The healing touch

Yesterday at 5 pm I was called to attend an emergency cesarean delivery. I am a pediatrician and work in a government hospital. As I entered the OT, I was told the mother was blind. Her husband was blind, too. I heard someone’s hushed whisper, a question hanging in the air like a heavy curtain: “Will the child be blind as well?”

Tension inside the Operation Theatre was contagious.The whole room felt tense. The mother, despite being under anesthesia, was so full of fear, she shrieked every time someone touched her. It was heartbreaking to see. Suddenly I realised that the mother had been going through this suspense for 9 long months.

But then, the baby came out. A son. The first thing I noticed were his eyes. They were beautiful, wide open and dark, already drinking in the world. He was a perfect little boy, a miracle in the making.

When the gynecologist were sewing the mother up, I took the baby to her. I wanted her to feel him, to know he was real and here. As he lay on her chest, he began to cry. His tiny fists balled up, and as he moved, one of his fingers brushed against his mother’s face. The touch was so gentle, so simple, yet the effect was instant and profound. The fear on her face, the tense, contorted expression, melted away. In its place came the most divine smile I have ever seen.It was a sudden, radiant light that filled the entire operating room. It cleared up the darkness of tension that had gripped us all in the OT. I looked around, and I could see the relief on the faces of the doctors and nurses. It was a healing, ethereal moment.

This isn’t a story about a medical procedure. It’s the story of the healing effect of the first cry of a newly born baby. It’s my personal experience that the moment the baby cries out for the first time, the gynecologist relaxes, the nurses smile. The result of 9 months penance of the mother bears fruit. Miraculously she feels less pain. Oozing from operation sites also slows down.

It’s a story about a tiny touch that broke through fear and pain and brought forth the most pure, beautiful smile I have ever witnessed. And it’s a story I will carry with me for the rest of my life.