Bundles of joy, p.11
Bundles of Joy, page 11
‘There you are, Nurse Buckley,’ she said. ‘Take this one, please. Janice Povey. She’s in the admissions room.’
Sister Norris handed me a bundle of notes and I got to my feet immediately and went to find the patient. Janice was twenty-eight years old and, at first glance, appeared to be labouring very well. When I asked if she had anyone with her she shook her head emphatically, and I noticed she was not wearing a wedding ring.
‘I was at work when me waters went in the toilet,’ she explained, gesturing towards the blue tabard apron that covered her clothing.
‘I work in a bingo hall, as a cleaner. I just got in a taxi, on me own, like, and came straight here.’
‘That’s fine,’ I replied. ‘There’s a pay phone you can use before we get you in the labour room, if you’d like to let someone know you’re here. Let’s have a look how far along you are.’
Janice nodded uncertainly before wincing and clutching her abdomen as it tightened. ‘Ooooh, that were right nasty. Mind if I have a ciggie, only I’m really nervous?’
‘No, I’m sorry you can’t, it’s really not encouraged on the wards.’
Janice’s apron and the saggy polyester dress she wore beneath it smelled of a mixture of cigarette smoke, stale beer and lavatory cleaner.
‘Right,’ she huffed and puffed as I set about examining her. ‘How long do you think I’ll be? It’s baking hot in ’ere.’
With that Janice whistled in a long, deep breath as she experienced another strong contraction. She was already six centimetres dilated, I found, and I told her we’d get her into a delivery room very shortly, although of course she might have several hours yet to go. ‘Flaming ’eck,’ she complained, which became her mantra for the next few hours or so, on and off.
Janice’s baby girl was eventually born at just before 4 a.m. the next morning after a perfectly routine labour. Janice did really well, dragging on gas and air and refusing the offer of Pethidine, saying she was ‘doin’ all right’ without it. At one point she even said she was feeling ‘champion’ in between her grumbles of ‘flamin’ ’eck’, which was not an expression I’d heard a labouring woman use before. I thought there was something not quite right with Janice, actually, as this wasn’t the only unusual thing she’d done.
She had not wanted to phone anybody at all, and as far as I was aware nobody knew she had come here straight from work, which was odd. I suspected the problem was that she was not only unmarried, but perhaps she was no longer with the father of her baby. I wasn’t sure, though, as she was giving nothing away.
It was still a little unusual in 1976 for a pregnant woman not to be married, or at least ‘promised’ to someone. If a single women found herself ‘in the club’, as it was often referred to then, it was not uncommon for a ‘shotgun wedding’ to be hastily arranged, typically in the register office with the blushing bride wearing a two-piece suit or a fitted off-white dress instead of a flowing white gown.
Sometimes women turned up at the hospital wearing wedding rings when you could see from the notes they were actually a ‘Miss’. They clearly didn’t want to admit they were having a child out of wedlock and so I would just refer to the partner as her husband to make her feel better. It didn’t matter to me what her marital status was; my job was simply to make the woman feel as comfortable as possible in order to deliver her baby safely.
However, being a pregnant woman without a partner at all, as I suspected was Janice’s predicament, was really quite rare for a twenty-eight-year-old at that time. It was typically only the trickle of pregnant young teenagers we saw who were not only single, but completely on their own. Nevertheless, I treated Janice exactly as I would any other patient, and tried to make her feel at ease by chatting to her and showing an interest in her life.
Janice remained cagey, though, and even avoided telling me which bingo hall she worked in. ‘Oh, you wouldn’t know it,’ she said, closing her eyes, as she had done every time she wanted to steer the conversation in another direction.
Her healthy little girl weighed eight pounds exactly, had an extremely good pair of lungs on her and was splattered in blood and sticky vernix when she made her entrance into the world. She cried loudly as I attempted to clean her up using cotton wool swabs, and she didn’t stop until she was neatly swaddled in an NHS blanket and lying comfortably on her side in a cot.
