Claiming Noah (7 page)

The bath did help, but after a while Catriona's skin started to pucker and her back felt stiff. James called the midwife and together they helped her to get out of the bath and back into bed.

‘Well, the good news is that your cervix has opened up a bit,' the midwife said a couple of hours later. ‘So, we'll be able to break your waters now.'

‘Thank God for that.'

Catriona stared out the window while the midwife rummaged around with some surgical equipment on the medical cart in the corner of the room.

‘What's that thing?' James asked as the midwife approached Catriona with a long plastic hook.

‘It's called an amnihook. It pierces the amniotic sac.'

‘I don't want that thing going anywhere near my baby!'

Catriona couldn't help but laugh at the terrified look on James's face. She had read about amnihooks in her pregnancy books, but she had never thought to tell James about them. ‘It's not as bad as it looks. It's just like bursting a balloon.'

‘That's exactly right,' the midwife said. ‘It shouldn't touch the baby, and your wife won't feel any pain.' She turned to Catriona. ‘Usually, after the membrane ruptures, you'll start to feel pressure from the baby's head resting on your cervix, which can be uncomfortable, so get yourself ready for that.'

After fourteen hours in the hospital without a single contraction, Catriona was more than ready for her labour to start. Her baby had taken control of her body for the past nine months and now it was dictating the conditions of its arrival as well.

James took hold of her hand and smiled at her in a way she knew was meant to reassure her, but she saw his gaze dart towards the amnihook. A few seconds later Catriona felt the sensation of warm liquid between her legs.

‘There you go,' the midwife said. ‘I told you it was easy. Now we'll give it a while to see if your contractions start naturally.'

But the contractions didn't start. After another two hours, the midwife was back in the room. ‘Okay, we have to move on to Plan C now. Your little one seems to want to stay put, so we're going to have to get things moving.'

Catriona sighed and leaned back against the pillows on the bed. James was stroking her hair and she was trying to resist the urge to tell him to stop touching her. She wanted him to go away for a while, but she knew he wouldn't leave. ‘I can't believe it's taking so long. Is Plan C the drip?'

‘That's right. We're going to put you on to a Syntocinon drip. It mimics the hormone Oxytocin, which your body produces when you're in labour. That's what starts the contractions.'

‘Will it definitely work?' James asked.

‘It will definitely augment the labour, but the pain can be more severe than if contractions start on their own, so you'll need to prepare for that,' the midwife said. ‘We'll keep the monitor on you full-time now, so you'll need to stay in bed, I'm afraid.'

James smiled at Catriona. ‘It won't be much longer now. You're doing really well.'

Her contractions did start, and they were as painful as the midwife had warned, but they progressed at an infuriatingly slow pace. As the hours went on Catriona grew sick of waiting, sick of being in bed, and sick of the sound of James's voice telling her it would all be over soon. Every half-hour the midwife increased the dosage on the drip, which increased the intensity of the contractions. Before long Catriona was barely able to draw breath before the next contraction hit. But they kept telling her she still had a long way to go.

Twenty-six hours after she had arrived at the hospital, Catriona was physically and emotionally exhausted. She desperately wanted a drink of water, but there was no time in between her contractions to ask for one, and she hardly had the energy to speak. The lights on the ceiling wavered in and out of focus and she was barely aware of who was in the room with her. She assumed James was still there somewhere because she heard his voice every now and again, but there could have been an entire football team in the room and she wouldn't have noticed.

With each contraction she felt for sure it was going to be the one that ripped her insides in two. The gas the midwife gave her hadn't alleviated her pain, and despite the intensity and frequency of the contractions it seemed she was no closer to having the baby than she had been twenty-six hours earlier. An epidural had never been part of her birth plan, but when she thought she could handle the pain no more she mustered the strength to ask for one.

Relief washed over her as the epidural took effect and the pain receded, but the relief was short-lived when she heard the conversation her midwife was having with the obstetrician.

