Sunday afternoon

My phone goes: Maternity unit. My pulse always doubles when maternity call. It is my great area of ignorance (surpassed, some friends would say, only by my ignorance of what goes on before…). Would I please go and assess as lady who is 9cm dilated but the foetal head has not descended.

I warily enter the labour ward – I always feel particularly foreign in here.

“Thank you for coming doctor. This is the lady.” The midwife hands me a pair of gloves. I am a little more adept at vaginal examinations now but could not be described as slick. I think that is the foetal head, and I think that must be scalp caput (bulging of the child’s scalp as it is pressed against the cervix in delivery), what that is I have no idea at all but I can’t feel a cervix rim. The head feels pretty far down to me but to be honest this is only the second time I have felt a foetal head so I have no idea.

I withdraw my hand and try to look thoughtful – like I am an expert with so much knowledge that I am weighing up numerous possibilities that are occurring to me, rather than revving my empty brain in neutral. Luckily Matron walks in. A lady all of us doctors are in awe of. I sidle up to her. “This baby’s head is 2 fifths descended. What do you think we should do?”

She appraises the women from across the room, pulls on a pair of gloves, strides over and examines her herself. She turns back to me. “She is about to deliver.”

“Ah,” I say. “Thought so.”

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