We’d recently had the luxury of receiving some samples of disposable nappies at the hospital, which we midwives thought were a marvellous improvement on the old terry towelling ones. Disposable wipes and protective bed sheets were also welcome new supplies at this time, and they made us whoop with glee the first time we saw them. However, we were under strict instructions not to give the nappies or wipes out ‘willy-nilly’ but to use them sparingly, to test out what we thought of them and to gauge what the women themselves thought. I think the nappy companies were using midwives for free market research, which was fine by us.
‘I’ve put a terry nappy on your daughter, but I can let you have a few disposable nappies if you like,’ I said. I wanted to engage Janice in conversation, and I also imagined she would be very grateful for the offer of a few nappies.
‘Whatever’, she replied impassively and, unlike practically every other new mum I had encountered, did not ask for a cuddle as her daughter lay in the cot at the side of her bed.
After examining the placenta to make sure it was fully intact, as it should be, I finished writing up my notes and tidied up. Janice’s placenta was perfectly healthy looking and so I took it down the corridor to a large freezer we had in a side room and deposited it, unwrapped, alongside scores of other placentae. They looked like a lot of big pieces of steak. Some were already deep-frozen, others were partly frozen, having been placed in the freezer more recently. It was routine for midwives to place healthy placentae in this freezer, and we all understood that they were collected by cosmetic companies, who used them to make women’s face creams and the like. The oestrogen and progesterone in the placenta were believed to be a valuable and effective addition to beauty products. That’s what we understood, and I don’t recall any of us midwives ever questioning the practice. It was simply one of those standard routines we were taught from the start and accepted as the norm, and the only placentae that didn’t go in the freezer were ones that were incomplete and would need further examination, or were soiled from meconium, which happens when a baby opens its bowels in the womb.
By now a half hour or more had passed since Janice’s baby was born. The new mum had said next to nothing, lying quietly with her eyes shut for most of the time.
‘Have you thought of any names?’ I asked, trying to get her to talk when I noticed her eyes flicker open.
‘No,’ Janice replied sleepily, shuttering her eyelids back down.
‘Oh, well, you can perhaps have a little think when we get you settled on the postnatal ward. I’ll be back very shortly; you have a little rest while I get someone to come and move you.’
When I returned just a few minutes later I was dismayed to see that Janice was off the bed and struggling out of her NHS gown. She was attempting to put her own clothes back on, which she’d kept in a carrier bag beside the bed. I told Janice there was really no need to change before we got her on the ward, as most women stayed in their nightdresses and dressing gowns until they were ready to go home, usually two days later.
‘I didn’t bring an overnight bag,’ Janice said flatly. ‘What with me coming straight from work, an’ all. I’ve not got a dressing gown, so I’m happier in me own clothes.’
I didn’t argue, as the NHS nightgown she was wearing gaped down the back and did not look a comfortable fit, and in fact I helped button Janice into her old floral dress before settling her back on the bed.
‘Now I have to just check on another patient,’ I told her. ‘One of my colleagues will help move you and settle you up on the postnatal ward very soon, and I’ll come and see you before I finish my shift.’
Janice nodded appreciatively and even gave me a smile. ‘Thanks, Nurse,’ she said. ‘You’ve been very kind.’
I dearly wished that when I went up to the ward later Janice would be in a better frame of mind, and hopefully cuddling her baby. However, when I got there at just after 7 a.m. she was nowhere to be seen. I’d been looking after my other patient for an hour or so and knew nothing of the drama that had unfolded in my absence.
‘Social Services have been called,’ Rita, a new pupil midwife, told me apologetically. ‘Miss Povey insisted on leaving, and left the baby behind. There was nothing we could do to stop her …’
I was open-mouthed with amazement. I knew there was something not quite right about Janice, but I didn’t imagine for one moment she would do such a thing.
‘She put an apron on over her dress,’ Rita continued, looking like she might cry. ‘She said she had to go, but she’d be back later. She wouldn’t listen to me when I said she had to stay. Sister took it from there.’
