Just before sunrise I was dreaming. The Assistant Chief Medical Officer was sitting in front of me and we were having a discussion. In real life she’d asked us several times not to deliver our own child in Kaffer. It seemed a bit incongruent considering that she had also told us that our little birth room was better equipped than the government Primary Health Centers that are assigned to take care of the majority of “normal” deliveries in our district. But still, even being fully aware of this discrepancy, her request made me second guess myself. It made me think about how detrimental to our work (let alone our family) it would be if something were to go wrong with the birth of our own child at our center. There were certainly some legitimate reasons for concern considering Amanda’s history and that VBACs (vaginal births after cesareans) aren’t practiced in India. But yet, in my dream, I was confident in telling Dr. Lingdo that we had the baby at home anyways, that not only was it a “normal” delivery but that it was a blessed one as well. It involved a mother doing what her body was created to do, everything needed to help her do it, a midwife there to help when required or desired, a husband and family to support her, and an ambulance waiting outside in case of any complications. The room prepared for her was clean, comfortable, and safe. The baby was born into an environment of love. All went well. All was well. In my dream I was telling her that it was good enough for my wife, so it is good enough for their wives, and that I was asking for official permission to take care of all the “normal” deliveries at our center.
Waking at six in the morning, I
found Amanda sitting upright. She was having contractions every six minutes and
it was finally time. Having seen a lot of traumatic births in recent weeks, a
sense of foreboding had been growing in my heart, but I awoke with a sense of
peace. One concrete reason for this was that Kara Rowley, a midwife from Kansas
with a lot of overseas birth experience, had volunteered to come for the
delivery. It was comforting that everything wasn’t riding on me, which too
often is the case despite my efforts. Another more ethereal reason for
my peace was my nocturnal conversation with Dr. Lingdo. Even as the contractions became more frequent, my
feeling didn’t fade. I was grateful that we’d been blessed with a week of rest
and preparation after a preceding month or so of mayhem. As the day progressed,
everything went according to plan, in fact, better than we would have hoped
for. It turned out to be an uneventful birth, but by that I do not mean boring.
I mean uneventful in the same sense that when you ask someone who has been
soaring at 35,000 feet at 700 mph and crossed half the globe in a single
technologically-enabled leap how their flight was and they reply, “Uneventful.”
My wife’s pain took off, she soared through the dizzying heights of maternal
sacrifice, Kara sat as co-pilot and helped everything stay on course and, after
half a day’s journey, my son gently landed in my arms in the middle of the
Indian Himalayas.
In those mountains, our village is
situated in the midst of a large protected forest. It is mostly composed of
Japanese Cedars: tall, straight, quick growing. In the Bible, cedars are often
used as a symbol for strength and integrity. Any single tree is quite majestic,
but it is much more beautiful when part of a forest. So we named our four-kilogram,
twenty-and-three-quarter’s-inch son Cedar Milan (milan meaning a union or unification). We hope that he will
grow quickly to be a man of integrity and find kindred spirits to stand beside
him in this journey of life.
Since the miscarriage of our
daughter Leaf and the traumatic struggle to save Amanda’s life, a main thought has driven me forward, “I
don’t want any of our neighbors to have to go through that.” But
after Cedar’s birth, a new thought will push me on, “I want all of our neighbors
to experience this.” Both thoughts are legitimate. Both are needed, but
I think the second is better than the first. Our work so far in Kaffer has been
like running life boats for a sinking ship. It has been a survival operation. It
has taken a monumental effort just to ensure that my neighbors don’t “have to
go through that” (not that this goal
has even been fully realized yet). Our work to come is to give an opportunity
for “our neighbors to experience this.”
What is the “this”? “This” is life instead of survival. “This” is grace instead
of fate. “This” is compassion instead of compulsion. “This” is love instead of
duty. But we won’t be able to do it alone, like two trees standing on a hilltop
just begging to be struck by lightning. We’ll need a forest of kindred spirits
to make it happen.
Just before sunrise I was dreaming
but just before sunset I was holding my dream in my arms. So I think I may go
and have that conversation with Dr. Lingdo in real life as well. The first part
of my dream has come true, why not the second?
In Him,
Ryan, Amanda, Linda,
Asher, Shepherd, AND Cedar.
No comments:
Post a Comment