Some of the clinic staff went a few days ago to take a woman up to Tokora hospital who had been in labor but the child had died and she had gone out of labor and needed to be induced (if you’re looking for gory details, the umbilical cord had apparently detached and come out with the child still inside. She tied the cord to her leg and walked for several hours to the clinic). They were on the road with an inexperienced driver at the wheel (not many good options to pick from around here) and the car fell into a gully that had eroded out into the road. The crash caused the woman to go back into labor and she gave birth on the roadside to the dead child but also to a second live child. She was carrying twins and nobody knew.
The real twist of the story, which I will relate as best I can without being trained in the medical arts, is this—I am told that after the umbilical cord detaching, the placenta naturally begins to die, causing the oxygen to the remaining child likely to be diminished for some hours while she was walking to the clinic. If she had not gone back into labor on the side of the road, there is a good chance that this second child would not have survived either.
We haven’t heard any updates on the woman. The child had some pretty long odds at ultimately surviving for a variety of reasons anyway, but the story is a boldface reminder that God is holding all of our lives in his hands and orchestrating even the troubles we experience (cars being swallowed up into the earth) to his good purposes (stealth baby is born).
As a result of the crash, Bob and little Bob had to go and tow the car out of the gully and little Bob was made with some great hesitation to take some pictures of the whole process, which I have not seen. If they aren’t too PG-13, I’ll post them here as soon as I get them.