‘Thanks for telling me,’ I replied. ‘And please don’t worry – this is not your fault, you know. If a patient takes it upon herself to walk out of the hospital, unfortunately there’s not a lot we can do to stop her.’ I rubbed Rita’s arm.
I found out later that Janice never did return to the ward as she promised, which didn’t surprise anybody. She did subsequently visit her GP, though, who referred her to a community midwife for postnatal care. I eventually learned that Janice never saw her baby again, and asked Social Services to arrange to have the little girl adopted. It seems poor Janice had hidden her pregnancy from everybody, including her employer, and had planned to leave the baby in the hospital all along.
I never got to hear any more than that, and could only guess at what had happened with the father of the child to have forced Janice into such an unfortunate position. I assumed that the father was not a steady partner and probably didn’t even know about the baby, but I didn’t know for sure. I felt very sorry for Janice and wished she had felt able to open up to me when she was having the baby, as I would have liked to have been able to offer some help, or at least a friendly ear.
The day after this unsettling incident I was sitting on the settee at home, mulling over all this information and wondering if I could have done more to help Janice, when Graham appeared.
I hadn’t been expecting him home from work so early, as it was only just after 4 p.m. I could tell immediately something was wrong as he had beads of sweat on his forehead and looked quite agitated. Jonathan was sound asleep in his pram, which I’d placed by the back door in the shade, and I instinctively felt glad he was not in the room with us, as this was not going to be good news.
I can’t remember Graham’s exact words because I think my brain fogged over. It felt very surreal, but I heard him say the words ‘leaving you’ and ‘it’s over.’
‘OK, then,’ I replied, very coolly. ‘If that’s what you want. I won’t stop you.’
Graham packed up some of his belongings and left within twenty minutes. We didn’t fight or even argue, and I didn’t break down in tears. Looking back, the scenario seems quite unbelievable, but it was truly that brief and simple. I was shocked, of course, even though I knew the writing had been on the wall as we had drifted apart further and further in recent months. I certainly wasn’t heartbroken, though, at least not for myself. Jonathan was my only concern. How would his life be affected by our marriage ending? I knew without having to ask that Graham would still be a part of Jonathan’s life. He was a good father, but we were simply no longer a good couple.
I didn’t argue with Graham, or even question him, because I knew deep down that there was nothing to fight over. Our relationship had run its course. We’d grown up together since he was sixteen and I was seventeen, but more than a decade had passed since then. Now we were twenty-seven and twenty-eight years old, and both quite different people to the teenagers we once were. In short, we were no longer in love and, perhaps worse than that, I think we felt quite indifferent to each other.
When Graham had gone I cuddled Jonathan and felt a deep pang of sorrow on my little boy’s behalf. I told him his father would always love him and he was not leaving him, only me. Jonathan was very quiet, and when I stopped talking I was very aware of the silence surrounding us. Graham’s voice was not going to cut through the silence as it once might have done. He had gone to stay at his mother’s house for the time being. I think that was the saddest moment in the breakdown of my marriage. I didn’t like such silence, but I knew I didn’t want Graham back. Our marriage had died, and that silence marked its passing.
I remember phoning my own mum quite calmly, and explaining what had happened. My voice cracked a little as I spoke and I felt sorry and a little guilty to be the bearer of bad news, but I also felt an element of relief as I spoke. The news knocked everyone for six, of course. We were perceived as a ‘lovely young couple’ within the family, and particularly by the friends of my parents who didn’t know us that well but had attended our wedding almost seven years earlier.
I reassured my mum that I would be fine, and it was for the best, because I really believed that was true. In typical style, she and my dad both said they would support me and do whatever they could to help me. There was no big drama, and they didn’t try to change my mind or interfere.
As the first night alone stretched into a week and then a month and more, I didn’t feel lonely. Sadly, I acknowledged that I was no less on my own that when my marriage had been failing, because Graham and I had ended up living such separate lives.
