Pregnant with Her Best Friend's Baby

by Alison Roberts

  Maggie was going to hold the baby’s head and apply some gentle traction with the next contraction. Kathy was red-faced and gasping as she pushed. This time the baby’s head came a little further but then it stopped.

  ‘What’s going on?’ Darren looked fearful as he looked up from the baby to meet Maggie’s gaze. ‘Why isn’t it coming out?’

  It was an effort to keep her voice this calm, especially as Kathy started sobbing. ‘Baby’s shoulders are just a bit caught behind the bones at the bottom of Kathy’s pelvis.’

  Darren put his arms around his wife. ‘It’ll be okay, hon. These guys know what they’re doing.’

  ‘Why is this happening?’ Kathy cried. ‘After all this time and it’s been so hard...it’s not fair...’

  ‘It could be a positional thing,’ Maggie said. ‘Or maybe your baby’s a bit bigger than the scan suggested. Don’t worry, we have several ways we can help.’

  And less than five minutes in which to do so.

  Joe was right beside her and they were able to talk quietly for a few moments as Darren tried to comfort and reassure Kathy as she sobbed.

  ‘We can only spend about thirty seconds on each manoeuvre to deal with shoulder dystocia,’ Maggie said. ‘I know the protocol but I’d like to get some expert obstetric backup on the radio.’ She lowered her voice even further. ‘We need to be prepared for a neonatal resuscitation, too.’

  Joe reached for the radio clipped to his belt but he was still listening to Maggie. ‘We’ll try the McRoberts manoeuvre first. If that doesn’t work, I’ll need you to provide traction while I put on some suprapubic pressure.’

  Maggie turned to Darren. ‘Help me move Kathy down towards the end of the bed,’ she told him. ‘And, Kathy? I want you to pull your knees up to your chest and then push as hard as you can with your next contraction.’

  Even as she was encouraging Kathy to push and telling her how well she was doing, Maggie’s brain was racing through the next steps, which would mean applying pressure to try and move the baby’s shoulders both externally and then internally. If that didn’t work she would have to follow guidance from one of the consultants in the maternity wing of Wellington’s Royal Hospital. She didn’t want to have to think about the more drastic measures that might need to be taken or the risks to both baby and mother.

  Joe caught Maggie’s gaze as the sounds of the effort Kathy was putting into pushing began to fade into exhausted groans. Maggie nodded and they shifted positions, with Joe gently taking hold of the baby’s head and Maggie moving to the side of the bed where she could feel for the position of the baby’s shoulders.

  ‘You’re going to feel me pushing this time as well,’ she told Kathy. ‘We need the biggest push you’ve got this time.’

  ‘I can’t,’ Kathy moaned. ‘I can’t do it...’

  ‘Yes, you can.’ Darren was lying across the top of the bed, holding both of Kathy’s hands. ‘Hang on tight...you’ve got this...’

  Maggie could feel the curve of the baby’s back beneath her fingers and then the lump of the tiny shoulder. She locked her hands by weaving her fingers together and then put the heel of one hand just above the shoulder. As Kathy’s next contraction gathered strength and she started to push, Maggie pressed down on the baby’s shoulder. Joe was applying traction. At one point during the tense thirty seconds of effort, Maggie and Joe held eye contact with each other. They co-ordinated a rocking motion as Kathy’s contraction began to recede and, finally, Maggie could feel the movement beneath her hands as one shoulder and then the other was freed.

  ‘Keep it going,’ she urged Kathy. ‘Just a little bit more... Baby’s coming... Push, Kathy...push...you can do it...’

  And there was the baby, in Joe’s hands. Looking...alarmingly limp. Maggie reached for the clamps and sterile scissors from the birthing pack roll. They needed to cut the cord fast if resuscitation was needed.

  ‘Is he okay?’ Kathy was trying to push herself up onto her elbows. ‘What’s happening...?’

  ‘He’s breathing,’ Joe told her. ‘And starting to move. I’m just going to check his heart rate.’

