Amazingly, luck was on her side and with a couple of bars of signal, she rang Tom. But it went straight to his voicemail. With nothing else for it, and not wanting to alarm him too much, she left a message for him to ring her.
Next Andy asked for her office number so he could alert them.
‘Does that mean I’m going to be stuck here for hours and hours?’ she asked, once she’d given him the necessary details.
‘I doubt that. But for now, why don’t you make yourself comfortable. Do you have anything to eat or drink?’
‘I have some coffee,’ she said, gingerly lowering herself to the floor. She was still scared that the slightest movement might cause the lift to plummet and send her crashing to her death.
‘That’s good. Now I’m going to go a bit quiet for a while, is that okay with you?’
‘Yes,’ she said.
Her legs sticking out in front of her, Martha took a sip of her coffee. At the same time she rested a hand on her baby bump. ‘There’s nothing to worry about,’ she told the baby.
As if in response, the baby seemed to stretch out a leg to give her a swift kick that landed in her lower ribs.
‘Okay,’ said Martha, ‘so you don’t agree, but there’s no need to get all antsy with me. I mean, it’s not my fault I’m stuck here in this lift. Do you think I planned it?’
She kept up a steady monologue of nonsense while she drank her coffee.Martha knew that at this stage of the pregnancy, her baby could hear her voice and could react to it. The baby’s eyelids were open at twenty-five weeks too, and her brain and lungs and digestive system were formed as well, although not fully developed. She was a truly wondrous little being who regularly hiccupped inside Martha and could keep her awake with her constant fidgeting as if she were bored and looking for something to do. ‘Just like her mother,’ Tom said, ‘always on the go, always needing to be busy.’
Family lore had it that Martha had been a fractiously fidgety baby. ‘You came out of the womb, kicking and screaming and ready to pick a fight,’ Dad had always joked. ‘There you were, your little fists tightly clenched, ready to fight your corner.’
Mum was a little more generous with her version of Martha’s baby years, explaining that she was a typical first child and that they, as parents, were learning on the job and didn’t always get it right. ‘You probably picked up on our lack of confidence,’ Mum said, ‘and by the time Willow came along, we felt we knew what we were doing and didn’t worry so much, so that made her less anxious too.’
Out of the two of them, Martha was happy to concede that Tom would be the more patient parent. She would always be impatient for the next phase, just as she had been impatient to conceive. Now she was impatient for the day when she would go into labour.
Just not today, she thought. Giving birth in a lift with only Andy’s disembodied voice to help was not what she wanted. Not when her baby was too small to be born now … not when her daughter’s chances of survival were so slim.
No sooner had she pushed this panicky thought from her mind,than her stomach tightened, and with such force, she gasped.
‘There’s nothing to worry about,’ she murmured, putting down her coffee cup and massaging her bump that was now as tight as a drum. ‘This is all perfectly normal.’
She breathed in deeply, then exhaled slowly.
In.
Out.
Braxton Hicks contractions.
It was when the womb tightened and then relaxed, she reminded herself. A sort of trial run for the real thing and could be triggered by all sorts of things, including dehydration or a full bladder. Hmmm … best not to think of her bladder, she thought, not when she routinely spent an insane amount of time going to the loo. At work it was embarrassing how often she had to go. Several times she had to ask the intern to cover for her when she’d been caught short.
She winced again as the tightening intensity of her stomach muscles increased.
Another breath in.
Another breath out.
She had experienced them twice before, so she knew the score and she’d read extensively about the phenomenon online. Just as she’d read up on everything else to do with being pregnant. Preparation was all.
So she knew that she was not about to go into labour. Absolutely not. She wasn’t going to be one of those panicky women who set off for the maternity unit with a false alarm every time she experienced a twinge. Willow had admitted the other day to Martha that she’d had a moment when she thought she might be in labour.‘If Rick had been with me,’ she’d said, ‘I’m sure he would have insisted we went straight to the hospital.’
‘What made you so sure you weren’t in labour, given how far along you are?’ Martha had asked.
‘Complete denial,’ she’d said with a careless laugh. ‘I’m going to keep on denying I’m having a baby until the day she arrives.’
As another mini contraction took hold of her, Martha started at the loud ring of her mobile. Assuming it was Tom, she didn’t bother looking at the screen.
