“I need gentle pressure from outside. Extremely gentle,” Nora warned as Mrs. Franklin applied her hands to Betsy’s swollen abdomen. The extra push worked, and the head slid toward Nora’s fingers. She hooked her pointer finger into the baby’s mouth, blinking when the tiny tongue flickered against her.
“He’s moving!” She sighed, relief sweeping from the top of her head and rolling over her shoulders. At least there was that. But he wasn’t having a better time than the rest of them. There was no reaching the arm. She had no room at all. How a man with larger fingers ever navigated this…
Giving up, she carefully withdrew and reached her bloodied hand into her bag for the forceps.
Mrs. Franklin’s eyes went wide from her position above Betsy.
“These are short forceps,” Nora explained. “Some doctors treat them only as leverage to pull harder, but we’re smarter than that. They can reach where we can’t. Every tool is a good tool in the right hands.”
“No!” Betsy screamed at the sight of the large metal clamps. “I can’t.”
“It won’t increase your pain,” Nora vowed. “It will help it end sooner.”
Betsy didn’t seem to hear, protesting even louder. Nora wished momentarily for the vaporizer, but there was no time toready it, let alone administer a dose of ether.
“Stand there.”
Mrs. Franklin repositioned herself as Nora slipped one forcep into the inferior opening near Betsy’s tailbone and eased it into position on the right side of the head. “Hold this one in place here,” she explained over Betsy’s hysterical screams. “Then we do the same on the left side. I extend the handles beyond the head, so the curved bits help push instead of pulling on the neck.”
Necks were so fragile.
“Try and keep her still.”
Murmuring incomprehensibly, Mrs. Franklin leaned in and grabbed her niece’s knees, holding her fast while Nora clamped the forceps together and rested the tiny body on top of them to support his weight before she guided the head downward. Horace had often warned her of the unique times you needed to ignore a patient in order to save them, but today, Nora couldn’t manage it. “We’re almost there, Betsy. Try to hold on to something.”
She turned back Mrs. Franklin. Flushed, sweating, she also looked at the point of breaking. “As soon as the chin appears—” She grunted as the nape of the neck and the mouth began to emerge. “You stand and draw the child up and out, toward the ceiling, decreasing the circumference for the mother.”
Almost as soon as she spoke, it happened. The head escaped, the rubbery cord dropping nearly to the floor as Betsy gave a shuddering cry.
Nora dropped the forceps and collected the baby from Mrs. Franklin’s trembling hands. The midwife rushed to clutch Betsy’sshoulders. “Well done, love. Well done. We’ve got him out.”
Nora turned the baby over, wrapping him in her billowing apron. He was limp now—the suck she’d elicited moments ago absent when she thumbed his tiny mouth. She rubbed his chest, waiting for the first gasp.
“Come on, dear,” she whispered, opening the mouth and sweeping it with her finger. Still no response. Nora rubbed harder, angling the baby’s head toward the floor.
“Is something the matter with him?” Betsy asked urgently.
Mrs. Franklin, moving like lightning, reached for the child with hands so demanding and certain that Nora relinquished him, the slack limbs flopping as Mrs. Franklin swiped his face with a towel. She opened his lips and placed her mouth over his, then gave a steady blow. The tiny chest swelled.
“Pinch his foot,” Mrs. Franklin ordered, then lowered herself for one more puff. Nora obeyed, and his limp fingers opened like a five-pointed star bursting to life in the sky. He sputtered indignantly, purple face reddening as he let out an objecting wail.
“Oh, my heart.” Mrs. Franklin exhaled, her head dropping in relief. “He’s fine, love,” she reassured Betsy as she wiped away the white coating of vernix. “Sometimes they’re too stubborn to take their first breath and we have to make them.”
She delivered the child into Betsy’s arms while Nora pulled out her threaded needle to suture the cut. In her experience, if she worked quickly now, the mother’s exhaustion and joy dulled the pain.
It took another hour to deliver the placenta. When all was settled, and the nervous father and grandfather brought intothe room to watch over Betsy and bestow extravagant praise on the baby, Mrs. Franklin steeped some tea and pushed a cup toward Nora across the rickety table in the sitting room. The room was too hot and stuffy for it, but Nora accepted the cup gratefully, if only as an excuse to quiet her nerves.
“You did well,” she told Mrs. Franklin. “I know it’s harder with someone you know and love, but blowing into the lungs worked.”
Mrs. Franklin closed her eyes. “A fair mite better than swinging them around. I swear on my life I once saw a doctor take a babe by his feet and swing him like a cat.”
Nora lifted an eyebrow, praying the unnamed doctor wasn’t Horace. He was never afraid to be unconventional. No, it couldn’t have been him. His favorite maxim was to treat things quietly. “Did it work?”
Mrs. Franklin’s nose twitched in disgust. “Aye. But I thought the head might snap off. Not to mention the baby could have slid straight out of his grip and gone flying across the room. I’d never let anyone try that on a baby in my care, especially not my sister’s grandson.” Her eyes lowered and her words slowed. “I felt like my sister was watching today, and I suspect she was as terrified as I was.”
“It was a difficult birth,” Nora agreed, collecting her thoughts as she indulged in the sweeter sips at the bottom of her cup. “Betsy will have a slow recovery, most likely.”
“I want to know more about those metal instruments you used,” Mrs. Franklin said, cocking her eyebrow. “I’ve only seen one doctor use them, but it was on a dead child.”
