In fulfillment of the promise I made in my last blog, I will be sharing a personal experience of how my family went through the pain of miscarriages and survived it.
In Nigeria, it is the cultural norm to expect pregnancy as soon as the marriage processes have been consummated. A couple may have to answer a barrage of questions from well-meaning but misguided people if this expectation does not become a reality within a period of one year after tying the nuptial bond.
Never mind that a couple may decide against child-bearing at the outset of their marriage for career development or whatever reason they may fancy. The communal tradition is yet to loose its grip on our clime.
Surely, you can understand the joy of a new wife when she take in, bearing in mind the traditions in this part of the world. Such was our joy when my wife took in some few months after our wedding.
That joy soon turn into sorrow when my wife suffered a miscarriage few weeks after her conception. Trouble started when we embarked on a three hours journey to visit some of our folks. Some few hours after we arrived at our destination, my wife noticed some brownish-like fluid in her pant. We did not think it was anything serious since she felt no other form of discomfort.
We returned home from our journey two days after so that I can attend to the call of duty at my place of work at that time. No sooner had we returned than my wife noticed tissue-like substances falling out of her. She lost the pregnancy! We were devastated.
"What was the problem?", my inquisitive wife queried. "Was it the stress?" "Why me?" There were a lot of questions but few answers.
She had to be taken to the hospital for the evacuation of the remnants of the baby from her womb. That was done by the insertion of a tablet called misoprostol into her anus.
My wife hated the whole process. She hated losing her baby, and having to open herself up for male doctors to examine and so forth. The doctor attending to us explained that the baby was possibly having some forms of deformities, causing her body to discard it. She simply took that explanation as the doctor way of trying to console her.
Some six months after, she took in again and gave birth to a bouncing baby boy!
The boy was about a year and three months old when she took in again. This pregnancy unlike the first one was accepted with mixed feeling. We were not ready for another child financially, career-wise and so forth. But we had to accept the pregnancy because we were both passionately against abortion. It was not an option for us.
We could have taken a more stringent preventive measure against unwanted pregnancy by subscribing to other forms of family planning, beside the natural method which was based on my wife's ovulation period, wet and dry days but my wife was afraid of secondary infertility, therefore those other types of family planning had to be suspended until she was through with child-bearing.
Well, back to my story, when she lost the latter pregnancy just at the end of the first trimester, I was perturbed. This time, it was me asking the questions. surely, the doctor's explanation of her body discarding the baby because of deformities make no sense at this time. The ultrasound scanning disproved that clearly.
"Could it be that this miscarriage occurred because subconsciously we really did not want the pregnancy", I thought out loud to my wife.
Unfortunately, she took that to mean that I was blaming her for the miscarriage. It was like adding salt to injury! I had to stoop to conquer. I apologized for my foolishness and won back her heart.
After regaining emotional balance, we identified the cause of the miscarriage to be stress on her part after juxtaposing the two cases of miscarriages with the case when she carried the pregnancy to delivery.
I particularly learnt the vital lesson that during the first trimester of pregnancy my wife's body cannot withstand stress. Surely, I know women whose experiences are diametrically opposed to ours. That simply goes to buttress the fact that women experiences differ during pregnancy.
As I mentioned in my last blog, my wife already put to bed a new baby and we are happy about it. Of course, we already learnt our lessons too.
It is my hope that some new couples out there will learn from our experiences and act discreetly.
Until I come your way again, this is @saintgentle saying thank you for stopping by. Feel free to comment and reblog!
Reference
Causes for spontaneous abortion: What the bugs ‘gut’ to do with it?
Stress in early pregnancy: maternal neuro-endocrine-immune responses and effects