle of taking Mildred Anderson’s blood pressure as part of a routine antenatal check-up. Mildred was twenty-three years old, carrying her second pregnancy. Barry knew her of old. A waitress in The Priory Inn in Holywood until two years ago, she had now elected to stay home with the couple’s toddler son, Angus. Her husband, Ken, worked at Bangor station as a ticket collector for the Belfast and County Down Railway. Barry’d seen her for a fractured fibula four years ago. That had been the last time she’d played ladies’ hockey.

Sebastian said, “Everything seems to be progressing as it should, Mildred. You haven’t gained too much weight, your blood pressure is normal, your urine’s clear.”

And Barry, now that Sue had reached eighteen and a half weeks, hoped that Harith would be saying the same thing every time he saw her for the next twenty-one and a half weeks. Barry worried about her, but not as much as she had started to worry about herself. Once the great relief that she wasn’t going to miscarry had subsided, Sue couldn’t help question Barry about every little thing that was different. He shrugged. So be it. It was his job to reassure her.

Sebastian stuck his stethoscope in his jacket pocket. “There is one thing, but I don’t think you need be unduly worried.”

“Oh?”

Barry heard the apprehension.

“Your womb is where it should be for thirty-two weeks in a second pregnancy, and there’s one baby lying straight up and down. But right now, its bottom is at the bottom of your tummy.”

She frowned. “Oh. Is that what youse doctors call a breech, like?”

“It is but try not to worry. Babies wriggle about all over the place.”

She laughed. “The way this one kicks you’d think I’d half the Linfield soccer team in there.”

“And that’s good. It’ll almost certainly have got its head down where we’d like it to be by your next visit in two weeks. If not, we’ll get you seen at Royal Maternity, where a specialist will try to turn it.”

“How’d he do that?”

“He’ll probably not need to. Only three percent of babies are breech at full term, but if he does try to correct the lie, it’ll be by using the pressure of his hand on the baby through your tummy. It doesn’t hurt and it won’t hurt the wee one.

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