Biography
Carol Falaki
Carol was a midwife from 1985 until 2004 with a special interest in helping prepare women for childbirth and supporting and promoting “normal” labour.
In 2005 she completed my MSc in continuing professional development with the University of Greenwich.
She enjoys reading, writing, tai chi and chi-gung and works for two days a week as Research and Development Coordinator for a local Hospital Trust.
Carol writes whenever she can make the time.
She has written two more...
Biography
Carol Falaki
Carol was a midwife from 1985 until 2004 with a special interest in helping prepare women for childbirth and supporting and promoting “normal” labour.
In 2005 she completed my MSc in continuing professional development with the University of Greenwich.
She enjoys reading, writing, tai chi and chi-gung and works for two days a week as Research and Development Coordinator for a local Hospital Trust.
Carol writes whenever she can make the time.
She has written two books, the first a children’s story ‘The Mirror Dragon, (unpublished)’ The other is ‘Birth in Suburbia’ a fictional account of childbirth.
Carol has worked on a writer’s group project ‘Cadets’ with poet and TV presenter John Gorman.
She enjoys writing poetry and her poem ‘Of a People’s Garden’ was selected for the final of the Birkenhead Park Poetry Competition 2008.
She has plans for a collection of poems with a childbirth theme.
Publications
The Midwives Role in Preparing Women for Labour - published in the British Journal of Midwifery in 2003 (pre married name Eames).
Carol conducted an extensive research project on this topic after winning a research award.
The Labour in Motion Study, Duchess of Westminster News 2003
Scarecrows - a flash fiction, The Mental Virus 2008
Snug in Pink bed socks: a poem published in an anthology, Peppermint Dream,
Score: a short story set in Iran: International Writers magazine, August 2008
Waterbirth: A poem Mothering Magazine, March 2009
Birth in Suburbia: A novel about having a baby in Suburban England, February 2009
Carol has also had a number of short stories and poems read on radio Five Live. She is a member of Riverside Writer’s Group and the Wirral Dead Good Poet’s Society Reading Group.
A small selection of Carol’s poems can be found on the Writeoutloud.com website
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Excerpt from Chapter Fifteen
“What’s the position of the baby?” he asked Amy
“There’s a suture line in the transverse and the station is at the spines,” Amy said.
“What does that mean?” Nigel asked.
Dr Shah did not attempt to answer this question. Instead he nodded at Nigel and asked Helen if he could examine her again. “I know that Amy has just done that, but I need to be sure of things before making the decision about what to do next.”
Helen nodded a more...
Excerpt from Chapter Fifteen
“What’s the position of the baby?” he asked Amy
“There’s a suture line in the transverse and the station is at the spines,” Amy said.
“What does that mean?” Nigel asked.
Dr Shah did not attempt to answer this question. Instead he nodded at Nigel and asked Helen if he could examine her again. “I know that Amy has just done that, but I need to be sure of things before making the decision about what to do next.”
Helen nodded and Dr Shah began to examine her.
“I can’t hear my baby’s heartbeat!” Helen proclaimed suddenly.
“It’s because I have taken the clip off your baby’s head for a moment. Amy, would you find the FH abdominally please?”
She did. It was still there, still very fast.
When he had finished examining Helen, Dr Shah answered Nigel’s question.
“Amy is right about the position. What it means is while your baby has been trying to turn to an anterior position the widest part of his or her head has become wedged against your pelvis. You are still not fully dilated. In view of this, and your baby is showing signs of distress, I think we should perform a caesarean section, Helen, but I need to talk to my boss, Miss Charles, to confirm this.”
The time was five minutes past seven AM.
Helen felt frightened, and Nigel later told her she appeared to panic. Her fear, she remembered, was for her baby, not herself, and for the lack of control she had over her circumstances. Yet inwardly Helen experienced a sense of calm and of separation, as if it was someone else was experiencing all of this, and not her.
Dr Shah left the room. Amy was there, and the senior midwife, Ed, who had been in earlier, and other people came in; people she had never seen before.
Amy tried to reassure Helen, but her words were diluted by the actions, and words, of the unknown others, who introduced themselves briefly and then did things, like take blood from her arm, shave the top inch of her pubic hair, and ask her to sign consent for a caesarean section. It appeared Dr Shah's boss had agreed with him that that was what she needed.
Another person, the anaesthetist, checked her epidural; asking Helen if she would like to be awake for the section, and when she told him she would, he sprayed something, which he said was cold on her stomach and asked her to move her legs, which she couldn’t. Then he adjusted something on the machine at her side.
“It seems okay but I’ll check it out in theatre,” he explained. “If the epidural block is not adequate, though, I will have to give you a general anaesthetic.”
Amy took Helen’s nightdress off her, trying her best to maintain some of Helen’s modesty, while at the same time threading her drips through the sleeve, and dressing Helen in a white cotton gown.
Although her legs were numb Helen was aware that they were being tugged and pulled, and glancing down she saw a young girl, possibly a student, struggling with a white stocking which she eventually pulled up to Helen’s thigh, the girl then smiled at Helen and said: “One down, one to go,” and started to apply the second stocking.
“Is she catheterised?” Ed asked Amy.
“Yes”
“Have you checked her arm band?”
“I’ll do that now.”
Ed then gave Helen some sticky clear medicine from a pot.
“It’s an antacid," she explained. “Don’t worry we’ll have your baby out very quickly. It will all soon be over.”
