“Dovid Hamelech praised Hashem for each of his five stages of passage. The first was even before his mother gave birth to him, and the second was just after he was born.” (Berachos 10).
Rabbi Avigdor Miller, zt”l, elaborates on this theme, declaring that few appreciate the full extent of the miracles which occur at each live birth of a healthy baby.
“Never were you in such danger,” he proclaimed, “as the day before and the day after you were born!”
My daughter, Gila, was expecting her first baby. As she lived in a small yeshiva out- of- town community, which boasted no hospital of its own, she planned to give birth in a large hospital in the city, not far from where I lived. I was glad of this, as I fully intended to accompany her for the birth, and give her appropriate encouragement. In my eyes, she was so very young, my own baby!
During the ninth month Gila arranged to spend every Shabbos with us, in case her baby arrived early and on a Shabbos. In a way that decision was the first in a series of miracles with which Hashem blessed us.
During that first Shabbos everything was going fine and Gila was suffering only the normal minor discomforts of pregnancy. So I did not give it undue attention when she complained of some discomfort in her upper abdomen. She had already had some minor problems with digestion in the previous weeks, which both her doctor and I knew was quite normal in some pregnancies, and insignificant in the general pattern of things. It definitely was unrelated to labor. That was quite clear both from the nature and location of the discomfort. I suggested that she rest after the seudah, a suggestion which Gila was only too happy to follow. She worked hard during the week at her job and her still relatively new housekeeping, and gratefully seized the opportunity to rest up.
After Shabbos, Gila was prepared to take the first bus home. Her husband was waiting for her – his own position as dorm supervisor did not permit him to accompany her to our home – and Sunday would be a busy day. The bus journey from my house to hers takes three hours.
The second miracle occurred when Gila recalled that she had to pick something up from a neighbor of mine. Once there she naturally chatted a little with her old friend and then realized that she had missed that first bus and would have to wait two hours for the next!
Two hours later, I helped Gila with her luggage and duly accompanied her to her bus stop. The third miracle that took place was that the bus was half an hour late in arriving.
We were both becoming a little irritated by the delay, when suddenly Gila turned to me exclaiming, “But Mammy, how can I possibly travel alone, when I have these terrible pains in my stomach? I can’t sit so long on a bus seat. It hurts my stomach to sit.”
My heart dropped. I had not realized that in the last few hours, her pains had increased so much. I later learned that the intensity had increased so gradually that Gila herself only realized at that moment how much she was suffering; especially when she contemplated the imminent arrival of the delayed bus, and subsequent three hour bus journey in that condition..
I was still certain that this sort of pain was definitely not labor. But my mother’s instinct was shouting to me in no uncertain terms: “There is something very wrong here. Pregnant or not, no one should suffer such intense pain that the thought of sitting is intolerable.”
Abruptly, just as the bus was finally approaching, I turned to Gila, and pronounced,
“You are right. You can’t travel in that condition. You are NOT boarding this bus. In stead we will take a local bus to the hospital emergency room and get you checked out.”
At the hospital, we inquired as to which section we should register. Where indeed does one register when pregnant, but suffering from some other malady unconnected with pregnancy and labor?
The reception nurses were quite certain, that since Gila’s complaints – by now she had added to the litany of her distress – feelings of intense nausea – were of a general medical condition, and she was definitely neither due to give birth nor in early labor, she should register in the section dealing with general medicine and not the special pregnancy emergency department.
So that’s where we waited patiently for attention. At least that’s where I waited patiently. But poor Gila could not sit down. After a short while, she was in such great pain she had to lie on the floor, and she began to vomit violently into a receptacle. At last she had the nurses’ attention.
“If you don’t mind, we would like to draw some blood for a routine test” the nurse declared mildly.
I certainly didn’t mind. Indeed I still do not know why they had not performed this routine procedure on our arrival. Gila’s display of her symptoms, however, turned out to be the fourth miracle in the series. For that is what finally obtained for her the necessary attention?
A short while later the nurse approached us again. “I am so sorry to bother you again,” she said. “But something happened to the first sample we drew, and we will have to take some more blood to do the test we wanted.”
I controlled my impatience. What could have happened to the first sample? Had it got accidentally thrown out? I was beset with a dreadful suspicion. Was the real story that the test had had displayed something horribly wrong with Gila’s blood, and they didn’t want to alarm us until they repeated the test and confirmed the diagnosis?
Fifteen minutes later a doctor approached us. “We need to perform a C section immediately,” he informed a shocked mother and daughter.
“But what is the matter?” I begged. “Isn’t it better for the baby if the mother remains pregnant till she has completed the ninth month? Why do you think that these pains she is experiencing have anything to do with labor?’
But the nightmare only got worse.
“There is no time to explain,” the doctor said. “I am sorry that I can’t even promise to save the life of the baby. We need your consent to perform a C-section immediately to save the life of the mother. Her blood has shown that she is in grave danger and we mustn’t leave the baby inside her even a minute longer. I will explain all after the surgery. Will you please sign here?”
“Sign, Gila” I told her. “You have no choice.”
They whisked her away, while I begged a friendly nurse to tell me what was gong on.” I have to inform her husband, ‘I said.
“Your daughter has a condition called HELLP,” she explained. It is a rare complication of pregnancy which destroys her red blood cells, attacks the liver, and decimates the platelets. The only way to save her life is to remove the baby.”
“And what about the baby?” I asked, already imagining what it would be like to be the one to inform a sick weak Gila recovering from surgery that chas veshalom –.
“Well we won’t know till we see it, and can assess how much damage has been inflicted. At least in your daughter’s case she has already entered the ninth month before the complication took hold. So the baby might live and not be too badly affected.”
I davened fervently and prayed for a miracle – for yet two more miracles – a healthy daughter and a living healthy baby.
An hour later, the surgeon who had performed the C Section approached me smiling.
“Your daughter is going to be all right,” he informed me. “You can go to her now in the recovery room. We did the operation just in time. It will take a couple of months for her blood to return to normal. So she can expect to be rather weak during that time. And of course she must go for regular check ups until her blood returns to normal.”
“And the baby?” I asked, not daring to hope.
“Oh you have another miracle there,” he replied. “The baby appears to be holding her own. The pediatrician will check her in the morning. But so far so good.”
I thanked Hashem with all my heart, as I entered the recovery room to greet a sleepy but smiling Gila, still cradling her precious daughter before they whisked her away to be examined.
Then as the morning dawn lit up the sky, I took out my cell phone to tell Gila’s husband, my husband, and my mother of the great nissim Hashem had performed for us.
If all the first four miracles had not occurred, Gila would have been in her isolated village when the seriousness of her condition had manifested itself. And by then it would have been too late for both mother and baby. And now the greatest miracle of all is for me to watch a fully restored Gila attend to the needs of a chuckling playful four- month- old Sarale.”