The Birth of Summer

It’s sunny and dry, with a perfect breeze blowing, when the call comes in for a 26-year-old woman in labor. The KDT indicates her water has broken. We drive quickly.Bronson has delivered only one child, about five years ago. “If I had a catcher’s mitt, I could have caught the little girl, it was that simple,” he says. He also experienced the birth of his son a couple of months ago. “I’m an expert,” he reassures me, not too convincingly.I, on the other hand, have never delivered a baby. My two children were both planned Cesareans, so I also have no experience with labor. I start going over the Emergency Resuscitation protocol for newborns, in case of complications: “Okay, if the baby has a heart rate under 60 beats per minute, begin CPR. If it has a rate of 60 to 100 …”Bronson cuts me off. “You always expect the worst.”“You can never be too prepared,” I say, like a Boy Scout.We arrive at a two-family house in East Flatbush, race up to the second floor, and find a young woman having contractions about a minute apart. She clenches her teeth and holds onto the bedpost for support as another contraction hits her. I want to tell her to “breathe,” or something equally dumb, but since I’ve never experienced labor, I don’t know what advice to give. “It looks pretty painful,” I say, stupidly.She looks at me, and as the contraction recedes, she starts laughing. “It’s awful!” she says, wiping sweat from her brow. For a woman in labor, she’s in a good mood. “Do you have children?” she asks, breathless, putting on her slippers.“My boy is 2,” I answer, “and my girl is 6 months. Both planned Cesareans.”“Why?” she pants.In my experience, most women who have regular deliveries aren’t too interested in other women’s C-sections. So I’m pleased. “My son was transverse,” I say. “If I tried, I would have ended up with a rib, maybe an elbow.” This elicits a chuckle. “He also had the cord wrapped around his neck,” I shrug. “So, I’m a fan of modern medicine.”“Good idea,” she says, without a trace of the superiority women who have regular deliveries often reserve for C-section mothers. “And your girl?” she says, barely a whisper.“I chose a C-section because I know a woman who ruptured trying to do VBAC,” or vaginal birth after Cesarean, I say. I ask her to lie down as I check for crowning. Nothing.We get her on the stair chair, do a quick set of vitals, and roll her into the ambulance before the next contraction hits. Bronson drives and I chat with her until another wave of pain washes over her and I hold her shoulders until it passes. She opens her eyes and asks me to tell her more about my birthings.“A routine delivery is a good thing,” I say, “but a C-section, if necessary, is a blessing.” I tell her how, afterward, when the nurse wrapped my baby up like a taco and held his face to me to kiss, I looked into those huge slate-gray eyes and instantly fell completely in love.“Cesareans are very dramatic,” she says.“Yes, they are,” I say, and lift the sheet to check again for crowning. This time, I see the top of the baby’s head. “Pull over,” I say to Bronson, putting on fresh gloves as he parks near a hydrant and hops into the rear compartment. We get our OB kit ready, spread out a sterile sheet and splash mat, and don paper gowns as the woman animals out on us. In a gush of fluid, the baby comes, a beautiful little girl.I suction her with a bulb aspirator and she starts wailing, a joyful sound. She’s slippery, her umbilical cord blue and pulsing, and though I’m nervous and shot through with adrenaline and fumble with my equipment, I somehow manage to clamp and cut the cord with the idiot-proof scissors from the kit. I dry the baby, wrap her in a foil blanket like the ones marathon runners use, and put a little stretchy hat on her head as Bronson tallies her APGAR score, a scale that measures the five characteristics of a newborn to determine its condition. She scores a perfect 10, not a smidge of cyanosis — I’ve never seen a blue baby and don’t ever want to.The baby’s father is waiting at the entrance to the emergency room. He hugs his wife and baby, and then Bronson and me, as the ER staff takes over. “APGAR a 10 at one and five minutes,” I tell the pediatrician, a young intern who looks at the baby and frowns. “Well, I would actually call this APGAR a nine,” he says, with attitude, as if the baby weren’t a person but merely a medical situation.“She’s a perfect 10 to me,” I say. The mother looks ethereal, probably from the pain endorphins. “Have you thought of a name for her?” I ask.“Summer,” she says, smiling. “Her name is Summer.”Ms. Klopsis is an emergency medical technician on an ambulance in Brooklyn. This column details her observations and experiences. Some names and identifying details have been changed to protect the privacy of patients.

The Birth of Summer

The Birth of Summer

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