Toward the end of November, Kay began to suspect that something was wrong with her. At first she thought of many reasons besides the obvious one why she should not be all right: The strain of coping with Steve’s neediness was telling on her more than she realized, or perhaps as a very diabetic thirty-seven years of age she was prematurely losing her youthful regularity, or … or…. But when she started having serious problems with the delicate balance of her insulin dosage, she was forced to ask for an urgent consultation with Dr. Pederson. And when she returned home from her appointment (it was two days before Christmas), she was a different woman.
In those two days she did more concentrated praying and thinking than she had ever done in any other two days in her life before. Weighing all aspects, she concluded that the best time to break the news to Steve would be after the midnight carol and Communion service on Christmas Eve.
If initially the news had left her aghast, what would it do to Steve? It negated all of his careful efforts over the past eleven years to avoid just such a thing. It had ripped open all those longings within her heart which she had stubbornly held in check because she didn’t want a repeat of the painful “clash” that had settled the issue once and for all at the beginning of their marriage. There was no doubt in her mind about when and where the breakdown had occurred, or about who was responsible for it. But now that it was a reality, fear and hope were at war with each other in her. Tears of joy mingled with tears of apprehension. She found herself returning again and again to the information Dr. Pederson had shared with her moments after breaking the news to her.
“There is something you and Steve should know,” he had begun. “But first let me review a few things you may already know. As soon as your baby’s pancreas becomes large enough to function, it will begin supplying both the baby and you with natural insulin in ever increasing amounts. As a result, your insulin dosage must be decreased proportionately, as you may already be discovering. I will have to monitor this frequently if you decide to keep the baby. Towards the end of your pregnancy, the baby’s pancreas will have become so overdeveloped that you will not be taking any injections at all. At the moment of childbirth, this creates a double crisis. The baby must immediately undergo an operation to reduce its oversized pancreas before the baby succumbs to a huge overdose of the insulin you can no longer use. And your dosage also has to be immediately restored, but to what level? All we can do in these circumstances is to guess at the right amount. On top of that, any bleeding induced by childbirth can become very dangerous to a diabetic mother whose blood doesn’t clot normally.
“That leaves us with three possibilities at this point. Sometimes the baby dies in the womb. This can happen at any stage, resulting either in a D and C or a stillbirth. Sometimes the baby is born alive and rapidly succumbs to an oversupply of insulin. And sometimes an operation on the baby to remove the excess pancreas allows the child to develop normally in every way. Of course, there are risks to the mother in all three possibilities.
“What I am driving at is this: the last alternative has enjoyed a growing success rate in recent years. There are specialists who have become highly skilled at performing the necessary surgery on the baby and others whose skills focus on the mother’s urgent needs. Even so, a large risk remains, but it has been reduced enough so that at this point physicians are tending to present the facts to the parents and leave the decision in their hands.
“Of course, much as I respect the sacredness of life in the womb, there are times with a certain severity group of diabetic mothers when failure to terminate the pregnancy early is a virtual death sentence both for the baby and for the mother. And you, Kay, taking account of your age and your medical history, could very well fall into that group. I shall send all your records to specialists in Minneapolis this very day for assessment. Their assessment, together with my advice, will give you and Steve something to base your decision on.”
Kay had gone home spellbound by the thread of hope held out to her by Dr. Pederson. He spoke as though there was a real chance that she and Steve could have a baby who would “develop normally in every way”! This would unite them in a new world, the world of a living soul of their very own whom they could love together and in whom they could inculcate the goodness the world needed so badly. How a child would bless them both at this point in their lives! Steve would surely not yield to despair when he had in his own arms a precious life to protect and guide. All they had to do now was say yes to the decision lying before them. The risk involved? Steve himself had drawn the conclusion that a life without risks is just about the worst thing that can happen to the human soul.
This was the thread of hope on which Kay strung her heart. Steve might well shrink back at first, but now she was armed with a fact for him to take into account, not just her feelings. That fact would stand, given any amount of encouragement from the specialists in Minneapolis, and it would stare him in the eye no matter what he said. Its power would work on him with time. Yes, it would work on him! And she and Steve would have their baby!
The Midnight Service on Christmas Eve was exhilarating. The whole church was illumined only by the soft radiance of the candles on the altar, the white bulbs on the Christmas tree in the chancel, dim recessed lights in the vaulted ceiling, and at the end by candles held by all the worshippers. The sweet tangy scent of pine needles was the incense offered to the newborn Savior on this night of nights as men and angels strove to sing His praises.
“Hark, the herald angels sing,
‘Glory to the Newborn King!’”
“What Child is this who laid to rest
On Mary’s lap is sleeping,
Whom angels greet with anthems sweet
While shepherds watch are keeping.”
“Ah, dearest Jesus, Holy Child,
Make Thee a bed, soft, undefiled,
Within my heart, that it may be
A quiet chamber kept for Thee.”
“Silent night, holy night,
All is calm, all is bright
Round yon Virgin Mother and Child,
Holy Infant, so tender and mild,
Sleep in heavenly peace.”
As the story unfolded in song and words, Kay held Steve’s arm in hers as in a vise, tugging on it every time shivers ran up and down her body. During the sacred moment of the Holy Childbirth itself, as the choir was singing the third stanza of Phillip Brooks’ sublime carol, Kay heard every word as if addressed to her and Steve:
“How silently, how silently
The wondrous Gift is given!
So God imparts to human hearts
The blessings of His Heaven.
No ear may hear His coming,
But in this world of sin
Where meek souls will receive Him, still
The dear Christ enters in.”
By the time they arrived home, a sort of beatific afterglow of peace had settled over Kay. Fear and doubt about what lay ahead of them had melted out of her heart. She had assumed until now that she and Steve would deal with this somehow by sitting down, coolly calculating the risks and mutually agreeing on the right course of action. Now this assumption was miles from her mind.
The aura of the Holy Night had had a soothing effect on Steve, too. As they entered the tidy intimacy of their living room at about 1:30 a.m. where only the lights on the Christmas tree were glowing, he put his arm around his wife and drew her down into the big soft davenport facing the tree. This tender gesture was all Kay needed to unlock her hallowed secret. Just a moment or two of silence, of soaking up the gentle mists of love, and she could hold it in no longer.
“Steve, my love. I have something wonderful to give you for Christmas this year.”
She paused. Then without lifting her head from his shoulder, but squeezing his hand a little tighter, she said, “We are going to have a baby.”
Steve’s jaw dropped. He tried to say something that didn’t come. Kay sat up straight and turned full toward him, clasping both of his hands in hers and beaming brightly into his eyes.
“What on earth do you mean by that?” he gasped.
Kay’s grin broadened and became as contagious as she could make it.
“I mean that next July you are going to be a father and I am going to be a mother. Dr. Pederson says there are doctors these days who specialize in this. So now we can have our own baby, and it is already inside me.”
It came at Steve too suddenly to grasp. He nodded slowly, said nothing, and sat in a daze for a very long moment. Then he reached out and took Kay by the arms. He drew her in to him again and, assured by the warmth of her body against his and the feel of their arms tightly wound around each other, he tried to absorb the reality of what she had just told him.
For a full half hour, this embrace of theirs in the soft light of the Christmas tree was their only communication.
Then Steve took a deep breath and conceded, “We’ll have to look into this.”