Pete McMartin: A salvation and revelation, weighing just over seven pounds

A child is born.

Her name is Sadie.

She was born, not in a manger, but in the maternity ward of Richmond General Hospital. She entered the world at 9:45 a.m. on a Tuesday.

She was in a hurry to get here. While her mother’s modest contractions started at midnight, the morning’s contractions arrived with a clamour, and her mother and father shot off to the hospital only to get caught in the morning rush-hour traffic. They crept through the jammed Deas Island Tunnel, counting the seconds between contractions, growing frantic at the thought of a subterranean delivery.

Sadie, obligingly, waited until they reached the hospital, but only just. Minutes after their arrival, her father, expecting a long day in the waiting room, instead emailed a picture to the extended family of mother and daughter together in bed, with the mother smiling and Sadie asleep at her breast. “Three pushes,” her mother said later, and Sadie made her squalling entrance. The nurses in the maternity ward nodded appreciatively at her mother’s quick work. The hospital discharged mother and daughter later that same day.