When Anthony Was Born (cont.)

I remember my mother-in-law that night, in perpetual motion; pacing and praying. Back and forth, up and down the hall just outside the delivery room. Pacing. Praying. Not just any old praying though. No. This was the very definition of fervent prayer; intense at just above a whisper, a focused dialogue with a God she was determined to engage, here in this place, where the lives of both her baby and her grand baby were hanging in the balance. My mother-in-law passed away last year. The church overflowed with many kind people who came to her funeral and shared memories of her. An entry from her journal was read aloud, from the day she learned that her cancer was terminal, and it was a strong testimony to her faith. But to me the greatest memory of Carol will be of that night, in that darkest hour, in a strong sort of agony, talking to God.

Whatever she did, it worked. That our doctor was able to make it to the hospital before Anthony came out was the first miracle. Maxime's labor simply stopped, this despite the fact that all the nurses were sure the baby was coming "any second". Time simply froze for both mother and child. Heart rates stayed normal, everyone caught their breath and when the doc arrived and the crash unit was called in....still, time froze. It did not seem possible, to anyone, save for a woman just outside the room who simply would not stop pacing.

The c-section began when the crash unit arrived. At this point it was discovered that our baby was, as the doctor described it, "inside of a loofah sponge". We knew my wife had fibroid tumors. We did not know she had over a hundred of them, from the size of grapes to the size of plums. That our child had managed 29 weeks in there was the second miracle of the night. But things then took a turn for the worse as, try as she might, forceps and all, the doctor just could not get our baby free from that loofah sponge. Having cut horizontally for the first c-section, she now made a second incision, almost in a panic, this time vertically, directly across the uterus. The room was not silent. Trained professionals as they were, they knew they were in a race against time. Mild curse words were muttered beneath their breaths. The crash unit waited in the background led by, I would later find out, one of the foremost doctors in the field of premature babies, a slight man with a beard and soft eyes. But this was not his game. Yet. This was my wife's OBGYN's game, and she was struggling. At some point it became now or never. I saw it in her eyes. My son still has the forceps scar on the side of his stomach to prove it. She went in and she grabbed hold and she pulled for dear life, and out came a little doll that was limp as could be, a mass of human flesh that was whisked so quickly to the crash team unit that I barely caught a glimpse.

If not for the click and whir of some of the machinery around us I would have been positive that I had been struck deaf at that moment. Nobody was talking. Not a sound. Then my wife began to cry and ask if the baby was OK. She was begging for an answer, and no one would give it. I was there but I wasn't, I was holding her hand but I wasn't. I had drifted to some far off place where I could handle what was or was not to come, that place named "This Isn't Really Happening". I heard the crash team struggling, I heard orders being given and instruments being banged about.

Good things come in three's, they say. Miracles rarely so. One in a lifetime is usually sufficient. But when you have an angel in the hallway rattling the gates of heaven for help, miracles can come in three's too.

Our third miracle was one that never should have happened, and that would by its very nature make it a miracle. It was the wayward cry of a newborn baby, loud and sharp, the likes of which is rare in a 29 week old who should not have lungs that are developed enough to do the deed. With that cry the room erupted with sighs and cheers of relief and I will never forget....no, I think it will be one of my final memories when I die...the words of that crash team doctor as he held our baby up to us.

"You have son. It's a boy."

In the hallway a mother-in-law stopped pacing as a daddy did his touchdown dance in the delivery room, and a little baby boy confirmed with all the strength his little body could muster in those first cries that prayers are never in vain, and that God is always listening.