That’s Ella–her brother Bryce is happy to have a sister.

This week brought some good news in the Finke extended family: Ella, who had been born to Beth’s niece Stacey and her husband Ryan prematurely, came home after a stay in neonatal intensive care.

In this day and age, one can say, “No big deal.” After all, preemies are common, we have folks scheduling births to accommodate busy calendars, we have people having extravagant baby showers and now—I understand—something called “sprinkles” for babies to be born after the first child.

It’s almost as if all this childbirth stuff is routine. I’m here to tell you: It ain’t. And to confess: Every time a friend or family member reports that they are expecting a baby, Beth and I hold our breaths a little.

Don’t get me wrong: We’re happy. But our experience with Gus nearly 30 years ago taught us something about birth: as commonplace as it is, it’s a ridiculously complicated miracle that should never be taken for granted.

For those of you who don’t know the story, Gus is our son. Conceived during an enthusiastic reunion after Beth had spent months at a blind rehab facility she nicknamed Braille Jail, he was the product of what I alternately describe as major contraceptive failure or unplanned parenthood.

Beth and I did not intend to have children—largely because she was diagnosed at a type 1 diabetic when she was seven. Diabetes had already cost her eyesight, and pregnancy can cause other very serious—up to and including fatal—problems for a diabetic.

Beth had a fantastic primary care doctor who ran a battery of tests, some of which could have revealed certain problems that for us, anyway, would’ve ruled out carrying through with the pregnancy. But they all came back clean, and he explained that if she/we wanted to, and if she/we committed to a bulletproof program to manage blood sugar levels, there was no reason we could not have a healthy baby without Beth suffering for it. And so we decided to carry on.

It was months of countless finger prick blood tests and weekly (at least) doctor visits. And everything checked out along the way. Babies of diabetic mothers tend to grow large quickly, and so we knew there was a prospect of an early birth by c-section. Indeed, Gus was delivered at just over 8 lbs. about three weeks early.

“Delivered” really doesn’t do the event justice. I was there for the procedure, and will never forget the sights and, frankly smells, and, well, let’s just say placenta is pretty psychedelic. Gus came out, the doctor said we have a boy, he gave a little squawk, and proceeded to try to leave the world as quickly as he had popped into it. I got a quick glance of him, they rushed him to a table in the corner of the OR, and it was a frenzy of activity and medical talk.

Beth and I had decided that we did not want to have more than one child, and that she would have a tubal ligation after the baby was born. Our OB/GYN, smartly and responsibly, said to us: “In light of what’s going on behind me with your baby, do you still want to go through with the ligation?”

YES! was our resounding, unified chorus.

Gus was given a 50/50 chance of making it through the night. Beth was in a pain-killer induced daze, but still had the wherewithal to hold my hand and say, “However it works out, we did everything we could.”

She fell out and I went home and sat on the couch, my view a tower of disposable diapers stacked in the corner of the living room, gifts from a baby shower.

Gus was in the neo-natal intensive care unit for more than a month. The days brought good news, bad news, ups, downs. I made multiple daily visits, Beth arranged rides to visit while I was at work, it was our second home.

Apart from our own drama, what I remember most is this: Gus and we had a lot of company in the NICU. Rows of distressed babies festooned with tubes and wires in incubators,  and distressed parents standing beside them. And unbelievably kind, capable staff—particularly the nurses.

We parents and doctors and nurses didn’t know a dang thing about each other but it was sort of like a college dorm. We got to know one another. We watched, with some envy, parents taking their babies home. We arrived to find a baby gone only to learn she hadn’t made it.

Gus, tough in his own way, proved to beat his odds. We eventually did bring Gus home, but only after learning he had a very rare genetic disorder that would leave him severely disabled. His difficulties had nothing to do with Beth’s diabetes.

It was impossible to understand. I saw him last week—27-year old Gus, that is. He’s doing swell in his little group home in Watertown, Wis., thanks to the good Badger and Packer fans at Bethesda Lutheran Communities.