  The baby was moving and screwing up his little face as though he wanted to cry but couldn’t find the energy yet. They were both good signs but his colour wasn’t great, with his extremities a dark shade of blue, and Maggie wasn’t sure that his breathing was adequate. Joe wasn’t looking too worried, however. He was smiling down at the baby as he dried it off with a soft towel.

  ‘Hey there, little guy. You going to tell us what you think about all this?’

  Maggie had the cord clamped and the scissors in her hand but, if an urgent resuscitation wasn’t needed, she didn’t have to rush.

  ‘Darren? Do you want to cut the cord?’

  ‘Apgar six at one minute,’ Joe told her. ‘Heart rate is over a hundred but the resp rate is on the slow side and he’s pretty blue.’

  By the time Darren had cut through the cord, the baby was starting to make sounds. The first warbling cry came a few seconds later and Kathy burst into tears and held out her arms.

  ‘Can I hold him? Please?’

  Again, Maggie and Joe shared a glance. And a smile this time. This situation was under control now with the emergency delivery successfully managed. Kathy still needed careful monitoring because she was at more risk of a postpartum haemorrhage after the complication with her baby’s delivery, and she needed to transfer to an obstetric unit as quickly as possible. But keeping the baby warm was also a priority and the best way to do that was to have him skin to skin with his mother and to cover them both with warm blankets.

  It was Maggie who scooped up the infant to place him in Kathy’s arms and, as she felt the weight of the newborn in her own arms and against her own breast, she felt oddly close to tears. Because it was a reminder of that ache of emptiness she’d been so aware of earlier when she’d been thinking of the baby her friend Fizz was going to have?

  No. These were more like tears of joy. How precious was this new life? Especially this one, after giving them all a fright on his way into the world, but all babies were just amazing and the joy of being part of a delivery was something that would never grow old.

  This was more than a purely professional satisfaction, however. Maybe there was an echo of that ache of longing. Of the emptiness. Not in her arms that were still full of this new life but somewhere further down in Maggie’s body—in the space where a baby of her own might grow one day.

  Her smile was definitely a bit wobbly as she helped Kathy move her clothing and gather her baby onto her chest.

  ‘He’s just gorgeous,’ Maggie murmured, stepping back to let Darren get close to his wife and baby for a few precious minutes of family bonding time as she and Joe got packed up and ready for the transfer to hospital.

  Darren sounded a lot closer to tears than Maggie was. ‘Looks just like his daddy, I reckon,’ he said. ‘How ’bout that?’

  Maggie checked her watch as she rapidly assessed the baby again before turning away to give this brand-new family just a moment of relative privacy. ‘Apgar score eight at five minutes,’ she told Joe.

  He nodded, grinning, and then stripped off his gloves and unclipped his radio. ‘Andy? We’ll be ready to go inside ten minutes. Crank up the central heating in the cabin, we’ve got a baby to keep warm on the way home.’

  Darren overheard him. ‘Will there be room for a dad in the helicopter as well?’

  ‘Sorry, mate.’ Joe shook his head. ‘It’s going to be a bit crowded. You’ll need to follow us by road.’

  ‘Don’t worry,’ Maggie added, to soften the blow. ‘We’re going to take very good care of both Kathy and the baby.’

  * * *

  A medical team, including Fizz Wilson, was waiting on one side of the Royal’s rooftop helipad to take over Kathy’s care as soon as they landed and lifted out the stretcher.

 
‘Third stage happened en route,’ Maggie told Fizz. ‘Oxytocin was administered on scene after the birth but I would estimate blood loss with the delivery of the placenta was still around three hundred mils with ongoing but slower loss now. She’s on her second litre of normal saline. Blood pressure’s one hundred and five over fifty.’

  ‘I feel fine,’ Kathy said. ‘Just a bit tired, that’s all.’

  But Fizz took note of the low blood pressure and the urgent need to control any ongoing bleeding.

  ‘Let’s get moving,’ she instructed the ED staff with her. ‘Maggie, can you bring the baby, please? We’ve got a paediatric team waiting for him downstairs.’

  Maggie followed Kathy’s stretcher with Joe walking beside her. ‘I could get used to this,’ she said.

