“I didn’t need to wear a bra until I was 18. This was a year after I got my first period, and 14 years before I got into a serious relationship, and decided I wanted to have babies at 32. At 34, I lost my first pregnancy in February of 2023.
I wasn’t even aware I was pregnant. It was a missed period, a sharp pain in my belly, and a HCG test later that showed levels of 1,216 mIU/mL. “You are pregnant,” the doctor said, “the bad news is that you are losing it.” I lost the baby I never knew I was carrying. Losing a baby is an experience that requires a whole book to explain.
My partner and I tried again immediately. I got an ovulation tracker. We scheduled sex. Scheduled sex is not joyous sex. Its primary purpose was never for pleasure but for a mission. And it rocks your relationship because it feels like work. One time he had to leave for work for a week. He told me this one evening. I felt like he was absconding duty.
“But how can you leave during the week when I’m ovulating?” I cried. He insisted he had to; he is a medic. “This is work and it’s important.”
“This is important!” I said, raising my voice.
He went for the trip anyway and I felt like he didn’t care. That all he cared about was his job, that he had purposefully placed that trip on the week he knew I would be ovulating. “I think you are avoiding getting intimate with me,” I texted him later.
In May 2023, I went back to my gynae, who prescribed lots of drugs: Ovacare Myo, Letrozole, and Biofolic. However, after five months of taking the drugs, I wasn’t getting pregnant. That is, until December 2023, when I suddenly got pregnant again. When I found out, I walked into a chapel at St. Theresa Cathedral to pray. It was early in the morning and the chapel was cool and quiet. A few people sat or knelt with their heads bowed. There was a general sense of solace, of strength, and of grace. It felt like the safest place in the world. I sat alone in a corner. My heart was so full. I prayed the rosary for thanksgiving. Later, I saw my gynae, who prescribed a load of hormonal drugs and advised bed rest and to avoid sexual intercourse for three months. I would have given up sex for a year for my baby.
I applied for leave, it was approved, and soon started my bed rest. On 28th December, I started spotting blood. The scan later showed blood traces around the uterine wall and placenta. “Subchorionic hematoma,” the doctor said, “but no cause for alarm.” I was sent home with painkillers and still advised to continue with bed rest.
On 1st of January 2024, I stood at the sink in the corridor of our house washing my hands after lunch, when I felt something trickling down my thighs. I lifted my dera and saw a stream of blood. My heart shattered. The pain started coming in great waves. Another scan. “I can feel the heartbeat,” the sonographer said. “I don’t see a problem.” My baby was six weeks now. My whole family had arrived and were gathered around me. I was sent home for more bed rest.
On the 5th of January, I woke up and the first thing I told my partner was, “I don’t feel pregnant.” He said, “What? What do you mean?” I said, “my breasts are not as firm.” He looked at my breast and touched one.
“They feel firm to me,” he mumbled.
“My nipples are no longer painful,” I told him. “And I’m not drowsy. I’m not feeling tired…I feel different.”
He said that those sounded like good things, that perhaps my body was now settling into the pregnancy. He suggested that I needed fresh air, so we went to have a late lunch. But first, I passed by church, the Divine of Chaplet Mercy, to whisper in God’s ear. I was in high spirits at lunch after having spoken to God. However, during lunch, I felt a sensation, a pressure down my abdomen; and when I excused myself to investigate in the washrooms, I saw clots of blood leaving my body. I was in mild pain. I sat on the toilet seat and felt defeated. I asked God, “Why are my children rejecting me as their mom?”
My roast chicken abandoned, we rushed to the hospital where the doctor said, “Unfortunately, you are losing this baby.” I felt like I was being stabbed in the stomach, slowly and repeatedly. I felt desperate. I was crying.
In the pain I was in, I limped from the doctor’s room and crossed the road to the church opposite the hospital. I had no words for God. I started weeping. I wanted a child so desperately, why wouldn’t God give me a child? Suddenly, I felt an arm around my shoulder. It was a woman’s arm, a stranger. She didn’t say anything, she just sat next to me with her hand on my shoulder and I placed my head on her shoulder and cried. She never asked me why I was crying, never said a word. When I was done, she said, “everything will be just fine.” Then she stood up and left. I felt this strength come over me and I wiped my face and left the church.
The following day, at dawn, they flushed my dead baby out of me.
I was in great physical pain, but the emotional pain would come later. In the maternity ward, I turned away from women holding their newborns. I couldn’t stand looking at a pregnant woman. I felt envy that wasn’t healthy. I asked God what I was not doing right. What sin was this that I had committed that I was paying for? Am I not praying right? Am I living my life wrong by you? What is wrong with my womb? Why are my children rejecting me?
When I went back home, I went back to love. My whole family was there, my mom and friends and brothers, sisters, my partner.
On 15th January, I reported back to work.
