Leave to Remain by Michael Dees

Author:Michael Dees
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Michael Dees
Published: 2022-10-23T00:00:00+00:00

Chapter Twenty-Four - The Baby - 7th December 2008

It had been almost two days since her water had broken. When she told William, he almost flew into a hysterical panic and rushed her to the hospital but, because she was not dilating and because the maternity ward was full, the hospital sent Teresa and William back home and said they should return once the contractions were a few minutes apart.

Neither of them slept much that night and most of the next day they spent timing the distance between contractions until they could wait no longer and returned to the hospital. This time they gave them a bed, but Teresa’s cervix turned out to be stubborn and refused to dilate.

Checking in the birth plan, the midwife on duty read that Teresa had opted for a natural birth, if possible, although that had been more of William’s idea. Teresa would have opted for a caesarean, like eighty-five per cent of her contemporaries in Brazil.

When the doctor arrived, he ordered the nurses to give Teresa some drugs to help with the dilation. They also gave her some gas to help with the pain. William was eager to experiment.

The hours came and went, but Teresa’s cervix was as stubborn as ever and refused to dilate. Two days after her waters broke, the hospital gave her an epidural, and the doctor decided it was time for an emergency caesarean and they wheeled Teresa to the operating theatre with William looking awkward following behind in the pale blue scrubs the nurses gave him.

In the theatre, the anaesthetist gave her more gas while they set a screen up over her torso to separate her from what the medical professionals were preparing to do at the other end.

William stayed with her at the head side of the screen. He looked more worried than she felt, and she felt terrified about what was about to happen. After the long waiting, the two days of contractions, the procedure to cut the baby out of her seemed quick.

“You have a girl,” said the midwife, beckoning William to take their new daughter.

Before she handed the small bundle of flesh to William, the midwife first placed a screaming Annabel onto a set of scales which Annabel grabbed onto, displacing the tray after the nurse weighed her.

Separating her from the scales, the midwife handed the tiny Annabel to William, who took the screaming infant for Teresa to see.

“Hello, my love,” said Teresa, and Annabel stopped crying, listening for the voice which had been so familiar for the last nine months.

All babies are beautiful, Teresa thought. She looked at her daughter in the arms of her husband, at the infant’s head, elongated to alien proportions, and a wave of responsibility swept over her. Unlike all the previous things that entered her life, this one she could not put down and forget about while she did something else. She would need to know where her daughter was and what she was doing for almost the next

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