The moment we arrived at the hospital, I was admitted straight into the High Dependency Unit. Three days later, the doctor came bearing the worst news. “Folasade,” he began softly. “Your body is shutting down. If you decide to keep this pregnancy, you will be dead by tomorrow.” But there were already seven graves in our oko, I couldn’t imagine an eighth one.
Source: Original
The first time I buried a child, the women in our village told me not to cry too loudly.
“It scares away blessings,” one of them whispered as they lowered my tiny son into the red soil behind our oko in Awgbu.
I remember staring at the small white cloth wrapped around my child and wondering how something that had lived inside me for nine months could suddenly weigh less than a sack of flour.
Chukwudi and I married when the world felt bright and promising. He was a strong, ambitious man who ran a successful local garage. He loves me deeply, but grief changes people.
By our fifth year of marriage. After three pregnancy losses, the protective wall around our marriage began to crack. My mother-in-law, Nneka, stopped greeting me with warmth. She began bringing bitter herbs brewed from roots pulled from the deep forest, forcing me to drink them while she watched with critical eyes.
Source: Original
“A home without children is just a dark cave, Folasade,” she told me one afternoon. “My son did not pay a heavy dowry for a shadow. If your womb cannot hold his seed, you must step aside.”
By the tenth year, our losses numbered six. There were the silent, early ones that occurred while I was washing clothes at the river. Then there were the later ones, where I actually felt the faint, fluttery kicks of a life that would never see the light of day.
And every time, the village found a new reason to blame me.
Maybe her womb is cursed.
Maybe she was promiscuous.
At church, women stopped inviting me to baby showers. Mothers pulled their daughters away from me during funerals as if infertility could spread through touch.
Source: Original
And the worst part is that I watched the devastating transformation of my husband. He changed from a tender lover into a cold, distant roommate. He began staying out late at the trading center, returning home smelling cheap beer, turning his back to me the moment his head hit the pillow.
Then came Ngozichukwu. He was our seventh pregnancy, and he became the permanent anchor of my grief. Against all expectations, I carried him to the third trimester. When the labor pains started early one night, Chukwudi rented a taxi to rush me to the local clinic.
Ngozichukwu was born alive. He was tiny, his skin so translucent I could see the fine network of veins beneath it. The clinic had no incubator or modern technology.
I pulled his fragile, shivering body to my bare chest, weeping and screaming to God to take my life instead of his. He lived for exactly four hours.
Source: Original
Every single day for years, I walked past Ngozichukwu’s grave at the edge of our oko. To the village, I was permanently branded Folasade the barren woman. To myself, I was simply a walking graveyard.
When the test strip turned positive for the eighth time, fifteen years after our wedding day, I didn’t celebrate. I collapsed onto the kitchen floor and begged Almighty God to cause a pregnancy loss immediately if the child was not destined to survive. I knew my mind could not survive another third-trimester funeral.
But the first month passed. Three months. Five months. Six months. Chukwudi completely refused to acknowledge the pregnancy. He wouldn’t touch my belly and strictly forbade me from buying a single item of baby clothing.
“We don’t buy baby clothes before the child is born alive, Folasade,” he said one morning over breakfast. He had been hardened by a decade of communal shame and financial drain.
Source: Original
Yet against all odds, the pregnancy grew fiercely. By the seventh month, I felt sharp, aggressive kicks that woke me up in the middle of the night. I would lie awake in the dark, pressing both hands against my skin, whispering, “Please, just stay this time.”
But as I entered the eighth month, the nightmare began. It started with bone-deep fatigue. Then headaches. Then swelling. Then bloating. Then dizziness so severe I collapsed while feeding the pigs.
Chukwudi rushed me to a local clinic where the nurse looked alarmed the moment she checked my blood pressure.
“Folasade, your system is entering total failure,” she said. “Your blood pressure is high enough to cause a fatal stroke. You must get to a major referral hospital in Lagos immediately. If you stay in the village, you will be dead before sunrise tomorrow.”
Source: Original
Chukwudi begrudgingly emptied our final savings to pay for private transport to the city. The moment we arrived at Lagos University Teaching Hospital, I was admitted straight into the HDU. Beeping monitors constantly flashed red numbers above my head, and several doctors in white scrubs surrounded my bed.
The official diagnosis was nothing short of a death sentence for my hopes. The attending doctor spoke of a severe, life-threatening immune-rejection complication.
Liver enzymes spiking.
Platelets dropping.
Kidneys shutting down.
Infections.
On the third afternoon, the chief consultant walked into my room and stood at the foot of my bed. His face was a somber mask of professional dread.
Source: Original
“Folasade, we need to talk,” he said. “Your kidney function has deteriorated significantly, and we’re seeing early signs of fluid accumulation in your lungs. If we keep you pregnant to try and gain a few more weeks for the baby, the toxicity will cause a fatal seizure. You will die within twenty-four hours. If we perform an emergency delivery right now, your body will recover. But according to our scans, the fetus is under extreme distress and is far too weak to survive the trauma of an immediate delivery. You must choose your own life, or the life of your baby.”
The words bounced off the white tiles, heavy and suffocating. My life, or the baby’s. I looked down at my massive, swollen stomach. I thought of the seven graves back at home. I thought of the tiny, cold body of Ngozichukwu under the avocado tree in Awgbu.
Source: Original
“I choose the baby,” I whispered. My voice was calm, but it carried absolute finality. “I have buried seven children, Doc. I will not bury an eighth and walk back into that village alive. I would rather die trying to become a mother than live another twenty years with empty arms.”
“We cannot legally accept that choice without consulting your husband,” the doctor said, his face twisting with discomfort. “We require his presence and signature on the consent form.”
The nurses tried calling Chukwudi’s phone repeatedly, but there was no answer. I took my own phone and dialed his number thrice as the heart monitor beside me beeped erratically. He refused to pick up. Later, I texted him to update him on the situation.
At exactly 3:00 AM, my phone vibrated. It was a WhatsApp voice note from Chukwudi. I pressed the phone to my ear, expecting words of comfort. Instead, his voice filled my ear—loud, distorted, and dripping with exhausted malice.
Source: Original
“Folasade, listen to me carefully,” the recording played. “I am tired of this. I am not coming back to Lagos, and I am not spending any more money on your cursed womb. For fifteen years, you have made me a laughingstock among my peers in the village. People see me as a weak man whose lineage is dead. This current sickness is the final proof that your body is broken. If you die in that hospital, you die. I will not travel to the city to pick up a corpse, and I will definitely not bury another child in my oko. Don’t call my phone again.”
The voice note ended with a sharp click. Chukwudi had abandoned me completely. He had left me to die in a city hospital room, inside a body that was actively destroying itself. About an hour later, a night nurse hurried into my room, looking uncomfortable. She held a medical chart tightly against her chest.
Source: Original
“Folasade! You husband just called the main hospital administration desk downstairs,” she said. “He told the medical director that you are completely mentally unstable. He claimed that the grief of your past losses has caused you to lose your mind and that you are unfit to make any decisions. He is formally demanding that the hospital perform an immediate medical termination of the pregnancy to save your life, so that he cannot be held legally or financially liable for your bills.”
Read Part 2 Click Here:
