Call the Midwife: A True Story of the East End in the 1950S

get her to drink something hot it will help. Hot water and honey would do; a teaspoon of brandy in it would be even better. The main thing is to treat the shock. And let us all hope and pray that the bleeding won’t get worse.”
     
    Len went out to issue some instructions, and to pacify the terrified family gathered around the door. Liz and I started to clean the dirty sheets and linen from under Conchita. Len soon returned with clean sheets and hot water bottles, and Liz and I started to make the inert body comfortable.
     
    Len must have gone over to the dresser. Liz and I had our backs to it, busy with Conchita. We heard a gasp.
     
    “It’s alive!”
     
    “What!” I cried.
     
    “It’s alive, I sez. Ve baby’s alive. It’s movin’.”
     
    I rushed over to the dresser, and looked at the gory mess in the kidney dish. It moved. The blood actually moved. My heart stood still. Then I saw the tiny creature in the pool of blood, and its leg moved.
     
    Oh, dear God, I could have drowned it! I thought.
     
    I lifted the tiny body out with one hand and tilted it upside down. It seemed to weigh nothing. I have held a new born puppy of about the same size. My head raced.
     
    “We must clamp and cut the cord quickly. Then we must get him warm.”
     
    It was a little boy.
     
    I felt desperately guilty. The cord should have been clamped five minutes earlier. If he dies now, it will be all my fault, I thought. I had discarded this tiny living soul to drown in a dish of blood and water. I should have looked more closely. I should have thought.
     
    But wallowing in self-reproach gets us nowhere. I clamped and cut the cord. I felt the fragile rib cage. He was breathing. He was a survivor. Len had warmed a small towel on a hot water bottle, and we wrapped him in the cloth. He moved his head and arms a little. All three of us were stunned by the life in the baby. None of us had seen a human child quite so tiny. A baby that is two months premature usually weighs about four pounds, and seems tiny enough. This baby was about one and a half pounds and looked like a tiny doll. His arms and legs were much smaller than my little finger, yet a miniscule nail completed each digit. His head was smaller than a ping-pong ball, and looked disproportionately large. His rib cage looked like fish-bones. He had tiny ears, and his nostrils were the size of a pin-head. I had never imagined that a baby of around twenty-eight weeks could be so lovely. I felt I ought to suck the mucus from his throat, but was terrified of hurting him. Anyway, when I got the catheter, it was far too large, and would never have gone into his mouth. To force a hosepipe into a normal baby’s mouth would have been just as inappropriate. So I just held him nearly upside down with one hand, and gently rubbed his back with one finger.
     
    I had no experience of caring for a premature baby, and did not know what to do. All my instincts told me that he must be kept warm and quiet, preferably in the dark, and with frequent feeding. No cot was ready. Where could we put him? Just then Conchita, who was lying quietly, spoke.
     
    “ Niño . Mi nino . Donde está mi niño? ” (Baby. My baby. Where is my baby?)
     
    We looked at each other. We had all thought she was semi-conscious or asleep, but obviously she knew exactly what had happened, and wanted to see her baby.
     
    “We’ve gotta give ’im to ’er. Liz, you tell her he’s very little and we’ve gotta be very careful with him.”
     
    Liz spoke to her mother, who smiled slightly and sighed with weariness. Len took the baby from me and sat down beside his wife. He held the baby in one hand so that the child lay within her gaze. Her eyes had been vacant and unfocused for several moments and I don’t think she saw or understood at first; she had expected to take a full term baby into her arms. Liz spoke to her again, and I heard the words.
     
    “ El niño es muy pequeño .” (The baby is very small.)
     
    Conchita struggled to adjust her vision to the minute scrap held in Len’s hand. You could almost see the struggle and the effort it cost her. Gradually she became aware, and with a sharp intake of breath put out a shaking hand to touch the child. She smiled, and murmured “ Mi nino. Mi querido nino ,” (my baby, my darling baby) and drifted off to sleep, her hand resting on Len’s hand and the baby.
     
    Just then, the Flying Squad arrived.
     

THE FLYING SQUAD
     
    v An Obstetric Flying