Pain! It was the kind of pain women feel when it is time to rush to the hospital to deliver the baby. And so the lady was hastily taken to the gynecology department where she was immediately warded and examined by a gynecologist. That very evening, she was taken into place where the baby first pushed its head through the vagina. It was big and the body just could not get through. The husband was told that there was a need to get the mother to the main hospital in Alor Star by ambulance. Having trust in the doctor’s assurance that that was the best procedure to take, the husband agreed to it.

Upon reaching the main hospital, the specialist gynecologist allayed the fears of the husband by explaining the steps which would be taken. The baby was unable to come out as the body was too big. The head was out, a little elongated with the shape of a jackfruit (This was what the husband told me.) but the body just could not make it. So, using a machine to suck the body out was the alternative step to take. The vagina had to be cut so that the opening for the foetus could emerge from the mother’s body. According to the husband the procedure was successful and both mother and child were safe. Still, the parents were anxious about the elongated shape of the baby’s head. The gynecologist told them not to worry but go for a rest and return after dinner. Unable to resist the gynecologist’s instructions, they had no alternative but returned after dinner to find the baby’s head the normally expected shape, well perhaps more like an apple than a jackfruit.

But then, the poor wife or the baby’s mother had gone though a trauma which was to prevent any wish to be pregnant for a good many years. When babies are too big, the pregnant lady ought to be advised to go through a cesarean birth which would have prevented such a trauma. (Of course, I am just voicing my unprofessional advice as I am not a gynecologist. Well, the best thing is to prove me right by asking a gynecologist.)

Anyway, modern science has progressed so far that what was once a problem is no longer one. Knowledge has not only made giving-birth safer; with this understanding, fears of the elongated shape of such foetus which had been pulled and stretched, would be a thing of the past. Getting the outline of the soft cartilage to become the shape we desire has no longer been a problem for the last thirty or more years.