Chapter 1220 - The Babies
Now, with public medical care already creating such tension with Wudaokou, adding an obvious malpractice incident on top of it would leave the Health Department trying to explain away "mud in their pants."
It seemed they needed to conduct a comprehensive inspection of these soon-to-expire drugs to see if any expired products had gotten mixed in. But drug procurement came through diverse channels, and there was a possibility that different batches had been mingled together.
He smoked half a cigar, then scrubbed up again. The rescue wasn't over yet. But first, he would check the expiration date on that tetracaine hydrochloride.
After leaving the operating room, Ai Beibei disinfected, changed clothes, and re-entered the delivery room. Four women had already delivered successfully, including the narrow-pelvis patient she'd feared might have a difficult birth. They'd all been wheeled out. One woman's amniotic sac had stubbornly refused to rupture, so they'd performed an artificial rupture. She was crying in pain. Ai Beibei personally supervised the delivery and soon delivered a healthy baby girl—weighing in at a full four kilograms, breaking the month's record.
The children of transmigrator families really do get better nutrition, Ai Beibei mused. The naturalized employee children delivered in obstetrics were doing well if they exceeded 3.5 kilograms. Most weighed between 2.5 and 3 kilograms. By old-timeline standards, a full-term baby at 2,500 grams was already underweight—and here there were even full-term babies under 2.5 kilograms with developmental issues.
Maternal and infant malnutrition remained widespread even among naturalized employees with stable incomes, let alone the general population. Miscarriages and stillbirths due to malnutrition were common. Improving people's lives would clearly be a long and arduous task.
She examined the baby carefully. Finding no issues, she signed the birth certificate and ankle band label, then personally watched as the single-use label was fastened around the infant's ankle. Matters involving transmigrators' bloodlines couldn't be handled carelessly.
Having done all this, she changed clothes, washed her hands, and headed to the obstetrics inpatient ward.
The obstetrics inpatient ward was separate from the general hospital's inpatient ward. The interior was well-lit. The premium wards sat at one end of the corridor with their own staircase and entrance—exclusively for female transmigrators and transmigrators' dependents. They came in single and double rooms. Besides the service personnel assigned by the Government Office, no family accompaniment was needed—given the current shortage of professionally trained nurses, having nurses provide all accompaniment would be an impossible luxury. Visiting hours hadn't begun yet, so it was very quiet inside, with only occasional infant cries.
Ai Beibei spotted two Government Office clerks already in the corridor. Despite their masks, she recognized one as Li Yuanyuan, a Government Office secretary. She held a document folder—they were here to register transmigrator children.
According to Government Office regulations, every transmigrator's child had to be registered within twenty-four hours of birth. Ai Beibei knew this registration was extremely detailed and meticulous—not just weight, height, hair color, and eye color, but also palm prints and footprints to be recorded and filed. Needless to say, the babies born yesterday now had ink-black hands and feet; the Government Office's female attendants were probably cleaning them up right now.
"How's it going? All registered?"
"Done." Li Yuanyuan said cheerfully. "The little ones are so cute! I want to pinch every single one of them."
"If they're so cute, hurry up and have one yourself," Ai Beibei said with a smile.
"I will. You can have a few more too." Li Yuanyuan gave as good as she got. "Give Duoduo a little brother or sister—wouldn't that be nice!"
Ai Beibei smiled, but she knew the truth: she truly didn't have the courage to bear more children under such rudimentary medical conditions. As a medical professional from the old timeline, she understood that even under the Senate's aegis, there were still too many missing links in the modern medical chain they needed.
Even the links that had been patched together were full of flaws.
Ai Beibei checked the ward round records, then did a walkthrough of the wards. She instructed nurses to urge the new mothers to get out of bed and move around—she was scornful of traditional Chinese postpartum confinement practices. She required that except for cesarean section patients and those who'd had episiotomies, who could stay in bed to rest, all other natural-birth mothers had to get up and move daily, and must bathe.
Then she came to the nursery. The nursery corridor was decorated with various color tones. This section of the building had been constructed to reflect the new fashion for spaciousness and abundant light. Ai Beibei approached and, as usual, heard infant crying—some wailing at full volume, some whimpering intermittently in falsetto. She always stopped here to peek into the nursery through its three thick glass walls. It had become a habit. As usual, the cribs were almost all full—obstetrics was always bustling. She looked at the neatly arranged cribs.
