Page 54 of Never Leave Me
“Who are you?” A maidservant stepped into Ellen’s path. With a fully rounded stomach, the servant was expecting a baby soon too. The young woman pressed a fist into her lower back to ease her discomfort. Although her expression was stern, her eyes were rounded with anxiety.
“I’m a midwife.” Ellen sidestepped the woman and approached the basin on the bedside table, intending to wash her hands, only to realize the water was murky with blood. “I want boiled water, clean towels, soap, and oil. Immediately.”
At her command, Marian’s eyes flew open. “Ellen?” Her beautiful brown eyes were frantic.
Ellen reached for Marian’s hand at the same time that she tenderly cupped her sister’s cheek. “I’m here, Marian. Everything is going to be okay now.”
“What are you doing here?” Marian’s voice took on a note of panic. “Are you real or am I dreaming?”
“I’m real.”
Before Ellen could explain anything, another contraction seized Marian, and her face contorted with pain.
“Take deep breaths.” Ellen smoothed a hand over Marian’s forehead and demonstrated the kind of breaths her sister should take.
Marian tried to imitate her, but agonized cries slipped out instead. Her eyes clouded with tears that spilled over and ran down her cheeks. “I’m so scared, Ellen.” She spoke in a gasp. “The baby is not coming, and I fear he won’t make it.”
“Don’t lose hope yet.”
As the contraction ebbed, Marian fell back into the pillows, pale and spent. “I gave them step-by-step instructions for doing a C-section, and they refuse to do it. So I sent Will for the physician. Maybe I can convince him to cut me open and save the baby.”
A cesarean in the Middle Ages without painkillers or antibiotics? Ellen shook her head and began to roll up her tight sleeves. Time to get to work.
She rubbed her hand over Marian’s taut belly, circling and probing and attempting to identify the baby’s position. How ironic that for once Marian wasn’t trying to save her, that she was the one scrambling to keep her sister alive.
Marian released a groan and arched upward again. Her grip on Ellen’s hand tightened at the same moment that her abdomen contracted. The veins in Marian’s arms and neck pulsed outward, the strain on her body more than she could handle.
Fear shimmied up Ellen’s backbone, but she shook herself to dislodge it. She had to stay calm and retain a clear mind. It was the only way she would be able to help Marian.
“How long has she been laboring?” Ellen continued to pressagainst Marian’s abdomen. From the upward hard bulge, Ellen suspected the baby was breech.
“Since last eve.” The pregnant maidservant’s tone dropped with both dread and defeat.
“And what have you attempted so far?”
Two of the women were local midwives and explained the efforts they’d already made while Ellen set to work washing her hands thoroughly with the clean water a servant had delivered and then oiling them. From what Ellen gathered, not only was the baby breech, but Marian was failing to progress. Something was holding the baby back.
Thankfully the presenting part was the baby’s bottom. The bottom was better than feet, but still so much could go wrong, especially without medical technology to aid them. Ellen did a quick internal examination too, and wasn’t surprised to find that Marian was fully dilated.
She prayed the cord wasn’t trapped or tangled, cutting off oxygen and blood to the baby. Without a stethoscope or monitors, she had no way of knowing if the baby was still alive. Either way, they needed to get the baby out before Marian lost any more blood.
The midwives had already tried every trick they knew to turn the baby and help the delivery along. But after the hours of labor, Marian was simply too weak and tired to do more.
Squaring her shoulders, Ellen forced herself to remember everything she’d ever read or learned about childbirth. “Let’s change her position, have her stand up a little. We’ll have two of you support her from the back. Then one of you can palm the baby’s head through the abdomen and gently push down.”
With everyone helping, they hoisted Marian so she was squatting at the edge of the bed. Then Ellen knelt on the floor and rotated the baby. “Don’t push yet.”
Was the baby’s bottom stuck under the pubic bone?
As another contraction tightened Marian’s abdomen, Ellen swiveled the baby again, freeing it, and then let the pull of gravity do its work. In the next moment, the baby’s buttocks slid down and out. She hooked her fingers over the flexed legs and tugged them out as well.
“The legs are born, and the cord is pulsing.” Ellen’s voice rose with her growing excitement. “That means the baby is still alive.”
Marian released a sob.
“You have a girl.” Ellen gently cradled the baby’s bottom half in her hands. “Let’s wrap the baby so she doesn’t get cold and gasp. We don’t want her inhaling amniotic fluid.”
One of the other women quickly folded a towel around the infant. As the next contraction came, Ellen guided the body, turning it a little clockwise until both shoulders were delivered and the arms out.
