“Well, well,” she said. “It looks like you went from twelve minutes to nine over the past few hours. Has your water broke?”
“Not yet,” Laura said.
“And have you lost your mucous plug?”
“A few days ago,” Laura replied.
“Very good,” Arlene said. “We need to see how advanced your labor is. I’ll need you to undress completely and put on one of our gowns. After that, I’ll hook you up to the monitor and do an internal exam to see how dilated you are.”
“Wonderful,” Laura said with a frown. She reached for her blouse and began undoing the buttons.
Arlene looked over at Celia. So far she had given no indication that she knew who Celia was. “What is your relationship to Mrs. Kingsley?” she asked.
“We’re good friends,” Celia told her.
“My best friend,” Laura put in.
“That’s right,” Celia said with a smile. “Best friends.”
“Okay then,” Arlene said. “Well, she’s about to disrobe and then have me put my hand up inside of her vagina. If either of you are uncomfortable being in each other’s presence while that happens, you might want to step out of the room for a little bit.”
“It’s all right,” Laura said. “She’s seen me naked before.”
“I see,” Arlene said slowly.
“I had to help her pee in the airplane,” Celia said.
“I see,” Arlene said again. “In that case, here’s your gown. I’ll give you a few minutes to disrobe.”
Laura took her clothes off (except for her socks) and put on the gown. She laid down on the gurney while Jake and Celia sat in the chairs next to it. Arlene returned a few minutes later carrying a stretchy band with several round devices attached to it and wires coming from the devices.
“This is the CTG,” Arlene explained. “It straps around your belly and tells us when you’re having a contraction and gives a constant readout of the baby’s heart rate. Do you know if it’s a boy or a girl?”
“It’s a girl,” Laura said.
“Have you picked a name yet?”
“Cadence,” Laura said. “Her name is Cadence.”
“That’s a pretty name,” Arlene said, though her tone suggested that she always said something like that, no matter what name a mother told her. Adolf? That’s a good solid name. Saddam? I like the sound of that!
“We think so,” Jake said.
She rucked up Laura’s gown and installed the device by wrapping it around her belly. She then fiddled with the positioning a bit while staring at the monitor screen on the wall behind Laura’s head. Finally, she seemed to like what she saw.
“Baby looks good,” she said. “Fetal heartrate is one-forty-two right now, right where it should be. Let me know the next time you feel a contraction so I can see if it correlates with the monitor.”
“Will do,” Laura said.
Arlene pulled her gown back down and then scribbled some notes on a chart paper for a few minutes. While she was doing this, Laura tensed up and gripped Jake’s hand on one side and Celia’s on the other. “I’m having one,” she said.
Arlene looked at the monitor and nodded. “You certainly are,” she said. “Let’s see what we got here.” She stared at the screen, which was spitting out a paper copy of what was on it.
“Which one of those lines is the contraction?” Jake asked.
“The bottom one,” Arlene said. “The top is your baby’s heart rate. I’m seeing a mild to moderate contraction here, tracking like a true labor contraction and not a Braxton-Hicks. The fetal heart rate is staying steady. That’s a good thing. We don’t like to see that number drop during a contraction.”
Jake, used to reading complex instruments in a cockpit and on an audio mixing board, quickly picked up on the ins and outs of the display. He could see where the danger zones for both the contractions and the fetal heart rate started on both ends of the spectrum. Laura’s line was nicely and completely in the safe zone. So was Cadence’s.
“That was a typical stage one labor contraction,” Arlene said once the line dropped back down to the base. “No fetal heart rate change. Now, we’ll see how dilated and effaced you are and watch to see the frequency of your contractions.”
“Okay,” Laura said, obviously feeling a little better now that she was in the care of professionals. Jake understood. He was feeling more comfortable now too.
Arlene gloved up and smeared lube over her right hand. She then directed Laura to open wide. Laura did so, wincing in advance. Arlene slipped her lubed hand inside of her, pushing in everything but the thumb. She felt around in there for a few moments, nodding her head at what she was detecting, and then withdrew.
“Okay,” she said. “You’re two centimeters dilated and about twenty percent effaced.”
“What does that mean?” asked Celia.
“It means she’s still pretty early in the process,” Arlene said. “She needs to be ten centimeters dilated and one hundred percent effaced to deliver. We’re still quite a ways out from the moment of truth here.”
“How far out?” Laura asked.
“Twelve hours, minimum,” Arlene said. “Probably as much as eighteen. You are barely into first stage labor here.”
“Barely in?” Laura asked. “It feels like someone is squishing my guts every time I have a contraction.”
“You can thank Eve for that,” Arlene said lightly. “Hang in there. We’re going to monitor you for an hour or so and get a good track on your regularity.”
“And then what?” Laura asked.
“And then we’ll make a decision based on that,” she said. “Hang tight in here. There’s a call button if you need me for anything. After an hour, we’ll examine you again and see where we’re at.”
“Are you going to call Dr. Niven?” Laura asked.
Arlene chuckled a little bit. “Not until you’re in well into second stage labor,” she said. “The docs only come in for the grand finale, not the warmups or even the main event.”
This was an analogy that the musicians understood quite well.
An hour went by. Jake watched his wife and the monitor, which he now knew how to read. Laura continued to have contractions every nine minutes like clockwork. Cadence’s heart rate stayed consistently between 130 and 145 whether Laura was contracting or not. Everything seemed to be copacetic. No one came in and started an IV on her. No one offered her any pain medication or anything else. No one even came in the room at all.
Jake found he could get a cell phone signal in the room so he called his parents when the clock ticked past 7:00 AM. His mother answered the phone, sounding a little sleepy.
“Hey, Mom,” he said. “It’s me.” He did not bother identifying himself by name, of course, since there was only one male voice in the world who would call her Mom.
“Hey, Jake,” she replied. “What’s happening? Is it time?”
“It’s time,” he said. “She went into labor about two-thirty this morning. We flew to San Luis Obispo and made it here safe. We’re in the women’s and children’s center at SLO Baptist right now.”
Mary Kingsley immediately perked up at this news. “That’s wonderful!” she exclaimed. She had been in the camp of those opposed to the flying-to-SLO-from-Oregon plan. “When will she deliver?”
“We don’t know that yet. The nurse seems to think we’re still at least twelve hours out and she seems like she knows what she’s talking about. Do you and Dad still plan to come out?”