marks on the underside of her bump; tight young skin wasn’t used to being stretched so. However, the good thing about her age was that her body should bounce back afterwards.
I sat on the edge of the bed, facing her head. I rubbed my palms hard to take the chill off them, but she jumped when I put them on her.
Sorry, they’ll warm up. Try to relax your belly for me.
I slid my hands from one spot to the next without lifting them; crucial not to tap as if playing piano because that made the muscles contract. I shut my eyes and tried to picture Mary O’Rahilly’s inner landscape based on what my hands told me. There it was, the firm top of the uterus, six finger-widths above her navel; she was full term or close to it. So the flu hadn’t managed to shake this particular nut out of its shell early, thank God.
One foetus only. (We dreaded twins.) Normal presentation, head down and facing the spine. I found the small bottom and traced the arc of the back downward. Your baby’s in just the right position.
It is?
The head seemed nicely lodged in the pelvis. Not that this told me whether she was in true labour or not, because in first-timers, the skull could lock into place a full month before birth.
Bridie came back in with Delia Garrett, perched on the bed on the other side of Mary O’Rahilly, and took her hand without asking. What are you doing now, Nurse Power?
If you’ll get me that thing on the top shelf that looks like an ear trumpet, I’m going to listen to the baby’s heartbeat. Nice deep breaths for me, Mrs. O’Rahilly.
I placed the wide end of the wooden horn against her belly on the side where I’d felt the back but below the midpoint, and I put the narrow end to my ear.
What—
That was Bridie; I shushed her with a finger to my lips. I counted, staring at the second hand on my watch.
Foetal heart rate 138 beats per minute, I recorded, quite normal.
A cough spasmed through Mary O’Rahilly, so I got her sitting up and sent Bridie over to the kettle to make her a hot lemonade. In the meantime, I had the young mother drink a tall glass of water. When her next pang started, I checked my watch—twenty minutes since the last. I settled her on her left side and told her to breathe in for a count of three, out for three, and repeat. If these were only warning shots, the combination of water, position, and breathing should ease them.
I checked on Ita Noonan—still asleep.
All right, Mrs. Garrett? Any more looseness?
She clucked her tongue. Quite the other way around, I’m all bunged up now.
It puzzled me how she could be feeling constipated so soon after diarrhea.
Mary O’Rahilly’s small, uneasy humming stopped.
I asked, Would you say that that one was about the same or milder?
She answered confusedly: About the same?
Probably true labour, I decided. But if her pangs were still coming at only twenty-minute intervals after more than a day…oh, dear, the girl could have a long way to go still.
Though of course, the last thing I wanted was for one of my patients to start delivering in this cramped little room when there wasn’t a single obstetrician in the hospital.
An internal examination to find out how far the cervix was dilated would tell me more, but I was holding off because it had been drilled into me that every time one’s hand went inside a woman, one ran some risk of infecting her.
When in doubt, I’d been taught, watch and wait.
You know what might help is if you felt able to walk around, Mrs. O’Rahilly.
(That could help the cervix dilate, and it distracted the woman and gave her something to do.)
Startled, she asked: Walk where?
I wracked my brain. I couldn’t send infectious patients to roam the corridors, but there wasn’t room to swing a cat in here…Just up and down, around your bed. Here, we’ll get these chairs out of the way. Sip your lemonade as you go.
Bridie had the chairs stacked and tucked in under the desk before I could ask.
Mary O’Rahilly stepped cautiously around the bed and back again in a U.
All right? Are you warm enough?
Yes, thank you, miss.
Nurse Power, I corrected her gently.
Sorry.
No bother.
Mary O’Rahilly was clutching her bump through the nightdress, poking one finger into her navel.