LITMIR.BIZ

      CHAPTER ONE

      ‘CAESAREAN birth, seventeen-ten,’ the scout nurse intoned. Everyone glanced at the clock as the baby was delivered into the world. Nobody spoke. The theatre staff at Midcoast Hospital, New South Wales, were too busy willing the baby to move.

      The child lay tinged with blue and still, across his mother’s green-draped stomach.

      Come on, Baby, Poppy McCrae urged silently as she moved into action. This was why she was here. She knew how resilient babies were once they had oxygen and the stimulation of the outside world.

      Her gloved fingers directed the tiny suction tube to gently clear his mouth and nose as Dr Gates clamped and severed the ropy link between the baby and his mother.

      Poppy gathered the tiny human to her chest and carried him to the resuscitation trolley. How he responded in the next five minutes would indicate his oxygen depletion.

      Her elbow knocked the clock timer to keep track of time since birth and she positioned him on his back with his head towards her. She briskly rubbed the infant’s damp skin with a warmed towel. Sometimes, towelling would be enough to stimulate a baby to breathe. His little limbs wobbled slackly with her movements and Poppy winced. Twenty seconds since birth.

      She reached for the stethoscope and listened for his heartbeat, heard the newborn’s slow steady beating in her ears and exhaled in relief. A sluggish beat was much better than no beat at all.

      Placing the mask firmly over his nose and mouth, she gently squeezed oxygen into the tiny lungs with short puffs from the bag. Poppy nodded slightly at the way his chest rose and fell as she squeezed the bag.

      One minute since birth. It felt like ten. His heart rate was better at just under a hundred beats a minute. She glanced up at the scrub-room window. Still nobody there. She frowned. Where was this new paediatrician?

      ‘Do it, Baby. Wake up and smell everybody sweating.’ She rubbed the infant again and continued puffing oxygen through the mask, noting the faint improvement in his skin colour.

      ‘You’re a dawdler, but you’re working on it. Good boy.’ She patted him.

      The operating-theatre doors whooshed open and Poppy looked up briefly in relief. A tall figure, masked and gowned, strode over to the resuscitaire.

      ‘Dr Sheppard. Paediatrician. How long since birth?’

      The previous week’s speculation about him was unimportant now and she glanced at the timer ticking away. ‘Two minutes, Doctor.’ They still didn’t know why the baby had become distressed during labour, and Poppy prayed there was no birth defect causing the problem.

      She swapped places so he could stand at the baby’s head. ‘Slow foetal heart rate since admission and decreased foetal movement. Stunned at birth. No respiratory effort as yet, although pinking up slightly with bagging. Heart rate just under a hundred now.’

      Poppy kept her gaze on the baby’s chest as it rose and fell with each squeeze of the black rubber bag.

      ‘How long was the labour and how much pethidine did the mother have?’

      ‘Less than four hours before the midwife noticed a sudden change in foetal heartbeat. As for the other...’ Poppy smiled at the memory of the baby’s earth mother and looked up at him ‘...we don’t use pain relief like pethidine very often here. The only drugs on board come from the anaesthetic. The baby was supposed to be born at home.’

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