Father of Three, Daddy of Two

I became a father,four days after I turned 25. I was both excited and worried. Excited because my daughter, Michelle, was the most beautiful new born baby I had ever set my eyes on. Worried because I was jobless and had no idea how I was going to raise my young family.

Labour of Love

Michelle had attempted to arrive two weeks earlier in what the doctors referred to as ‘False Labour’. It is an interesting concept in that it is exactly like normal labour but for one difference. There is no baby at the end.

Besides what I had seen in movies, I had never experienced such passionate screaming prior to that visit to Pumwani Maternity Hospital in the wee hours of the morning. As my brother and I waited on a bench in the gloomy corridor, we at first thought that it was some kind of crusade. Only later did we realise that it was women in labour. It was an unnerving experience that greatly raised my respect for mothers.

Hawking doughnuts with my wife when she was heavy with child had enabled us to pay the bill at Pumwani. It had also afforded us napkins (disposable diapers were out of the question), and a few other clothes and items for our new baby. We almost named our baby “Reform”, which was the nickname of the doughnuts we were selling at the time (owing to the calls for constitutional reforms then).

‘Cord Prolapse!’

“Cord prolapse! Cord prolapse!” Those are the words a nurse came out shouting when my wife went in to a small nursing home near the area we lived in then during the birth of our second born. We didn’t know what she was talking about but it sounded serious, especially judging by the worried look on her face. We later came to learn that it is a situation that arises during child birth when the umbilical cord attempts to come out before the baby.

It was a serious situation that called for an emergency caesarean section failure to which we could have lost the mother, the baby, or both. I don’t know what the moralists would say on this but at that time if I had had to make a choice; I would have opted to save the mother. Anyhow, that was not the worst of the problem. The nursing home did not have theatre facilities and so my wife had to be moved urgently to another hospital.

By that time I had secured a job as a taxi driver and my boss was gracious enough to allow me to use my cab to transfer my wife. I remember us arriving at the small but well equipped hospital and the surgeon coming out to examine my wife. He started to raise her skirt then he noticed me and asked me to excuse him. I left the room and it was ironical that I was willing to leave the room as another man looked under my wife’s skirt.

After four hours of anxious waiting, my wife and our new daughter, Hellen, were wheeled out of the operating theatre. They were both okay and my heart was filled with so much delight. My daughter was sleeping peacefully, oblivious of how closely she almost missed joining us. Looking at her then, I thought to myself, “She was worth every single drop of tears and sweat that she had induced in us”.

The One We Never Met

My wife and I had always planned to have two children from the time we married. However, we were not completely opposed to one more. She conceived and we were happy about it. This pregnancy however, was not going to be like the other two. From very early on, it was riddled with problems. A few weeks after its confirmation, my wife started to bleed and went to hospital. On examination, she was told she had lost the pregnancy. She was treated and cleaned out. We decided then that we were not going to have any more children. We would appreciate, love, and take care of the two we already had. We have not regretted that decision because I believe ours are the most wonderful girls in the whole wide world.

P.S. A miscarriage is something that parents never get over. There will always be questions of  how the baby would have turned out and those 'what ifs' require a lot of support especially for the mother, but also for the father.