Call the Midwife: A True Story of the East End in the 1950S
injected it into the thigh.
“She must have one ampoule I.M. for seven days b.d.,” he said, as he entered it on the notes, and wrote out a prescription.
“Now I’m going to try to see about this blood. That’s as much as I can do at present. Frankly, nurse, I don’t know what to do about the baby. I think I will have to leave it to you and the Sisters. They are sure to have more experience than I have.”
“Or me,” I said. “I have never handled a premature baby before.”
We looked at each other with shared helplessness, and he left. Bless him, I thought. He hadn’t had any sleep for God knows how long; it was about 5 a.m., it was a filthy morning; and now he was leaving, on foot in thick fog, to try to get the blood sorted out. No doubt he had a surgery at 9 a.m. and a full day’s work after that.
I was so tired I could scarcely think. The adrenalin had been pumping all night, and now my body was drained. Conchita was sleeping; the baby could have been alive or dead for all I knew. I tried to think if there was anything I could do, but my brain wouldn’t work. Should I go back to Nonnatus House? How could I get there? The policemen had gone, and I couldn’t face the prospect of cycling alone in the fog.
Just then Liz came in with a cup of tea.
“Sit yerself down, luvvy, and ’ave a rest,” she said.
I sat down in the armchair. I remembered drinking half a cup of tea, and then the next moment it was daylight. Len was in the room, sitting on the bed, brushing Conchita’s hair and murmuring sweet nothings to her. She was smiling at him and the baby. He saw me waken and said, “Feel better now, nurse? It’s ten o’clock, an’ it said on ve news tha’ the fog’ll start to lift today.”
I looked at Conchita who was sitting up in bed, the baby still between her breasts. She was stroking his little head and cooing to him. She looked pathetically weak, but her skin colour and her breathing had improved. Above all, her eyes were still focusing and she looked collected. The delirium from concussion had quite gone.
From then on she improved rapidly. No doubt the penicillin helped, but alone it could not have effected the astonishing transformation, within a few hours, from someone close to death who didn’t even know her own husband, to a calm competent woman who knew exactly what she was doing and why.
I have a theory that it was the living baby that cured her, and that the crisis had occurred when she thought that they were going to take him away. In that moment, her powerful maternal instincts had kicked in, and told her that she was the protector, the provider. She didn’t have time to be ill. She couldn’t afford to be woolly minded. His life depended on her.
Had the baby died at birth, or had he been taken away to hospital, I think Conchita would have died also. The animal world is full of such stories. I have heard that a sheep or an elephant will die if the baby dies, and live if the baby lives.
The level of consciousness or unconsciousness is also deeply interesting. Having sat with many dying patients over the years, I am not at all convinced that what we call “unconscious” is anything like the state of unknowingness we think it to be. Unconsciousness can be profoundly knowing, and intuitive. Conchita had seemed quite unconscious, yet her hand tightened over her baby when the paediatrician tried to take him. She could not have seen who was in the room, because her eyes were not focusing, nor known what had been said, because she did not understand the language. Yet somehow she understood that they were planning to take her baby away, and she fought back with every ounce of her strength. This had cured her.
Douglas Bader, the Battle of Britain flying ace, tells a similar story. After an air crash and bi-lateral mid-thigh amputations, he heard a voice say, “Hush, a young airman is dying in that room.” The words focused his mind, and he thought, “Die? Me? I’ll bloody well show you.” The rest is history.
Conchita reached for a saucer at the side of her and began to squeeze her nipples, pressing out a few drops of colostrum, which fell into the saucer. Then she took a fine glass rod which was used by one of her daughters for icing cakes. She held the little baby in her left hand and, having suspended a drop of colostrum on the glass rod, touched his lips with it. I watched, fascinated. His lips
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