The Concordia Deception-7
1237 Words
CARIAD SQUATTED DOWN next to a gestation bag. Five trainee midwives stood in a half circle behind her. So far, none of them had volunteered to assist with a decanting.
“There really isn’t anything to be frightened of, you know,” she said. “Isn’t anyone willing to try? I know it seems scary, but the chances of losing a baby are vanishingly small. I don’t think a single one has been lost at the decanting stage aboard Nova Fortuna. It’s much safer than natural childbirth. We can see if the baby’s stuck or the umbilicus is wrapped around its neck or it’s passed meconium. We don’t have to rely on instruments to tell us what’s happening. Things are going to be a lot harder planetside when you’re assisting women giving birth.”
She shut her eyes. That was exactly the last thing she should have said. She was supposed to be reassuring these young women and men, not making them nervous. When she opened her eyes, however, a fresh-faced man had raised his hand.
“Great,” Cariad said. “Step over here.”
“Oh, I er,” the man mumbled. “I just wanted to ask a question.”
Deflated, Cariad said, “Shoot.”
“I was wondering why you don’t just open up the bags and take the babies out. Wouldn’t that be a lot easier and safer?”
“Good question! So, it might seem easier to do it that way, but when the babies are squeezed out through the decanting channel the action forces mucus out of their lungs and respiratory tract, and that helps them breathe. There might be other unknown benefits too. We try to mimic nature as much as possible because sometimes we can only guess why humans evolved to reproduce the way we do.
“That’s why we play the audio of a pregnant woman’s heartbeat to the babies from the embryo stage onward because without it or other sounds their hearing might not develop normally. We can’t be sure because it would be unethical to conduct an experiment to find out, so we take the precaution of exposing them to noise. On the other hand, in the artificial method we’ve removed the known risks of natural childbirth like a too-narrow birth canal.”
“Is natural childbirth really risky?” asked a frightened-eyed young woman.
Cariad couldn’t tell if the trainee was asking in a professional or personal capacity. “It’s riski-er. I can’t deny it. Unfortunately, the reproductive technology that’s served us on the Nova Fortuna won’t last forever. It’s already wearing out. We need to move reproduction planetside and increase the birth rate, which means that after this final decanting it’s down to you Gens to do things the old-fashioned way. But the settlement hospital will be equipped with birthing facilities of the best quality, and those facilities are going to be staffed with the best midwives, right?”
It was an unfortunate consequence of the impersonal replenishing of the Gen population that none of them had any experience of natural pregnancies or births. Up until then, reproductive technicians had been responsible for creating and gestating the project’s new babies. Working alongside the settlement doctors, the people Cariad was training would be dealing with soon-to-be-new mothers who would probably be frightened if not terrified. What was more, the women might also have a higher risk of complications due to six generations without selective forces preventing the number of mothers who couldn’t give birth naturally from passing on their genes. Still, Cariad tried to give the students her most encouraging smile.
It seemed to do the trick. The man who had first asked a question stepped forward and said, “I’ll try.”
“Fantastic,” Cariad replied and waved him forward. “Come over here. You saw what I did, right? Make sure you have everything ready before you open the channel. I’m going to watch but I won’t intervene unless I see you need some help, okay?”
When she had studied human reproductive biology, Cariad only assisted with a decanting a few times in preparation for taking her finals. Students were supposed to experience the nitty gritty of practical applications of their subject. Later on, as a reproductive geneticist, she hadn’t been expected to actually decant babies. That was a job for technicians. Since being revived from cryonic suspension, however, she’d enjoyed bringing the little squirming, mewling infants into the world. She hoped she could pass on that enjoyment to these women and men.
Cariad moved out of the trainee’s way as he prepared the receiving dish and checked the emergency equipment. The baby he was about to decant was one of the less active ones. The female infant hung upside down in her gestation bag, her eyes closed, a serene expression on her tiny face. She was entirely unaware that her life was about to begin.
The man paused and half-turned toward Cariad for reassurance.
“Good,” she said. “You’re ready to go.”
He stood and activated the decant function on the panel at the top of the bag. Pulsations began to ripple the surface and fluid dripped from the channel as, slowly, it opened. The student squatted as Cariad had and held his hands beneath the opening. It was a precaution in case a malfunction or a particularly wriggly infant caused the exit to suddenly burst wide.
Now that he’d found the courage to try, the man was doing well. Time wore on, and the gestation bag pushed the baby girl into the narrow, flexible channel at its base. The trainee was beginning to look uncomfortable, probably due to squatting for so long.
“You can kneel if you want,” Cariad told him. “It won’t be long now.”
The receiving dish gurgled as the fluid dripping from the bag was drained away.
The trainee midwives leaned closer. The moment of decanting was approaching. The baby was packed into a ball, her small, chubby arms wrapped up high around her chest. She gave a wriggle and the channel opened wider, spilling a gush of fluid into the dish below.
“Nearly there,” Cariad said to the kneeling student. “Get ready.”
He held his gloved hands beneath the baby’s crowning head. Pink liquid soaked his hands and wrists. The top of the baby’s head appeared. Centimeter by centimeter the head emerged from the channel. A small face came next, its eyes still closed. Then a tiny fist showed up, followed by one round shoulder, then another.
As the baby slid out of the collapsing bag, the man carefully took the weight of her head and body. He gently lay her down in the receiving dish. She took her first breath and a pink color suffused her skin.
“Great job,” Cariad said. “Do you remember the procedure for the placenta?”
The trainee nodded without turning around, apparently unable to take his eyes from the baby, who gently waved her arms and legs, testing out her new-found freedom. She grimaced and her deep blue, unfocused eyes briefly peeked out from between their eyelids. When the placenta was ejected from the gestation bag, the trainee cut the umbilicus and picked up the baby to swaddle her. He turned around, his face wreathed in a beaming smile. “I did it!”
“You certainly did,” Cariad said. “Do you want to take her to the nursery?”
The baby was breathing well and didn’t seem to have any problems, but the duty doctor would check her over thoroughly.
“Sure,” the trainee replied. “Do you think they’ll let me name her?”
Cariad chuckled. “Maybe. It won’t hurt to ask.”
Like a proud new father, the man carried the newborn out of the Gestation Room. Cariad turned to the waiting students. “Who’s next?”
***
- Writer
