PAIN AND PARENTHOOD- How it changed our lives!!!!

" If you being evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, then how much more does the Father in heaven!" Matt 7:11.

I was carrying the pain bleep for the month of January. I would see patients suffering from post op pain and relieve it with bolus of opioids and anesthetics.  And at dusk I would go around monitoring their discomfort. Alice who was eight months pregnant would insist that she would accompany me. We enjoyed our romantic walks around the wards of Christian medical college. One day as we passed by nursery, the neonatal ICU, Alice said ‘, This place is scary! Very sick kids are kept here.” I nodded and looked around. Parents in anxiety were looking through the glass window to catch a glimpse of their children. ‘They would be feeling horrible no?” my wife said. ‘I don’t know!’ I replied bothered more about finishing rounds.

                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                            

Few weeks later,we were in Foodies kitchen, the only decent restaurant near our place. I had ordered Naan and Prawn Volcano for my wife and Palak for myself. Alice suddenly winced in pain. In a second it was gone. By then, she had these fits of pain so often that I did not consider it as a red flag. Alice, being an ardent meat eater enjoyed the meal and we walked home.

As I switched on the TV, she screamed from the bathroom, ‘Tony I am bleeding.’ I went to examine her and could appreciate a bloody discharge. But she was only 35 weeks pregnant. We had exactly 30 days for the expected date. Neither of us was prepared. I had asked for a bigger accommodation, planned leave, informed parents all according to Naegele’s rule- the method that reveals the expected date of delivery from the last menstrual period. Alice had the baby shower ceremony just 5 days before and my mother had just left town. We however, did not think an admission would be needed. Alice came out in her casuals and I did not have a penny in my pocket as we reached the labour room, the very place I put 2 epidural pain injections the same evening.

The group of obstetricians examined my wife and announced that her cervix was already 4 cms dilated and was in labour. In the next few minutes, I called my fellow registrars and close friends. Alice’s parents arrived. We were given a private room which fortunately was available. According to the examination, Alice must deliver our first child by sunrise. But whenever I looked at her, she would grin and crack jokes as if we were in a comedy circus. I had seen women howling in distress during labour and Alice obviously was not looking like one. She was comfortable till 7 am. Except for the constant drumming of the cardiotocogram- that resonates the baby’s heart, the room was in utter silence. From then onwards, she would periodically shout, ‘Tony, it’s paining.” She needed pain relief and I called my senior anesthetist for help. We had put many such injections into people’s spine but this one with a difference that it was for my wife.

By 11 am, Alice was in the most active phase of child birth. Though the epidural offered moderate relief the contractions now were vigorous and too frequent. She would scream in intense pain every 10 minutes. I never saw her in such a state before. She was hurting. All my medical knowledge had not pacified me that it was a natural course of child birth. I could not stand that situation. I just walked out and sat on the visitors’ bench with moist eyes and praying hands. Though not aesthetically pleasing, I think all men should see their wives deliver. When we see what battles they fight on the labour tables to give birth to our young ones, our respect for them would soar by miles.

At 12:30 in the afternoon, the consultant performed the second examination and told me that the baby would be out in 1 hour. As her pain would reach its peak, Alice would shout in helplessness, ‘I am not able to do it. Lord Jesus, have mercy on me. Take me for a C-section Tony!’. Agreed that this pain would not stay forever! Agreed that women have the most severe pain of their lives during full cervical dilatation. I have seen a multitude of such scenarios. But this was different. It was not just a woman in labour. It was my wife in pain delivering my child. The medical team headed by our friend Annie was with us. But Alice had to push. It was her call. The baby’s head was visible at the perineum and to take her up for surgery would be a medical joke. There was no turning back. Each time the uterus would contract, she would clench her fists and push with all her strength. Baby would still not come out. Alice would break down into tears. That would choke my little voice trying to encourage her. Those moments felt like they would never end.

At 1:35 pm on 16^th Jan 2014, Alice gave her last push and Annie pulled our baby came out. I took her to the resuscitation room. With long fingers, wide forehead, beautiful chin and hair all over she began to cry vigorously.  Amita weighed 2.3 kgs at birth. Moments later, she began to grunt. She was finding it too difficult to breath. The nurse informed me that the baby would go to nursery for few hours for observation. Twenty minutes later, I received a call from nursery. They told me that my child was shifted to level 3 nursery. As I told Alice, she began to weep silently. Though I was pretending confidence and reassuring her, there was a tempest of unrest in my own heart. I left Alice with her parents and friends and entered the place I never wanted to in my life.

Level 3 nursery is the place where the tiniest of human race fight for survival. Little rectangular contraptions with blue lights overhead would provide both the light and heat to the little ones. A big room with 40 such beds, immaculate white flooring and air smelling of breast milk, preterm kids like ours are kept. I reached for the station where my baby’s name was written.   

She was a little wonder. With a cute CMC tunic around her micro frame, she was breathing tenaciously, rapidly and deeply. Like an athlete running for a medal, she was breathing till the last molecule of ATP. She already had tubes running into her veins, nose and mouth. The doctors explained that she suffered from Hyaline membrane disease, an entity where the lungs are not mature enough to open up. So she was being given positive pressure oxygen to supplement her breaths.

Each day I would read Psalm 23 for Alice. And when read the verse, ‘even though I walk through the valley of death, I fear no evil,’ my voice would tremble. For eight days my child was indeed in the valley of shadow of death. Each day we would wait for the neonatologist to utter some words of hope and assurance. In those times, I did not want my child’s vital parameters. I wanted words like, ‘She is doing fine. She is better!’ Now our daughter is at home in her own world of milk and sleep.  She is 30 day old at the time of this writing.

There is something good about pain. We come out of it as better people. I can say that parenthood has made me more sensible to pain and suffering. Previously when parents would leave their offspring in my hands for surgery, I would not understand their anxiety. After 2 weeks of my child being born, I took a 16 day old baby for a major surgery. The parents began to cry as they left their kid. For a moment, I could see Alice and myself in their shoes. Now the question of – what if it happens to my kid? - arises very frequently. Now I see parents of children with cancers and heart diseases and can empathize with them deeply.

With this new prism of parenthood, I also look at God who is our heavenly Father. Each day after a busy day of work, I go back to see my daughter. There is a sense of joy as I hold her in my hands. There is nothing she needs to do. There is nothing she needs to achieve. I just delight in her as I embrace her. God also loves us as His children. He also delights in us, not in the wealth we accumulate or the degrees we earn. He just looks at the essential worth of my life and loves me. The verse-“As a father has compassion over his children, so will I have compassion over you, says the Lord”, has an all new meaning as I look at my daughter. When I see parents in fear and apprehension, I share to them my story. I tell them that pain has something good in store for us. I say, ‘ I have been there too!”.