Tuesday, February 26, 2008

Miracle of Life

I always wonder do miracles really happen...does every human being come across a miracle atleast once in a lifetime...well believe it or not...i found the answer. Miracles do happen and God sends them in the form of babies!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Our miracle was born on Jan 3 2008 at 11:05pm after I spent what seemed to be the longest day of my life. Sushma started getting her contractions early morning at around 5am and we knew it was time. We waited till it was really no longer possible for her to bear the pain, and we rushed her to the Durham Regional Hospital at around 11am. The doctor put her on a sedative and said we need to wait for another 10-12 hours till it was time. She was in pain and there is nothing much a husband can do at the time, just give some moral support and make her strong for the ultimate challenge of her life.

When the pain became unbearable, the doctor advised for a dose of Epidural which is a painful injection given directly to the spinal cord. It made her go numb and she had a smooth journey thereafter. After all this pain and time spent waiting for a normal delivery to happen, we were told a C-section is inevitable. This was decided at 10pm and sushma was taken into the operation room, I dressed up in the gown, cap & mask given to me and joined her at the operation table where there were around 5-6 doctors and nurses around her, belly already sliced open, 2 anaesthetia doctors behind her head asking her whether she is feeling anything happening except the pressure on her stomach. Seeing all this made me go numb in my legs, but i tried to remain cool and sat down next to her and held her hands, never daring even once to look across the thin sheet they had put up in front of her face, basically covering all the action at the other end of the table!!!!She had had enough of pain and struggle throughout the day and what we thought was going to be an enjoyable experience, turned out quite a nasty one. Well, once again, i was just able to hold on to her and wait for the procedure to get over without any major issues.

It was almost like 15minutes after I had walked in, that the doctor said the baby is almost out, so I jumped up on my feet to have the first glimpse of our miracle. There she was, Dr.Avery holding her up, patches of white fluid all over, gasping for her first breath of air, suddenly feeling all cold and exposed to the outside world. Till that very moment, we didnt know it was going to be a girl, and once i realised it, i cried out loud to sush that we got what we were always hoping for - a beautiful little girl.

I sat back down waiting for the moment to sink in and exchanged tears of happiness with sush, the moment was precious and I wanted to spend as much time with sush, meanwhile our daughter was drawing all attention at the other end of the room where there were atleast 4 nurses attending to her, cleaning her up, and keeping her warm. I had to capture these precious moments on my camera, and I came back and showed sush how lovely our little girl was looking, hoping that would ease off all the pain she had during the day. The doctors were still working on her belly, stitching away in glory, constantly laughing and chatting amongst themselves, I wanted to tell them, 'hey take these things seriously in life, itz my wife laying down there', but of course they were used to doing dozens of this everyday, and it was like they were stitching some tear in their garments.

Once our baby got wrapped up in warm cloths, with a small pink cap, looking like an angel, a nurse brought her to us and asked if I wanted to hold her. I put down the camera and for the first time picked up my daughter in my arms, the moment was so overwhelming, and really difficult to express in words. Since sushma's hands were not free to move around, I brought our baby's face close to her's, so that she could kiss her and experience the first touch. She had tears in her eyes, seeing her daughter all awake and keenly observing it's surroundings, trying to get accustomed to the sudden changes. It really makes you think how wonderful a miracle life is, growing up nine months inside the womb, secured, fed and protected by her mother all throughout, to grow into a pefect individual having similar traits of both parents, to have developed all the right organs in the right places, leaving nothing to chance, this is God's ultimate miracle!!!!!!!!

I can keep writing about all the events that followed that night, but I want to take a step back and give some thought to the wonderful chain of events that lead to this beautiful girl whom we named Neha. It was in April 2007 that we realised Sushma is pregnant and we broke the news to our parents who were extremely overjoyed hearing about this. Sushma was working at AICPA at the time and decided to continue with her job till she could manage. She started feeling nauseous during her 2nd month which continued for almost 3-4 months, she couldnt stand the slightest smell that could make her throw up. She had phases of cravings for eating, though we cooked as much as we can at home, we did enjoy the early days of her pregnancy going out and eating at various restaurants here.

We wanted our parents to join us here in the US, by taking turns so that we will have them with us for a continous stretch of 1 year. Sushma's mom joined us in October and sushma had left her job by then, she has been a tremendous help for us from the day she has arrived, preparing tasty indian dishes and freeing us up from so many household chores that we used to do before. Sushma's dad is joining us in a couple of weeks and later on my parents will be arriving at the end of march. We will be so used to having people around us now, i cannot imagine how it will be when everyone leaves and we are again alone.

Well, now we have Neha in our lives, who has taken the center stage, demanding our attention every minute she is awake, we have realised our responsibility towards her. She has brought a storm of changes along with her into our lives, and has filled it with happiness and joyful moments. We will continue to cherish these moments throughout and hope to make good parents for her. Sushma has given me the ultimate gift a man can ever want in his life, thanks honey, we make a perfect happy family now.