‘BP's dropping.'

‘How's the baby doing?'

‘Starting to show signs of distress during the contractions and a slow recover to baseline.'

‘How long has she been on the Syntocinon?'

‘Ten hours.'

The obstetrician's face hovered over Catriona's. ‘We think it's important to get your baby out soon, so we'd like to talk to you about your options.'

‘What's happening?' she asked, struggling to prop up her body with her elbows. She looked across at James for reassurance, but he seemed as distressed as her.

‘The epidural has caused your blood pressure to drop, and that's affecting the amount of oxygen getting to your baby. Because you're on a high dose of Syntocinon your contractions are very strong and we're concerned about how your baby will cope if we continue.'

Catriona looked at the heart-rate monitor, but in her exhausted state she couldn't make sense of it. ‘What should we do?'

‘We can't be sure how much longer a natural delivery will take,' the obstetrician said. ‘And if the heart rate continues in this pattern, then we'll need to get your baby out as quickly as possible. My opinion is that a caesarean is the safest option for you and your baby at this point.'

‘I don't want that,' Catriona said, hearing the whine in her voice but not caring. ‘I want a natural birth.'

‘We can keep trying for a little while longer if you want. And another thing we can do is to take a sample of blood from the baby's scalp, which will give us a better idea of how it's coping, and then we can make a more informed decision,' the obstetrician said. ‘It's your decision, of course. But if your baby continues to shows signs of distress, then we'll need to do an emergency C-section.'

Catriona slumped back against the pillows and closed her eyes. Someone took hold of her hand and when she opened her eyes again, James's face was next to hers.

‘I think we should go with the caesarean now,' he said. ‘If that's what's best for the baby. We don't want to wait for it to get worse.'

She stared into his eyes, beseeching him. ‘But I didn't want a caesarean. We had a plan.'

‘I know,' he said, squeezing her hand. ‘But we need to do whatever's best for our baby. And you're exhausted. I know it's not what you wanted, but I just want you both to be safe.'

Catriona was disappointed that it had come to this, but she knew he was right. As she was prepared for surgery, James tried to reassure her that they were doing the right thing, telling her it would soon be over and their baby would be with them. She barely had time to respond before she was rushed into the chaos of noise and light of the operating theatre. After the agony of a long labour it felt like only a few minutes before the midwife handed her a small bundle, loosely wrapped in a striped blanket, and said, ‘Here he is. Here's your son.'

As she glanced at the baby on her chest, tiny and helpless but already grappling for her with its mouth and its one free hand, she waited for the rush of adoration she knew she was supposed to feel. Instead she felt dread taking hold of her like a hand to her throat.

Monday, 13 June 2011

D
iana and Liam sat in two uncomfortable chairs facing the fertility counsellor's desk. The shelves surrounding the walls were littered with educational flyers covering every conceivable fertility issue:
Embryo Donation
;
Ovulation Induction
;
Intracytoplasmic Sperm Injection.
It had never occurred to Diana how many different methods had been developed to deal with infertility.

The counsellor was an older woman, in her late sixties, Diana guessed. She said her name was Mrs Olsen and since she offered no first name Diana and Liam were forced to call her by her surname as if she were their teacher. They had made the appointment with Mrs Olsen at the request of the staff at the fertility clinic, who had stressed to them the importance of discussing the social, legal and emotional implications of adopting an embryo.

‘You're very fortunate,' Mrs Olsen said to them from behind her desk. ‘Most couples are on the waiting list for a long time. Some have been on the list for years.'

‘Yes, we know,' Diana said. ‘We feel very lucky to have been chosen.'

‘Doctor Malapi feels strongly about matching the embryo as closely as possible to the recipients. He feels it's a key success factor for implantation, as well as for the future of the child, of course.'

‘And we really do appreciate that,' Liam said in a sickly-sweet way that Diana knew was an attempt to charm Mrs Olsen. He was always trying to do that with older women. Usually it worked, too.

