“If that were my wife, sir, I would have her in surgery right now and get that baby out of there as soon as possible.”

Those chilling words were followed by a flurry of frenetic activity. The on-call surgeon was paged. Nurses were summoned from their coffee break. Permission forms signed.

The anxious young mother was wheeled into the operating room with her nervous husband in tow.

It was a totally unexpected turn of events for the couple who had come in twelve hours earlier when her contractions were too close for comfort.

The labour had been proceeding quite smoothly until the intern decided she would speed up the process by breaking the water before heading home from the very last shift of her internship.

Everything started to go downhill from that point. The dilated cervix started to contract. The labour started to slow down.

Thankfully, since she had been a gestational diabetic, the mother was wearing a monitor. Nurses had offered her the option of having it removed after the first few hours. She had politely declined.

It turned out to be a divinely inspired decision. Without the monitor, no one would have noticed that the baby’s heart beat had been dropping steadily.

As it slowed down to 30 beats per minute, the attending ObGyn looked the father of the child in the eye and uttered the aforementioned words.

Doctors were not sure what was responsible for the low heart beat. Best guess? The umbilical cord was wrapped around the baby’s neck.

Within a matter of minutes, the C-section was in full swing. The nervous father took the best course of action that he probably could under the circumstances. He prayed fervently. And waited impatiently.

Pretty soon, he was treated to the sight of a baby boy being extricated from the womb. When he heard the baby’s cry, he too sobbed as hot tears of joy spelled relief for his tense nerves.

The attending pediatrician who checked out the baby thought he looked a bit blue. The baby’s colour turned healthy shortly after the doctor held an oxygen mask under his nostrils for a few minutes. And all was well with the world.

Meanwhile the tired mother was resting comfortably under the influence of the anaesthetic, totally oblivious to all the commotion.

On this eve of Mother’s Day 2013, we celebrate every woman for whom child birth did not proceed the way it was depicted in the prenatal class videos.

We tip our hats to every mother who did not experience the joy of seeing her newborn at the moment of birth.

We bless every woman who underwent the pain of surgery and the discomfort of post-partum recovery so that her child would gain healthy entry into this world.

We salute every mother who still wears the scar of a C-section as a proud badge of honour.

We praise our Father in heaven for being there for the Sam family at the Regina General Hospital on May 11, 1990 as Sulojana took the perilous path to motherhood.

We thank Dr. Bastien for his forthrightness, Dr. Cardoso for his surgical prowess, Dr. Gunawardene for the pediatric assessment and the masked crew for their able assistance.

Happy 23rd birthday, Sathiya Sam! Happy Mother’s Day, Sulojana Sam!