‘How will you manage?’ I remember a rather nosy neighbour saying to me at a toddler group some weeks later. She looked absolutely horrified as she spoke. ‘I’d not cope at all if I were on my own.’
‘I’ll manage fine,’ I replied. ‘I am managing fine, honestly I am.’
The neighbour was about the same age as me but she reminded me of a younger version of myself: the teenage Linda who needed Graham’s support to get through the day. I looked at her and realised just how much I had grown up. I was an independent woman with a good job, and I was perfectly capable of raising my son as a single mother. The prospect didn’t worry me at all, and I told her as much. She practically winced when I used the word ‘single mother’.
‘There are far worse things that can happen,’ I said, thinking of some of the very sad situations I had encountered through my work. ‘And in my experience things have a habit of working themselves out.’
Chapter Seven
‘What an impatient little boy you are!’
I threw myself into my work, and looking after Jonathan, of course. Work was my therapy and it always has been, helping me through other tough times that lay ahead. My mum was fantastic, offering to look after Jonathan more so I could work two nights a week. I would need the extra money after the divorce, which would take about six months to process.
Over the following months, as Graham and I gradually dismantled the life we had built together, dividing old photographs, wedding gifts, furniture and finances, I always looked forward to losing myself in my work. Being in the maternity unit brought me so much joy. It was a pleasure to bring new life into the world instead of dealing with the demise of my marriage.
It was around this time that I had a rather amusing experience whilst delivering a baby. Women who were ten days or more overdue, or whose waters had broken but had not started labouring, were always brought in and induced in the afternoon. They would be given a Prostin pessary containing a hormone to stimulate the cervix and bring the onset of labour. The hope was that it would start to work straightaway, but if it didn’t the process would be repeated after six hours and another pessary would be inserted in the vagina. Alternatively, they might have their waters broken and be commenced on a Syntocinon infusion, which also stimulated the onset of labour.
More often than not women who had come in for an afternoon induction delivered their baby during the evening or in the small hours of the morning, which contributed to the high number of deliveries we had during the night shift. Nowadays we do it the other way around, inducing women in the evening in the hope they will deliver during the day, when there are more midwives and doctors available.
It was bonfire night in November 1976 when Sister Norris sent me upstairs to Ward 27, the antenatal ward, with the familiar instruction: ‘Nurse Buckley, there’s another induction needs bringing down.’
I took the lift to the first floor and found a friendly-faced lady called Lillian Leyton preparing to be moved onto a trolley, upon which she would be wheeled downstairs to the labour ward. Mavis, the auxiliary, was talking to Mrs Leyton ten to the dozen, as she had a habit of doing when she found herself in the thick of the action.
‘Hello, Linda!’ Mavis waved as I approached the bed. ‘Am I glad to see you! This is a fourth baby, you know!’
All midwives, not to mention experienced auxiliaries like Mavis, knew that fourth babies had a tendency to deliver quickly. The same is often true of second babies, although the third child can be trickier and is commonly perceived by midwives as being a more difficult delivery. I’ve no idea why this is the case, although some midwives have a theory that a woman who has already given birth to two babies expects the third to be easier still. Perhaps this optimistic expectation makes the reality seem worse than it really is? It’s the closest I can come to any kind of explanation.
Anyhow, Mrs Leyton was having very regular contractions that were only a couple of minutes apart, and she gave me a welcoming smile. ‘Hope this is quicker than last ti – aaarrrggghh! Than last time.’
It wasn’t until that moment that I realised I’d delivered Mrs Leyton’s previous baby, a boy called Christopher, when I was pregnant with Jonathan. She’d had a tough time and her very long labour was so painful she had two shots of Pethidine four hours apart before Christopher arrived after a mammoth twelve-hour labour. We’d actually been on the verge of needing to administer a third dose of Pethidine, which was very unusual and would have had to be signed off by a consultant. In the end Mrs Leyton had been so exhausted she could barely speak, I recalled.
