Anita* was expecting her first child and was excitedly looking forward to buying baby clothes and preparing for her baby’s arrival. As she approached the completion of 7months of pregnancy, she couldn’t shake the niggling doubt that everything was not right.
“I started noticing that my tummy is going down as if someone is pressing my tummy”, she shared with me. She shared this fear with her husband but later dismissed it as she reassured herself that she had never missed an antenatal appointment or defaulted on any of her medications.
She however decided to arrange for an ultrasound scan. But the 5th of April, the day she chose to go for the scan, would prove to be a life altering day in Anita’s life.
According to Anita, the lady performing the scan suddenly burst into tears. One can only imagine the trepidation that went through Anita as she witnessed this. “I started asking the woman, ‘what is the problem? Tell me, what is the problem’ cos me I don’t understand why she is crying”, Anita recalled. Without being given any information, she was sent to a different place for a repeat scan.
With mounting anxiety, Anita watched as the man performed the scan again. He looked very sad and she could sense the pity in his demeanour as he looked at her. Once again, Anita demanded that she be told what was going on. All he did was ask her to go back to her clinic with the results of the scan.
That was when the bombshell hit. She was simply informed, “Ah. The baby is dead in your womb o”. Anita was in shock and in her own words, started to lose hope. She burst into tears and could not even compose herself to send for her husband; the staff at the clinic had to do that for her.
What followed was a traumatic two weeks and four days as she stayed in hospital undergoing all sorts of procedures and medication in order to push out her baby. When I asked her how she coped, she simply explained, “I have to have strong heart to save my own life...cos if I should lose hope, I could have been a dead somebody now” (sic). She admitted that the shock of the loss was still a very real and constant feeling but she felt that she needed to fight for her life; so this survival instinct took over and helped her through that physically and emotionally harrowing sixteen days.
As at the time when we spoke, Anita was still coming to terms with the loss. The main question that plagued her was what could have caused her baby to die. That was all she wanted to know. Was it something she did? Was it something the health workers missed? Time and again, she would find herself thinking about it and wondering what could have gone so horribly wrong. But, whenever she found herself deep in thought, her husband would get cross with her and tell her to stop thinking about it.
So now, all Anita can do is wait for her body to heal and hope that she will get pregnant again and that when she does, she will end up with a baby. As for her emotional scars; only time will tell.
* not her real name.