  ‘What? Having full-on cases with successful outcomes? That’s two today.’ Joe was smiling. ‘I could get used to it, too.’

  ‘No... I mean this...’ Maggie looked down at the tiny sleeping face visible amongst the folds of blanket in her arms. ‘Carrying a baby around. I think I want one.’

  Joe made a shuddering sound. ‘Rather you than me, mate. Hey...’ He increased his pace as the stretcher was slotted into the rooftop elevator. ‘Is there room for us in there, too?’

  They squeezed in.

  Fizz was right beside Maggie. She had her gaze fixed on monitor screen of the life pack, taking in as much information about Kathy’s condition as she could, but she slid a quick sideways glance at the baby a moment later.

  ‘Any problems?’

  ‘Not at all. He was a bit flat to start with but he picked up quickly. Apgar score was ten at ten minutes.’

  Fizz was smiling as she turned back to her patient. ‘He’s so cute,’ she told Kathy. ‘Have you decided on a name yet?’

  ‘I like Aiden,’ Kathy said. ‘But Darren wants him to be Patrick, after his dad. We decided we’d wait and see what suited him more.’ She twisted her head, trying to see her baby’s face. ‘I think he looks like an Aiden, don’t you?’

  Maggie smiled. ‘Aiden’s a great name.’ But so was Patrick, she thought. One of her favourite boy’s names, in fact. She wondered if Fizz and Cooper had already started discussing possible names for their baby or if they knew whether it was a girl or a boy.

  The elevator doors opened again as they reached the ground floor and Fizz stayed by the head of the stretcher as it was swiftly rolled towards a resuscitation area in the emergency department. Kathy would have no idea that her doctor was pregnant, Maggie thought. And here she was, with baby Aiden or Patrick still in her arms. It was baby overload today, that was for sure.

  Her head was still full of it when she and Joe finally got to take a break and sat down in the staffroom of the Aratika Rescue Base.

  ‘I haven’t finished the paperwork for the post-cardiac arrest case yet, let alone for the birth,’ Maggie sighed.

  ‘It won’t take too long,’ Joe said. ‘I’ll do the cardiac one.’

  ‘Because it’s half-done already?’

  ‘No. Because you’re the one who wants a baby. This way, you get to enjoy the case all over again.’

  ‘Hmm...’ Maggie shook her head. ‘It could have turned out to be not very enjoyable at all. I was so relieved the moment I felt that shoulder start to move.’

  ‘I’ll bet.’ Joe pulled the folder of paperwork towards him and took a pen from the pocket of his overalls. ‘Keep it in mind when you choose the father of your baby. You’re so short, it might be wise not to marry a solid, over six foot tall farmer like Kathy did.’

  ‘Five foot four is not short. I’m average,’ Maggie countered. ‘And I don’t even know any farmers. Or any potential baby daddies at all, in fact.’

  ‘They’re out there. In droves. You just haven’t been looking.’

  ‘That’s because I got fed up with relationships that were going nowhere fast.’

  Including the one she’d been in with Richard, years ago, when Maggie had first started working at the rescue base. One that had had a promising start but had ebbed into being nothing more than flatmates. Friends. And it hadn’t been enough for either of them.

  ‘Maybe that’s because you go into them expecting them to be going somewhere. That can scare guys off, you know. It would scare the hell out of me, that’s for sure. In fact, it’s precisely why I’m currently single again.’

  Maggie snorted. ‘It’s a baby I want. A partner would be a bonus, of course, but I’m running out of time to jump through all those hoops.’ She was only half joking. It really did feel like she was running out of time, given how many dead ends she had already come up against in the search to find someone to share her life with. ‘And who says you have to marry someone to have a baby, anyway? You might marry someone and end up being a single mother anyway—like Laura.’ Her flatmate had escaped what she suspected might have been an abusive relationship years ago when her son, Harrison, was only a tiny baby.

  ‘So you’re going to do the independent professional woman thing and go to a sperm bank or something?’

  Maggie blinked. ‘D’you know, I hadn’t actually thought of that.’