I’d like to say all’s well that ends well. But it’s a lot more ambiguous than that. It’s still not really understandable.

One thing, though, that I’m sanguine about: When it comes to childbirth, our hubris can tempt us to believe we’re driving the bus. But we’re not. Best we can do is check the tire pressure, change the oil, and hope for the best.

Whether you believe in the wonders and complexity of biology, of God, or both (I don’t think they’re mutually exclusive), a healthy baby is one gigantic deal.

And I could not be happier for Ella and her folks.

Last summer four instructors started training 28 one-and-a-half year old puppies to become Seeing Eye dogs. Jim Kessler, one of the Senior Managers of Instruction & Training at the

Jim Kessler left Wall Street for The Seeing Eye.

Seeing Eye, supervised these four instructors throughout the training process. On November 26, I arrived along with 18 other blind people to be matched with a Seeing Eye dog. Jim had phoned us all beforehand, read our paperwork and even visited a few of us at home before we arrived. He helped the instructors size up each of us to determine which of the dogs would match up best with our situations at home. Two days after we arrived, nineteen of us were introduced to a friend who will guide our way through the next decade. My new pal is Whitney, a Golden/Labrador Retriever cross with a goofy “smart bump” on the top of her head.

Jim hasn’t always worked for the Seeing Eye. “I worked for Lehman Brothers before it imploded, and then I worked for the Federal Reserve,” he told me.“ And I can tell you the very last day I ever went to work in Manhattan: it was September 11, 2001.” Jim was contemplating a career change before then, and 911 cemented the decision. From an article in the North Jersey Record:

The position requires a college degree, Kessler said. He worked for an investment bank and was considering a career change when the terrorist attacks on Sept. 11, 2001, made him switch jobs. Kessler said he chose this position because it combined his interests in teaching,working with dogs and helping people.

After passing a three-year apprenticeship, Jim became an instructor in 2004. He was promoted to Senior Manager of Instruction and Training this year – we were the very first class he supervised.

The North Jersey Record article reports that salaries start in the $40,000 range for those in the Seeing Eye’s three-year apprentice training program, and that the salary for full instructors ranges from $50,000 to $85,000. Odds are that Jim Kessler took a significant paycut to work for the Seeing Eye, but he doesn’t talk about that. He talks instead about his pride in the instructors here, his love for the dogs, and his family at home. Jim and his wife have three beautiful daughters, and Whitney and I are going to meet two of them later today.

Let me explain. During this last week here students do “freelance” work – instructors expose us to some of the specific things we’ll be facing once we return home. Two students in my group of four are retired and live in communities without sidewalks, so they used freelance time learning how their dogs Alec (a black Lab) and Beckham (a Golden Retriever) would guide them safely along the sides of streets. One student in our group is a lecturer in the Cultral Anthropology department at Texas State University – our trainer took him to a local college to see how his new German Shepherd Bill navigates campus sidewalks.

Whitney and I went to New York City for freelance work on Saturday, and we returned there with our trainer yesterday to practice negotiating revolving doors and turnstiles, see how Whit deals with road construction on busy streets, and get a feel for how she handles crowds of pedestrians walking with/against us. Whitney made some mistakes, of course. I could read her body language through the harness as we reworked the errors, and I am happy to report that corrections don’t shake her confidence. “Oh, you meant for me to turn into Penn Station, Beth?” she seemed to say once. “Well, then, let’s back up a few steps and do it again, get it right this time.” She turns into the station, I follow her lead, and we’re off!

For my freelance trip today, Jim Kessler will chauffeur Whit and me to Warren G. Harding Elementary School in Kenilworth, NJ, where his daughter Emma is in third grade and Maeve is a big first grader. I already have three school visits scheduled in the Chicago suburbs in 2012, and the trip today will show us whether young Whit can sit still during a school presentation and resist all those adorable students reaching out to pet her. Wish us luck!