midwife's muse

Grandmaternal distress

The girls, Jack and I had just returned from a leisurely wander when huge, pregnant one said 'ouch'. We looked at her expectantly, 'I don't know what I've done but it feels like a bad muscle strain', half an hour later, with tummy being rock solid and  it had gone. During this time I mused, mused some more and decided that I would be happier if I knew that Baby Bean hadn't been upset by his/her home turning into a cast-iron fortress. Out came my sonic-aid and we tuned in. Beautiful heartbeat, 144, 140, perfect, 132, 120, oh are you going to sleep little one, 106, 100 stop this now, wait a minute, starts coming back up. Daughter looks at me, I smile, 'Oh, silly baby was playing with the cord', then BB did it again. Right that's enough of that, 'I'm just going to take you in and bung you on a monitor', daughter felt that would be a nice idea. In we went, lovely midwife who used to be my student was on hand to welcome us and do the honours. On went the monitor, no dips, but equally a flat trace. Daughter fed iced water, still BB slept, hot coffee, no reaction, external encouragement, one lazy shrug, and then back to a monotonous flat line. After 40 minutes turned daughter to her side, and BB became a whirling dervish, hurrah. (during this time the monitor had also picked up several impressive tightenings). Midwife decided that in view of daughters listing, she is now catagorised as 'High Risk' a doc should see her. He duly arrived, and Oh joy, it was my registrar of last Thursday, he of the odd communication skills. I have to say he was lovely, he explained everything, absolutely everything, including how wonderful stretch and sweeps were. It was at that point that someone knocked on the door and told me that the midwife who delivered Jack was outside. I scuttled out, we had a quick conflab and waited for the Doc to appear. He had a long chat with us about baby's size, he doesn't think it's 5kgs, yet, excess fluid, and said he knew why I had bought her in, yes I had been worried that the placenta was coming away, and that he felt the sooner BB was out the better, she's got until Thursday before they intervene (to be totally honest I would have been happy if they had got on with it there and then). Jacks midwife went in to daughter, and reappeared 5 minutes later with the news that daughter had agreed to a stretch and sweep, or scratch and sniff, as her partner calls it.

So, she's had a S & S, nothing so far. We are still waiting, and waiting.

10.5.05 11:21