Miracles do happen

It was March 30, 1997. It was also Easter Sunday. A day of celebrations for Catholics like ourselves. At around 9 in the morning, Ivy tells me, “Hey, I think my bag has burst, we need to rush to the hospital.”. We quickly dressed and took a cab to Bombay Hospital, where we went to the emergency room. There they admitted Ivy. We were kind of surprised. The baby was not due until July, and this was March. It was like just 26 weeks.

Ivy being a physician, the doctors were straightforward and told us what to expect. The probability of Reia surviving was 1 in a million. And just in case she did, her being normal was yet another 1 in a million. And since the chances of survival were low, they were more concerned about the mother. They wanted to avoid a Caesarian to reduce risk, and wanted an induced labor. Finally on April 2, they decided to go ahead. In the afternoon, all of us were surprised.

Emerged Reia, as small as a rat, and weighing in at 880 grams. She fitted in the palm of my hand. They had an incubator ready for her. And all the other gizmos that a modern hospital had to offer. But Reia was independent from Day 1, and decided she didn’t need all of this. Surprisingly, none of the modern day equipment had to be used. She scared us a little and every day was, “1 more day survived”. At one point her weight was down to 770 grams.

Through this process, there was only 1 person who seemed super confident that Reia would survive and be well. And that was Ivy. Everybody else, including me were skeptics. We thought that survival would be difficult if not impossible. And I’m thrilled that all of us were wrong.

She had a wonderful pediatrician Dr. Prem Sheth and her assistant Dr. Rahul. Rahul, coincidentally is now Reia’s cousins pediatrician. They looked after Reia so well, and did their work with a passion that is difficult to describe. And they were really good.

An example that comes to mind, is that during one of Reia’s thrice daily routine, her weight showed as 660 gms. The alarms went off, and Dr. Prem Sheth was summoned in the middle of the night. She walks in, impeccably dressed in her sari, takes 1 look at Reia, holds her in her hand and declares, the weighing machine is wrong. The doctors on duty say they’ve checked it twice and she remarks, "Doesn’t matter. Its wrong. Just get it fixed." And she was right, as usual.

8 weeks later, we walked out of Bombay Hospital with a healthier and heavier cute child. Who weighed in at an impressive 1100 grams. 13 years later, Reia is a a perfectly nice and normal kid. And as she enters her teens, we are beginning to wonder, “Are the tough times behind or ahead of us ?”