At the same time someone was moving the bed. There was another stranger, a smiling man in blue theatre clothes, pulling the bed and unlocking the room door to allow the bed out. Amy and the student pushed the drips.
“My baby,” Helen said.
“We have unplugged the monitor until we get you into theatre,” Ed said. “As soon as we are in there, we’ll listen in again. Nigel, bring your camera, just in case they have to put Helen to sleep; so you can get some photographs of your baby in the first few minutes for her.
“Bye the way,” Ed added, “that is Bob at the bottom of the bed, good at steering isn’t he? He’ll be in theatre. There’ll be a lot of people in theatre.”
There were lots of people in the operating theatre. Nigel was asked to wait outside while they got Helen ready. He was given a green gown and some disposable plastic overshoes to wear. Bob explained they were to keep his shoes from spreading bacteria into the theatre.
Back in the theatre, the student midwife, who introduced herself as Gemma, stood by Helen and held her hand while the anaesthetist adjusted her epidural.
“You can ask me anything and I’ll try to explain,” she said to Helen.
Amy used a sonic aid to listen to the baby’s heartbeat while at the same time the anaesthetist sprayed Helen’s stomach and lower chest asking all the while:
“Can you feel this? Is it cold? You shouldn’t feel any pain at all,” he told her reassuringly. “But you must let me know if you experience any discomfort and I’ll have you off to sleep as fast as you can wink.”
A screen was raised, between Helen and her stomach, by tying a sheet to the drip stands either side. All around her people were busy. Then she felt herself being tilted sideways, towards her left side; the operating table was moving.
“You’ll stay slightly tilted like that to prevent postural hypotension,” Gemma said, and then decided to abandon the medical terminology, she added: “It’s to help stop your blood pressure from dropping.”
“Has someone bleeped the paediatrician?” Helen heard someone call, and looked at Gemma, who explained: “We always have the paediatrician in for an emergency section.”
“Can my husband come in?” Helen asked, feeling a sudden pang of fear for her baby, and the need for Nigel’s hand.
“I’ll get him,” Bob said, and placed a stool beside the theatre table, close to Helen’s head.
Dr Shah, now in his theatre gown, came and said hello, followed by Nigel, but Helen had to look twice before she realised it was him - he looked like another one of the theatre staff. He sat down next to her and leant over to kiss her cheek.
“How are you doing, love?” he asked.
“Okay,” this was not the truth; she was scared. By now Helen could feel there was something happening behind the screen.
“What are they doing?” she asked Gemma.
“The surgeon is cleaning your stomach now, he’ll start in a moment,” Gemma replied.
Amy came to say hello. “I may have to take your baby straight to the baby doctor she said, before bringing him, or her, to see you, it just depends how your baby is. The paediatrician is here, over in the corner by the rescuscitaire.”
Helen and Nigel nodded simultaneously. There was too much to take in, Helen was aware of bright lights, busy people and music, something classical and vaguely familiar, but drowned by voices and the many unfamiliar sounds, like the humming of machinery, and the occasional gentle clunk of metal on metal. She noticed a blurred reflection of green movement in the large theatre light above her, and deliberately averted her gaze, along with all thought of what she might see, or imagine she could see, in that reflection. She felt slightly cold and nauseous,
“Are you okay, Helen, you’ve gone a bit pale?' Nigel asked.
The anaesthetist, who had introduced himself as Dr Thomas, made an adjustment to her intravenous infusion and the nausea settled quickly. Nigel bent his head to kiss her cheek. He smelt of fresh sweat and cologne, reassuringly familiar, reminding her of home and safety.
Helen could feel some tugging and pulling, her body moved, swaying very slightly from side to side with the efforts of the doctors. Then she had a sensation, which in her imagination took her back to her childhood, to one Christmas when she was about six or seven years old.
She had awoken to find her Santa sack at the bottom of the bed. It was crammed full of presents, but the one she really wanted was at the very bottom. So she had put her hand in and reached as far as she could and rummaged around until she felt the familiar shape beneath the paper, which she grabbed and then tugged. It had got a bit stuck on the way out and everything else in the sack was shoved and pushed out of the way. Determined she would not let go, and then success! She had pulled and wriggled her present out of the Santa sack. The Christmas wrapping came off in one go, to reveal a baby doll, with eyes that opened and shut and a sweet rosebud mouth. Helen still had the doll; she had kept it all these years.
“Seven twenty seven,” she heard a voice call, and then the most fantastic sound she had ever heard in her life, a quiet watery gurgle, accelerating instantly, to a full throttle release.
It was her baby’s cry.
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Birth in Suburbia:
The story of three pregnancies, four friends, love, labour and birth.
Birth in Suburbia is filled with information about pregnancy and labour, but the story drives the novel so well that it never feels like a data-laden textbook on pregnancy.Â
Falaki strategically places helpful tidbits of information throughout the story, never forcing the plot or turning the narrative into a field manual.  The story slowly builds and culminates with all three women going into labour within a 24-hour period.
‘Under Falaki’s careful pen, Birth in Suburbia plays out like a quick-witted, more mature episode of Sex and the City, except in this episode the characters are British … and pregnant. With witty banter and emotional relationships, readers will find themselves quickly drawn into the story.’
Carol Falaki was a midwife for 18 years with a special interest in helping to prepare women for childbirth and supporting normal labour. She lives with her husband in Merseyside, England.
