My story . . . Part 3 of several

Well, I suppose you may have guessed what happened.

It was May 8, 2001. Barb was about seven months pregnant and we were still very excited about it all. I had just started my new job in Virginia Beach—the one I was assigned to in lieu of England. I was a department head overseeing ten courses of instruction at the Navy’s intelligence training center. Teaching and education appeal to me, so I liked the job.

On this day I got a phone call from Barb from the hospital. She had gone in that day for a check-up, and the doctor told her that she had started having contractions—pre-term labor. She would have to be admitted for a day or two until they could get the contractions to stop, then she would probably come home and be put on bed rest for the remainder of the pregnancy. Given this likely scenario, Barb’s mother came down from Maryland to help out.

However, a week went by, and the doctors were unable to get the contractions to go away fully. Eventually they began to subside, and by May 15th, the doctors said that if all went well, Barb could come home the next day. But all did not go well.

On the evening of the 15th, Barb’s contractions increased a good bit, and through the evening hours she experienced quite a bit of pain. This didn’t seem fair. She had discussed all this with her doctor beforehand and for medical reasons it was decided that she was to have a c-section, by appointment, with a very minimum of pain. Instead, Barb had about five hours of fairly intense labor. As midnight approached, the doctor determined that there was no turning back. Barb was prepped for an emergency c-section. As she was whisked away to the operating room, a nurse threw a gown at me and said, “Put this on and meet us in the O.R.”

The operation went fairly quickly, and at 1:30 A.M. on May 16th, 2001, the baby was lifted out, appearing no worse for the wear. He was eight pounds. [Eight pounds and eight weeks early—geez, if he had gone full-term he would have been a monster!] We gave him the name Matthew, which means “gift of God.” We had decided on that name fairly early, since this is exactly how we felt. Anyway, Barb was sewn up, and led back to a room for recovery and sleep. I went over to where Matthew was being cared for, and spent an hour or two watching what was going on.

Now, at one time or another, most of you have been in a hospital in the middle of the night. Everything is a little surreal, foggy—silence, with the exception of muffled chatter here or there, and the sound of light, airy music in the background. In this atmosphere, it was difficult for me to even begin to process everything that had gone on in my life over the past year. What made it even more surreal was that after all this time I was actually looking at my new baby—a living, breathing, crying baby. It was exactly what I wanted.

After a while, I was able to put together a few thoughts. This would certainly make for a nifty story, one that I would no doubt be telling people for the rest of my life: Man and woman can’t have baby. Man throws temper tantrum in back yard. Man and woman have yard sale. Woman finally gets pregnant. Older son declares preposterous wish. Baby is born on his brother’s 9th birthday as a sign that God’s hand is in it all.

But as I stood there in the hospital that night, little did I know that in the next few days, I would begin to experience the greatest crisis of my life—a crisis that eventually caused me to change the way I think about almost everything in life.