All The Pain Yet No Gain (Or So It Seems)

Posted under hope by Radiant Light

Been in a rather sombre mood for the past few days, I think its all the hospital trips taking their toll on. Seems to me half the world is hospitalised!

Nearly three years ago I went through an experience, which I could truly call a lesson in life.

My neighbour, who is like a sister to me and my family, was expecting her first child (the child was almost like my own, a baby after soo long!), she was due on the 11th of April but started feeling slight pain from the 9th, when she phoned up the hospital (the crazy system of calling before going in!), they told her to wait it out until her contractions were a minute apart.

On the 11th she still hadn’t had any such thing, so she went for her 9 plus one appointment (I went with her), the guy that examined her was a student, and when he put his portable sonograph (I think thats what its called) to her stomach, he thought he couldn’t hear anything, but he said that his batteries had been playing up and went to find replacements. When he returned he still was in doubt, he asked her if her child had moved and she said the last she had felt was the night before, but she hadn’t worried because in the pregnancy guide given by the hospital it said as the child is ready to be born movement becomes less frequent.

The student then sent her for an ultrasound by the midwife, the midwife also wasn’t too happy, and at that time I was sent to call her husband.
I felt like crying but knew I had to be strong, so when I went back, on the screen you could see an ultrasound picture by now they had taken her to the main ultra sound room, and to the doctor in charge.
He waited for me to enter and said “I’m sorry, there is no heart beat, and it seems the baby has died since about a day”.
The feelings that went through me that moment, I don’t think I can ever put into words, yet what hit me the most was not my own feelings but the feelings of the mother, who had waited 9 months to hold her baby, she hadn’t had an easy pregnancy, but every time se would consolidate herself saying what was to come would make it worth it. She broke down, it took her quite some time to grasp what she was told, and even then she was still in utter shock.

The craziest part was that the doc’s made her go home instead of inducing the birth the same day, that night she went home and spent the entire night in the baby’s prepared room crying.

The next day we took her to the hospital again to deliver the baby (induced natural birth), I’ve heard people say that the pain of child birth is worth it at the end and you forget it the moment you hold the baby in your arms, but what if you know that you’re giving birth to a dead child? What then? When you know, that after this immense pain you aren’t going to have a bundle of joy to play with but a vast emptiness and broken hope?

It takes the strongest of eman to come through a situation like this, alhumdulillah she had that faith, it didn’t stop the tears or the pain, but it was a comfort knowing that her place in jannah was now secure, that each moment of pain she had patience upon was reward for her. It made me think, what of those who didn’t have eman? Those who lived for only this world? How truly blessed we are to have eman, one of the greatest gifts and the treasure of most value. Truly without it what would this life be?