Cribs with blue labels held boys; those with red labels held girls. Transmigrators' children weren't separately marked—apart from the specialized nurses and doctors, no one else was permitted in the nursery.
A female nurse pushed a wicker cart down the corridor, densely packed with swaddled infants, all waving their arms and kicking their legs and crying—children just returned from the bathroom after their baths.
"Hello, Dr. Ai."
"Hello." Ai Beibei responded politely, carefully observing each child's condition. They were all healthy with rosy cheeks. Though small, they looked full of vitality.
Across from the main nursery was a smaller nursery. It was quiet inside—individual premature and underweight babies, each in a separate incubator.
Babies born before twenty-eight weeks or too underweight were extremely difficult to save with current medical conditions. The incubators they'd brought could keep premature babies of twenty-eight weeks or more alive.
Everyone entering the premature nursery was held to the same requirements: wear sterilized gowns and masks. Inside, there was air conditioning and humidity control. Family visits were restricted to looking through the large glass partition from outside.
Ai Beibei pushed open the door and went in. Inside was another layer of glass separating the nurses' station from the nursery. Ai Beibei nodded at the nurse on duty, then looked through the glass at her newest patient—the baby that Director Shi had risked a cesarean to deliver earlier. Though already at thirty-seven weeks—technically full-term—they'd put him in the incubator as a precaution.
"How's the new little guy doing?"
"Crying lustily. We've already given him glucose water," the nurse reported. "Should we use formula feeding?"
"Yes, formula feeding." Ai Beibei affirmed. "He should be fine. Observe for two days—if there are no problems, transfer him to the regular nursery."
She then wrote out her medical orders in the usual orderly fashion.
On her way out, a nurse led someone in a sterilized isolation gown down the corridor. From his clumsy manner and nervous demeanor, she knew this was a naturalized citizen. From his thick hands and feet and broad shoulders, he was probably a heavy laborer.
The nurse led him to the large glass window, and the nurse inside pointed at one of the incubators in the row so they could look in.
"This baby boy is your son."
The man stared wide-eyed at the little infant sleeping in the glass box, as if unable to believe this wrinkled, red, old-man-like baby had anything to do with him.
"Why... why is he sleeping in a glass box?" Lu Shouyong stammered. Though he handled hammers and pliers with great dexterity and commanded his work crew with ease, now standing in this place that made his clean hands and feet feel like they had nowhere to go, he suddenly felt he couldn't even speak properly.
Lu Shouyong had just gotten off work. The moment his shift ended, he'd received news of his wife's difficult labor. He was immediately flustered—and not just him; even his father Lu Youtian panicked. In Lingao, nothing was scarce except women—especially young women suitable for marriage, who were extremely rare. If not for Lu Shouyong being a technical backbone at the shipyard, and his father the foreman of the ironwork shop, Lu Shouyong would have had great difficulty finding such a suitable and satisfactory wife. Though she was a bit older, at least she was unmarried, and worked at the clothing factory with decent income.
In ancient society, difficult labor often meant one body, two lives. For ordinary families, this was nothing short of catastrophe.
"Don't worry—he was delivered by cesarean section, and they put him in there just to be safe," the nurse reassured. "He's a very strong baby boy."
"What? Cesarean section!" Lu Shouyong's face went white. He wasn't illiterate—he roughly knew how those characters were written. Cutting open the belly to take out the baby—could his wife even survive? "My wife... how... how is she..." His tongue was so tied he could barely speak. A child without a mother—how could he, a grown man, raise it?
"Don't worry," the nurse reassured him. "The transmigrator doctors are treating her right now. With transmigrator doctors, you can rest easy!"
Ai Beibei returned to the operating room. The transmigrator doctors took turns monitoring, adjusting the patient's internal environment, continuing focused head cooling with ice cap to maintain rectal temperature between 33–31°C, administering intermittent diuretics, running regular blood chemistry tests, maintaining water-electrolyte and acid-base balance, and providing various targeted treatments. After more than ten hours of unrelenting rescue efforts without leaving the operating table, convulsions gradually stopped, and the first drop of urine appeared, with urine output steadily increasing.
Everyone was overjoyed. Subsequently, the patient's consciousness gradually recovered; she opened her eyes spontaneously and even indicated that she couldn't tolerate the endotracheal tube and wanted it removed. After extubation, the patient could partially understand commands. Brain resuscitation had achieved satisfactory results, and the patient's life was saved.
(End of Chapter)