Pregnancy is a beautiful but critical journey that only a mother can explain or talk about. Most times, someone who has never gone through pregnancy cannot really tell the discomfort that comes along with it.
During my second trimester, I had a series of preterm labor which made me spend most of my days at the hospital. Each time the doctors will treat me and I get healed after some weeks, the preterm labor reoccurred thereby putting me in serious unendurable pains.
I called my elder sister who is a mother of five to ask her if she ever experienced a thing like this but she told me that she had never experienced such. She went further to tell me her own difficult experiences and the challenges she had faced when she was pregnant for each of her children. She told me that pregnancy differs from person to person and from child to child. That each child came with their own style and each trimester came with its own challenge.
I do not know if there is any woman who has had a very smooth pregnancy without any form of complaint, discomfort or severe pain. I must say that such women who have smooth pregnancies without anything to really worry or cry about must be very lucky.
The story of my boss (a single mom like me, who is my age mate though, I learnt a skill from her), we call ourselves sisters and friends. I followed her to the general hospital when she was in labour but I was not allowed entry into the labour ward as it is in the culture of this side. I only waited at the waiting room and stayed with her at the hospital till she was discharged.
She narrated her experience to me when I was finally allowed inside the labour ward. She was left all alone in the labour room, only for the midwife to appear later with some medical students. This midwife left my friend who was in labour to the hands of medical students. The students themselves seemed not to know what they could do to help my friend bring forth her child.
The midwife only asked my friend to keep pushing out her child until the child comes out. Only for my friend to start crying and begging for help. The medical students were busy trying to comfort her. Her water later broke and they widened her legs while she laid on her back on top of the hospital bed.
Some of them went out to look for the midwife while the rest stayed with her, only for one doctor to come in and ask about the midwife and they said she stepped out. The Doctor was further informed that other students had gone to look for her.
The Doctor got some new gloves on his hands immediately and asked my friend to only push when she had a contraction. My friend followed suit, she pushed and kept pushing but the baby was not coming out. The midwife later came in and the doctor left the labour room, then the midwife asked my friend to keep pushing, while she went and sat by a corner eating her food and complaining that she had not eaten any meal since morning.
My friend told me she pushed until she was totally weak and then she started begging for help again. She called on the midwife and asked that they should do anything within their powers to help her bring forth her child but no, the midwife seemed nonchalant.
After the midwife had finished eating that night she stood up wore her gloves, stood by and gave my friend a tear with a new razorblade and asked her to push, my friend said she pushed and the baby’s head stuck out, after which she was asked to push again for the shoulder, by this time her strength was beginning to fail her but she managed to push and the baby came out with a very loud cry.
My friend narrated to me that she felt as if cold water was poured on her and something very heavy was lifted off her shoulders and wondered if this is what women go through and yet the entire world is so populated with human beings.
My friend's experience made me run from registering my antenatal with the general hospital. I registered with the primary health center in my locality but I think their negligence which I saw with my own eyes is a story for another day.
I believe every mother has one experience or the other and has her story to tell. I celebrate every mother around the world.
Write up and Photo is mine. Photo was taken with my Infinix smart 5 phone camera.
Posted Using INLEO