‘Yes, you should.' Mrs Olsen pursed her lips at Liam in a way Diana would have found humorous in a less grave situation. ‘Now, you do understand, of course, that this embryo is one of several conceived using the donor couple's sperm and eggs. That means if this embryo results in a child then that child is likely to have full-blood siblings living with another family. How do you feel about that?'

Diana smiled in spite of the stern look on Mrs Olsen's face. ‘We've discussed that. We think it's nice that our baby could have a sibling. We hope one day they might be able to meet.'

‘We won't give you the contact details of the donor couple,' Mrs Olsen said firmly. ‘That's confidential.'

‘We understand,' Liam said. ‘We wouldn't ask for that. Our understanding is that once our baby is eighteen it would be allowed to find out the identity of the donor parents if it wanted to. That's what my wife meant.'

‘Yes, well, that's correct.' Mrs Olsen shuffled through a stack of papers on her desk. Diana and Liam sat in silence while she selected a page and scanned through its contents before addressing them again. ‘All I'm able to tell you about the donors is that they're a healthy married couple in their late thirties. They're both university educated and successful in their chosen careers. They're Caucasian and both were born in Australia.'

She looked up at Liam. ‘Like you, the husband has dark hair and brown eyes. The wife has blonde hair and green eyes.'

Diana's heart raced with excitement at the prospect of having a baby boy with the same dark hair and eyes as Liam's. She imagined them standing side by side, her son a miniature version of his handsome father. From the look on Liam's face, Diana assumed he was picturing the same thing.

‘I've met the couple personally,' Mrs Olsen continued, ‘and I can tell you they're mature, responsible and intelligent people. It's the best you could hope for with a donor couple.'

‘Do they live in Sydney as well?' Liam asked.

‘I can't tell you that.'

‘Do they want to know anything about the baby?' Diana asked.

‘No, they would like this to be an unidentified adoption,' Mrs Olsen said. ‘Now, that's all the information I can give you about the donor couple, so please don't ask me any more questions about them. Let's move on to issues you will need to consider if you're successful in having a baby.' She moved the piece of paper with the details of the couple to the back of the pile and read from a different page. ‘Have you discussed whether you will tell the child how it was conceived?'

‘Sorry, Mrs Olsen, I do have one question before we move on,' Liam said. Diana looked at him in surprise. ‘What do we do if the donor couple change their mind and want to know about the baby? What if they want to meet the child when it's older, or they want to be part of its life? Do we have any say over that?'

The pinched look on Mrs Olsen's face softened and she set the piece of paper down on her desk before answering Liam. ‘That's a very good question, Liam, and an important one to ask. Genetically the child will match the donor couple, of course, but they've signed a donation consent form and by doing that they have relinquished their legal rights to the embryo. Once the implantation takes place, the embryo is your legal child. The couple can't revoke their decision at a later date and decide to raise the child themselves.'

Diana had never considered that. She was surprised Liam hadn't discussed it with her because obviously it had been on his mind. She had been so focused on the embryo and falling pregnant that she hadn't stopped to think about the donor couple. She assumed they weren't emotionally invested in the embryo, because they would likely have at least one child already. If she was in their position she would want to know if the embryo had resulted in a baby, and if it was healthy. But would she want to know more than that? Would they? She shifted in her seat, uneasy with the path on which her mind was taking her. Her stomach lurched at the prospect of the couple turning up on her doorstep one day, demanding to meet their child.

Diana said little in the remainder of the counselling session. Mrs Olsen and Liam moved on to discuss other issues, but Diana couldn't articulate any intelligent responses. All she could think of during the session, and later that night as she lay awake in bed with Liam asleep beside her, was what would happen if the donor couple changed their mind and wanted to be involved in the child's life. When she eventually fell asleep, Diana's dreams were corrupted by the image of a man with brown hair and brown eyes, and a woman with blonde hair and green eyes, glaring at her and demanding she give them back their child.