From March of 2024, I listened to every podcast, every YouTube video, and anybody who talked about how to get pregnant quickly, and keep it to term. I was still desperate to conceive and I spent the better part of 2024 trying to conceive. However, I was tired of modern medicine, and modern medicine couldn’t save my babies, so I decided to go the traditional way.
I’m a learned woman. I’m well-educated, I have a fulfilling job, but I lost faith in gynaes and their clueless shooting in the darkness with their magic medicine. You see the conflict here immediately because my partner is a medic and he frowns on traditional medicine. So I never told him about my experiments.
I started asking people about referrals to medicine women who specialized in reproductive health. In April, I drove to Navakholo in Kakamega where I met this woman, a Muslim lady, who lived in a mud house with an old tin roof. Chickens roamed outside her darkened door. She gave me the barks of trees and some leaves to boil at night and let cool overnight. I drank that until my periods came.
I abandoned it, then drove to Chavakali to to see a different medicine woman in May. She was very old, couldn’t speak Kiswahili. She could barely see and she would turn slightly to her right to catch what I was saying. Her little house smelled of earth and secrets. I left her house with a jerry can full of liquid herbs. I drank until my periods came, then I abandoned it.
In June, I found myself lying on a small bed in an old woman’s house in Turbo, Uasin Gishu. After pressing my belly with her warm dry hands, she announced that I had “something between my hips.” [I was later diagnosed with fibroids]. More herbal drinks from her. In July, I drove with a friend to Bomet to a lady called Gogo. She was the oldest one of them all, her skin looked like a dry hide. She left us sitting in a small dark house and disappeared into a forest. She boiled fresh roots and herbs and sent me with mursik as well. My periods came anyway. In July, I drove to Mbita, to meet a Kisii woman who lived by the lake. She only spoke Luo and Kisii. I speak neither. My colleague who took me there translated. She was the only herbalist who asked about my man. “Maybe he should be here also,” she said. I confessed to her that he wasn’t aware I was seeking this alternative medicine. Maybe she could give me a drink for him? She refused. “I can’t treat what I can’t see,” she said. I left with my liquid herbs. My period came. In August, I was in a small village in Kitale. More roots and leaves and shoots. My periods came. In September, I was in Mumias. More herbs. Nothing doing.
Tired of the disappointment of traditional medicine, I resorted to social media. I joined online groups of women who wanted to conceive. There was a community out there that understood my woes. There is a group where you would comment “Amen” and then write your wishes. I did that. I even wrote the names of my children; Neema and Nathan.
I did the Salty-Water Prayer Challenge where you put salt in water and stir it while manifesting the children you seek from your womb. Then you pray barefooted as you pour the water on the ground for mother earth to appreciate. I have done the Coin-Challenge as well. Drop a silver coin in a glass of water at night, pray over it. Sleep with the glass of water under your bed. Wash your face with the water when you wake up before you speak to anyone. I’d do all these things when my partner was away because he’d think I’m mad.
I joined – and I’m still in – a 3 AM prayer group. These are groups that manifest with prayer. It’s a group with 148 people from different countries. It’s run by a Ugandan lady, I know because of her accent. Depending on your time zone, you wake up at 3 AM to pray, seven days a week.
I also did the Hallelujah Challenge for 20 days. It’s run by a Nigerian pastor. We write down what we desire and when it’s midnight in Nigeria (2 AM Kenyan time) we go online. It’s live on YouTube and IG. We sing and pray. We did something called Act your Miracle where you dress us up as what you want. Some people got a baby bump. I bought some baby dresses and two teddy bears and I dressed them. My sister joined me and we sang and prayed while carrying the teddy bears.
I love children. I’m very good with my nieces and nephews. I want to be a mother. Everything in me wants to carry my own children in my body, birth them, and nurture them. I want to watch them crawl and walk and fall. I want to hear their first words and take them to school on the first day. I want to watch them grow into teenagers and deal with the problems I hear about teenagers. I want to see them grow into adults. I can’t wait to see my heart in human form before my eyes…the desire is so immense; it even scares me. There is no scenario in life in which I’m not a mother. I will make a great mother. And last year was the hardest year because I did everything I could have done to become a mother, and it never happened. At the beginning of this year, I put up a photo of two babies on my Vision Board. Because I believe in the power of manifestation and I’m working towards making it a reality. I often wonder, will my rainbow babies make it?
***
“Have you considered that perhaps this might not happen? Conceiving. Getting babies?” I asked her. “And if that turns out to be the case, have you perhaps considered adoption?” Maybe her child is out there somewhere, not in her womb.
“I have thought about it..but…I don’t know…I don’t know if I will love them as I would love my own.” She paused, “ Normally when my nephews and niece come over to visit me they always cry so much when times come for them to leave. I want my own children who won’t have to leave.”
***
Registration for the writing masterclass is ongoing HERE. Looking for a random gift for a friend, your boss, someone in hospital who is bored of staring at the ceiling? Gift them a copy of my book DRUNK. It’s a light, snappy read. You can read it while getting a drip.
What’s the hardest thing you did last year? Email me on [email protected]
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