  ‘Why not? You read about people doing it all the time. Especially older, professional women who choose not to get married or realise they’re running out of time. People just like you. And it seems like a great way to get a designer baby. You could practically choose its hair colour and how smart it’ll be.’ But Joe was frowning now. ‘Of course, you’re going to provide the other half of the genes so it might just come out with blonde hair and blue eyes and to be not very...’ His lips twitched.

  Maggie threw her pen at him. ‘Are you trying to tell me that I’m not very smart?’

  Joe had already caught the pen. ‘I was only going to say you’re not very tall.’

  Maggie narrowed her eyes. ‘Not sure I believe that. And what did you mean by “something”?’

  ‘Huh?’

  ‘You said a sperm bank “or something”.’

  ‘Oh...’ Joe picked up his coffee cup and took a swallow. ‘You could just pick someone you liked the look of, I guess, lay on the charm and lure them home and hope that he’s not too careful about birth control.’

  ‘Joe... How irresponsible would that be?’

  ‘Irresponsible on the part of the guy, that’s true.’ Joe shook his head. ‘I’d never relinquish that responsibility.’

  ‘I couldn’t get pregnant and not tell someone that they were going to be a father. That’s just not right.’

  ‘I guess.’ Joe was focussing on the paperwork in front of him now. ‘Do what I read about a gay couple doing recently, then. The women asked one of their good friends and he agreed to be the donor. He said he wanted them to have their family and he was happy to be a kind of uncle but never wanted to be a father.’

  They both concentrated on the paperwork for a while but, even as Maggie filled in the precise details relating to the obstetric case that was clearly going to be the last job for their shift today, another line of thought was ticking along somewhere in the background of her brain.

  Thoughts about sperm banks. How easy was it to get accepted for treatment and how expensive it might be. And how it worked. Did you have a wish list of things to tick off, like physical characteristics of height and hair colour or evidence of intelligence such as a university qualification? What about more important attributes like whether someone could make you laugh or how kind he was?

  Thoughts about the other things Joe had suggested circled in her mind, too. Randomly picking some guy with the intention of seducing him and possibly lying about being on birth control was not an acceptable option but...but the idea of using a co-operative friend, now that was interesting...

  * * *

  So interesting that it was the only thing Maggie was thinking about as she kicked her bike into life and threaded her way through the city traffic
not long after her conversation with Joe.

  By the time she was getting into bed that night, it had started to feel like it was her own idea.

  And, out of all the men she knew, there was only one that stood out as a perfect possibility.

  Joe Wallace.

  The thought of broaching the subject was a bit nerve-racking. Enough so to keep Maggie awake for quite some time. On the positive side, he’d had a half-smile on his face when he’d said ‘rather you than me’ when she’d been holding Kathy’s baby, and had said she wanted one as well, so maybe he was on the same page as that co-operative friend he’d told her about—who didn’t want to become a father but was happy to be a kind of uncle.

  On the other side of that coin, however, was the fact that she’d be stepping into a realm that had never been there with Joe and that was why their friendship was so solid. They’d both been in long-term relationships when they’d first met as colleagues. By the time they were single, they were already good friends and Maggie had learned the hard way that friendship was not enough to base a long-term relationship on. Joe was off limits and he clearly felt exactly the same way and that had never been a problem. But baby-making, no matter how you ended up actually doing it, had everything to do with sex and even the thought of opening that conversation with Joe was enough to make Maggie blush.

  But it wasn’t enough to make her dismiss what seemed to be a perfect plan. As she drifted off to sleep Maggie’s thoughts were tumbling, interwoven with memories that went back so far they were no more than misty glimpses. She’d had an old-fashioned child-sized pram when she was very little and she would cram every doll and teddy bear she owned into that pram and wheel it everywhere.

  My babies, she would tell everyone.

  When she was older she had her fashion dolls that gave her a mother and father figure and she would add smaller dolls as their children. Lots and lots of children because that was what made a ‘real’ family. It wasn’t that she hadn’t been happy and loved as an only child, it was just that she knew it was a case of the more the merrier. Her parents had desperately wanted more children and had been sad that it hadn’t happened but it hadn’t dented the rock-solid love they shared. They would be the best grandparents ever.