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Educating Abbey

Midwife Abbey Wilson lives for her job and her family. After a break-up with her fiancée she has stayed clear of men. But when Dr Rohan Roberts arrives at the maternity clinic in Gladstone, Abbey becomes aware of a man for the first time in years.

Abbey arouses Rohan’s desires and all his protective instincts. But Abbey is a woman in need herself. Rohan decides to reassure her that she is the sensuous woman he sees - and discovers his feelings for Abbey are far deeper than he’s bargained for. But can he stay?

Reviews

MIDWIFE IN NEED is a delightful story that deals with life’s basic needs — family, work, and the need to love and be loved. Abbey and Rohan both have obstacles to overcome before they can realize that they are meant for each other. Even though they have more in common than not, they battle each other and their inner selves until a nightmare from Abbey’s past forces them to team up to protect her and her tenants.

Although relatively short, MIDWIFE IN NEED is packed with excitement, conflict, and a host of excellent secondary characters. This wonderful, well-rounded story is both entertaining and well written. The first book in a trilogy about the three Wilson sisters, this story gets the author off to a good start!

Jani Brooks
Romance Reviews Today

Excerpt

“THE new doctor is on his way.” Michelle put the phone down and moved around the bed to hold the young woman’s hand. “He’s stuck at the railway crossing. Should be here in five.”

Abbey Wilson, Nursing Unit Manager of Gladstone Maternity, on the mid-north coast of New South Wales, nodded and sighed. They didn’t require a doctor’s presence for uncomplicated births, but this baby had shown signs of distress late in labour. The last gush of amniotic fluid had been thick green meconium liquor. Why did Scott have to have a sudden trip to Sydney when she needed him?

Apparently, the new doctor travelled Australia filling in as locum for general practitioners in small country towns. He’d done his anaesthetic training and also his Diploma of Obstetrics with Scott in England, so Abbey could hope he’d be competent.

“They say boy babies are more stubborn than girls but I am never doing this again,” panted Vivie.

Abbey smiled across at the young woman. How many times had she heard a woman in labour promise never to return?

“You’re incredible, Vivie. Hang in there, just a few moments to go,” Abbey said. “You still need to push because your baby’s head is a tight fit down here. We may have to take him over to the trolley to give some oxygen, but we’ll get him back to you as soon as we can, OK?”

Vivie nodded that she understood and then she groaned.

Suddenly the baby’s head started to move as Vivie pushed with the next contraction. With aching slowness his little crinkled forehead lengthened, and then with a rush his nose and lips were released from the birth canal.

“OK. Well done, Vivie.” Abbey slipped her finger in beside the baby’s head and sure enough a loose loop of cord was coiled around his neck. The pulsating coil didn’t have enough stretch to slip over baby’s head and wasn’t tight enough to warrant cutting prior to birth, so Abbey let it be.

As if by magic, Vivie’s baby’s head swivelled like the hands of a clock travelling from six to nine, and inside Vivie’s pelvis his neck untwisted to allow his shoulders to slip under her pubic arch.

Two minutes seemed to take for ever as they waited for the next contraction which would allow the rest of him to be born. Abbey had suctioned his mouth to remove any meconium that would otherwise be drawn into the lungs at his first breath, and waited. The bluish hue of his little face darkened and Abbey resisted the impulse to encourage Vivie to push without a contraction. In nature’s time, she reminded herself.

Finally, Vivie’s uterus hardened with the next contraction and she groaned again. Her son’s anterior shoulder dipped down then rose from the birth canal and Abbey gently supported his head as the rest of his body was born. Limp and pale, the baby lay on the bed between Vivie’s legs. Abbey uncoiled the cord around his neck and another loop coiled around his arm. His cord pulse was strong and above a hundred beats a minute but he made no attempt to breathe. He was stunned by his passage through the birth canal.

Abbey quickly clamped and cut the connection between Vivie and her son and Michelle leant over and lifted the baby up for Vivie to announce the sex.

“The ultrasound was right. It is a boy,” Vivie gasped as she leaned back against the bean bag.

Abbey glanced at Vivie as Michelle carried the baby over to the resuscitaire. “He needs some oxygen, Vivie. Michelle and I are going to dry him and use the mask. I’ll have to leave you for a moment.”

“OK.” Vivie’s voice was faint with relief that the birth was over. She closed her eyes. Vivie’s son lay on the resuscitaire like a pale rag doll, and when Abbey wiped him with a warm cloth, he jiggled flaccidly as the fabric moved over his skin. Dark blue eyes stared, open and unblinking, as Abbey wiped his face. She suctioned his nose and mouth again before gently placing the oxygen mask over his nose and chin while Michelle listened with the stethoscope to his heart rate.

Michelle nodded. “One hundred and ten.”

“OK. He doesn’t need any cardiac help. But he still doesn’t want to take a breath.” Abbey tilted the baby’s head into the sniffing position, compressed the green bag of the oxy-viva and watched his chest rise. The air pressure would encourage the inflation of his fluidfilled alveoli into working order. She started with three larger puffs, then settled into a rhythm of one small inflation of the bag per second.

When one minute had passed since birth, Abbey stopped her compressions of the bag and Michelle listened again.

“Still one hundred and ten.”

“We’ll give him a two for heart rate and he gets a zero for respiratory effort.” Abbey hated it when they did that, but consoled herself with the fact that his skin was pink from the oxygen pumping around his body. They continued with the respiratory resuscitation.

A firm knock tattooed on the hallway door. A broad-shouldered stranger in a cowboy hat and linen shirt entered the birthing suite and strode across to Abbey and the baby.

“I’m Dr Roberts, I’m filling in for Scott Rainford,” he said, and tossed his hat towards the corner of the room. Abbey blinked as the black Akubra sailed through the air to settle gently on the chair. The sight was so bizarre that for a split second she had trouble marshalling her thoughts.

That was what he looked like a marshal or sheriff in a cowboy movie. Or maybe the cynical gunslinger? Her mind clicked back into gear. “Dr Roberts. Thank you for coming.” She looked away from him to the timer on the resuscitation trolley.