Read Online The Sheikh and the Surrogate Mum by Meredith Webber - Free Book Online Page B

for drying and wrapping the baby, sterile equipment for tying and cutting the cord, feeding tube, sterile gloves—everything seemed to be in place.
    As the obstetrician reached into the small incision and drew out the tiny infant, Laya wheeled the trolley close and Liz took the baby—a boy. She used a fine tube to clear his mouth and nose, squeezed his little chest so he began to breathe and then to cry. She held him against his mother’s chest, only for a moment, but it felt the right thing to do for both of them, then, when the obstetrician had tied and cut the cord, she set the infant on the trolley and wheeled him to the corner of the room while the surgeons prepared the woman for the next stage of her operation.
    ‘He’s come through this well,’ she said to Laya, as the vital Apgar numbers added up to six at one minute. She’d used a bag and mask to give him a little extra oxygen, and by five minutes his score was up to nine.
    Once dry and warm, they weighed and measured him.
    ‘Fifteen hundred and fifty-eight grams—it’s low for thirty-four weeks,’ she said to Laya, then glanced over at where Khalifa was preparing to open the woman’s skull. ‘She possibly hasn’t been feeling well for some time, maybe not eating properly. Would she have been seeing a doctor or midwife regularly?’
    ‘I don’t know her, but she’s from the desert so I doubt it,’ Laya said. ‘It’s all very well to build hospitals and clinics but getting our people, particularly the women, to use them will take a lot longer than His Highness realises.’
    ‘His Highness?’ Liz echoed, and Laya nodded towards Khalifa.
    ‘He’s our leader—a prince, a highness,’ she explained.
    Well, that settled all the fizz and sparking stuff, Liz thought, not that she’d ever had any indication that the man might be interested in her. As if he would be, pregnant as she was, and probably not even if she hadn’t been pregnant.
    A highness, for heaven’s sake! And she’d been joking with him!
    Though she should have twigged when he’d talked about the palace!
    ‘Did he not tell you?’ Laya asked as Liz wrote down the baby’s crown-heel length of forty-four centimeteres.
    ‘Well, yes,’ Liz admitted, ‘but somehow you don’t connect a bloke you meet in the corridor at work with royalty. I thought maybe like our prime minister—that kind of leader—an ordinary person with a tough job. Head circumference thirty-three.’
    She made another note, her mind now totally on the baby, although the murmur of the surgical teams voices provided a background to all she did.
    ‘I’ve got a special-care crib waiting. Should we take him to the nursery?’ Laya asked when the little boy was safely swaddled and ready to be moved.
    Liz glanced over at the woman on the table. The baby’s mother was unconscious, of course, but would she have some awareness? Would she know her baby had been taken? Would she need him nearby?
    ‘I think we’ll stay here to do the stabilisation,’ Liz responded. ‘The crib has monitors on it so we can hook him up to them to watch him, and give him anything he needs as he needs it. At this weight he’ll probably have some apnoea and will need oxygen support, caffeine to help his lungs…’
    She knew she was thinking aloud, but the situation was so strange she wanted to make sure she was ready for every possible problem that could arise. CPAP, the continuous positive airway pressure, could be delivered through a nasal cannula, and if she put in a central venous catheter for drugs and measurements and a peripheral line as well, all the bases would be covered.
    But without a special-care unit, where would they take the baby?
    To the nursery?
    No, from what Khalifa had told her, under normal circumstances they’d fly any premature baby to the capital.
    Not a good idea, given what the mother was going through. Liz glanced towards the tall surgeon bent intently over the operating table.
    ‘Do new babies room in with