Disclaimer: This is solely my experience and it in no way invalidates (or validates) your own experience. So, when you read these words, read them as what I intend them to be — a testimony. If you must pick a lesson, pick the soul of it, not necessarily the experience. Selah!
When you have a kind of sickness that scares your African mother, that’s your cue to panic. When your African mother can not wrap her head around the kind of herbal concoction that’ll bail you out of your condition, it is finished!
Then the hospital rounds began. First, it was “it’s just pregnancy symptoms. It’ll get better” Then it was, “Oh! We found H-pylori in your blood. That is the cause of the pain you feel in your upper abdomen but don’t worry, it happens. It’ll go” And then it became, “As it stands, you have severe Hyperemesis Gravidarum plus H-pylori but we’re managing it”
With all of these diagnoses, I shrank. I became someone else. How do you go from “this pregnancy will be a walk in the park” to being wheeled in the park? How do you find balance?
On one of the days I was busy retching and dislodging the content of my stomach, the smell of rain as the cloud gathered was my succour.
It felt like a pat on the back. I could hear it say “Be calm!”.
Dear Reader, I no longer know what it means to be calm but I look at my husband and watch how he stares at all the many things I’ve tried to eat that day to no avail, and my heart ached. Several bottles of unfinished (read untouched) smoothies, plates of food, untouched water, packs of biscuits etc. Our eyes meet and he extends a hand to my hair, ruffles it and says “Don’t worry! Everything will be fine”. I am unable to decipher the look on his face. Is it pain? Is it frustration? Is it anger? I do not know but in the little smirk on his face, I see hope. Hope? A concept that I’ll soon come to embrace but in that moment, it annoys me. How dare you have hope? Is this how we planned it?
That’s not the only time my husband’s hope annoyed me. On another occasion, he carried me in his arms and rushed me to the emergency section of the hospital. After a failed attempt to get my blood for a test, I passed out in the hands of the lab technician. I had started to see the clouds, count my cost and hope that the little impact I had made in the last 27 years of existence would count for something when I was finally gone. Then I started to hear, “Dazzle! Dazzle, wake up! Shola is here” There, I knew I wasn’t going to die. I opened my eyes to find him smiling at me. The doctors started to poke me for veins. About 9 pokes later, I became numb to the poking.
“We can’t find a vein. You are very dehydrated. In fact, we think you should do a scan to ascertain the state of the baby”
In the scan room, I steadied my heart for the worst news. I was ready and a part of me knew that if I got bad news, this experience would be a perfect reason not to have a child again. So, yes, fingers crossed. The sonographer had barely put her device on my stomach when my baby’s heartbeat reverberated in the room. Shocked, I look at my husband and this time, it’s not a smirk; it’s a smile. Smile = Bigger Hope. I made sure our eyes met from where I lay and I gave him the biggest frown I could muster.
“Why were you smiling?”, I asked after we were settled in a ward.
“Dazzle, our baby is fine. We should be happy”
“What of me? Am I fine?”
“No, you’re not and that bothers me”
You see, I’m not new to pain or hospital visits. I have battled asthma since I was 16. This meant that in a year, I could visit the hospital 5 times or more depending on how many times my inhaler failed but you see the pain of visiting the hospital for Hyperemesis Gravidarum and H-pylori combined? Nothing beats it.
It is not just the physical pain that makes it unbearable. It’s the emotional stress attached to it. All for what? I decided to lend my body to grow a child. I will later come to realize that this assignment is one of the greatest privileges that God will ever bestow on anyone but let’s not jump the gun.
Life as I know it began to take a new shape. All my plans for the year began to fall through in my very before. When I cried, they were bitter tears. Tears that spoke the words: “Why me?” “Why do I have to go through all of these?”
