BMJ  2004;329:287 (31 July), doi:10.1136/bmj.329.7460.287

Filler

The truth is not always a beautiful thing

I answered my emergency page to be informed that my presence, as the on-call neonatology senior house officer, was required for an instrumented delivery. On my arrival in the obstetric theatre, three apparently vital pieces of information were offered: the baby was being delivered by mid-cavity forceps, labour had been prolonged, and both parents were veterinary surgeons.

The scene was familiar, with a sweaty, exhausted looking woman in stirrups. At her cranial end sat her husband, perched awkwardly on a stool, his discomfort heightened by the cumulative effect of the "one size fits all" surgical scrubs and the actions of the obstetrician at his wife's caudal end. I checked the resuscitaire and waited for the impending delivery.

The baby girl was delivered "flat," and the theatre echoed with her silence. As I cleaned and dried her, I felt the father's presence at my shoulder. This was the first anxiety provoking moment of his new-found fatherhood, but thankfully it was not to be the last. The theatre rang with the tumultuous sound of crying, and the relief was tangible. The infant's body turned bright pink as her lungs went through postpartum transition, but patches of her head and face remained varying shades of dark blue, the trauma from the forceps already closing her left eye.

The obvious question followed; "Is she beautiful?" the mother cooed from the bed. The father and I looked at each other and then down at his grimacing, bruised, screaming daughter.

The pause should have lasted longer for him to have thought of a more appropriate response than the one that will inevitably haunt him—"I prefer baby lambs."

Royal Hospital for Sick Children, Glasgow

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