Who Will Tell Her?

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Trigger: Death

The living, in their constant curiosity, often wonder what death feels like. Well, the deep sleep of general anaesthesia is what death must feel like. It’s bottomless. It’s nothingness. You are in there but you aren’t. You don’t know if you are human or you are a duck. You could even be a boat. You don’t know. You don’t feel. You don’t have. You don’t count. You are matter without a core, or crux. You don’t have any surface area to speak of. You are floating but you could also be sinking. You are legless. You don’t dream. You don’t have breath. Time is atmospheric. Your compass is broken. You could be folded in a box and transported to Siberia and you wouldn’t know it. You could have all your organs harvested – your heart in an ice cooler, your liver tossed in the bin because it’s no good after all the tequila you drank – and you wouldn’t know. You could be buried and a dirge sung in your honour after your phony friends have come to say the things, they should have told you while you breathed. You could be hanged from a tree, like a fish on a line. You are the white sheet on blank paper. You are air. You are soil.

General anaesthesia is darkness without the dark.

Little wonder then that Ann doesn’t remember the surgery. But she remembers that before the general anaesthesia she had felt pain as the surgeon made the first incision on her stomach and she had winced and said out loud that she could feel the pain. The surgeon – scalpel in one gloved hand – had asked her to try and lift one leg, which she did, and she could see that ‘oh shit’ look in the eyes of the whole medical team gathered around her. Clearly the epidural hadn’t worked on her. So general anaesthesia it was.

She woke up slowly, in small disoriented stages, in and out of consciousness. There was a bare ceiling, a big light overhead. Her head was foggy like someone had stuffed cotton wool in there. She had lost all sense of time. She was 39 years old, but she wasn’t aware of it. Or that it had been her birthday the day before; May 13, a Friday. It was sabbath, the day God rested, depending on how you interpret the Bible and your faith. She didn’t know all these yet; that she was a mother of two grown boys and a wife to a loving husband. She hadn’t fully come to herself and her realities; was her father alive? What room was this? What was her shoe size? Was this a dream? She heard a drone of voices, a distant hubbub of humans. But they were far away in another century, another time when men rode off the back of donkeys and mules and took a dump in bushes. Voices. The room was strange, nebulous. It had no windows or curtains. She was anxious and scared.

“In this state of fogginess,” she recalls, “I can hear someone say, from very very far, ‘She’s waking up….who will tell her?’” The voices, she finally realises, are coming from the adjacent room with even brighter light. She now recalls fragments of information; that she is in theater, that before surgery her engagement ring had refused to come off because of her weight gain. She remembers the doctor asking her to lift her leg.

Suddenly the surgeon was standing over her bed. He still had his green scrubs on. He was dark and average height with perfect eyebrows that he didn’t deserve and most likely didn’t appreciate enough; women deserve such eyebrows, not men. A kind man. He held her right hand in both his hands; gently, comfortingly, warm hands that cut and healed human bodies with skill and medicine.

“We tried everything,” he said gravely, “But your baby didn’t make it. I’m sorry. She was exhausted upon delivery and had difficulty breathing. We tried everything. I’m sorry.”

He kept repeating these words in a very kind soothing voice. “At first I didn’t know what he was saying, or I didn’t want to know what he was saying. I felt like he wasn’t talking to me, he was talking to someone else. But he kept telling me this gently while looking into my eyes, holding my right hand. He was the gentlest doctor I have encountered; I will admit; very kind, very warm and sensitive. When I finally understood what this man was telling me, that my newborn daughter was dead, I opened my mouth to let out a scream but nothing came out of my very mouth. My mouth was parched. I couldn’t scream, it was soundless. I tried to scream…my baby was dead…I couldn’t scream..”

She starts crying. I can hear her weep over the phone – and for most of the interview, she would weep softly.

It’s Saturday afternoon and I’m seated in my big sister’s backyard under an avocado tree she is proud of because now it’s finally bearing fruit. My sister meanwhile is having a dry cider inside the house, her feet up on her coffee table. Spilling out of the back door is the sound of her TV playing Roga Roga with the blackest man in Africa. I’m barefoot. A glass of whisky sits at my feet. I’m now thinking, I should have done this interview earlier in the week.

“I’m sorry to drag you back,” I say, “We can take a break and talk later?”

“No, it’s fine,” she sniffs.

She recalls the surgeon saying, “We tried everything we could, we really did. But God made his decision…I’m sorry.” She was struggling to breath now. Her baby couldn’t be dead. No way. “I want to see her,” she urged the doctor. “Give me my baby,” she said. So they brought her and placed her against the crook of her right hand because her left hand had a drip and things in it.

Her baby was naked, she recalls. “She was the biggest baby I ever had. She had the most amazing skin. I’m light chocolate with milk, my husband is very dark. Her skin was amazing. I looked at her face; she had a nice round face like mine. She felt very delicate in my arm. Very sweet baby. I long for her even today. I’m 47 years old but I also tell God, if you could give me another baby, just one more baby like her I’d be very happy.”

As she looked at her dead baby in her arms, the surgeon and the rest of the medical team stood away respectfully, pretending not to watch her. The room was still, filled with the indescribable pain of a baby that just died at birth. She wept bitterly. The surgeon and the team then slipped out, to give her a moment. She cradled her and wept until no tears were left in her, just anguish.

“I felt like I had sinned, that’s why I was being punished. That perhaps I shouldn’t have tried getting a baby nine years after my last born, that I didn’t know what I was doing and I paid for it by losing her,” she tells me. “Mostly I felt like I had failed my baby. I blamed myself for choosing to give birth in Kenyatta National Hospital.” At the start of the pregnancy she was seeing a private gynae and she was to deliver in a private hospital but a friend had told her not to waste money with private hospitals that KNH had competent doctors so she opted for KNH. “I thought that had I continued with my gynae and gone to deliver in a private hospital my baby would be alive.”

She doesn’t know how long she held her dead baby but at some point, a nurse started demanding to have the baby back. “She was very insensitive. She kept saying, ‘mama nipe mtoto.’ I was furious, I asked her what she was going to do with my dead baby? What was so urgent? She said she needed to record certain things, paperwork. I asked her, ‘Huyu mtoto ni kalamu? Ni karatasi? Ni meza? She was allowed time.”

She wondered how she would go back home without a baby? Who went back home empty handed without a baby after nine months? “What would I tell my mom, who was alive then, had happened to the baby? What would I tell people when I ran into them and they asked, ‘how’s the baby?” What would I tell my husband?”

Earlier, as she was wheeled into the theatre, the baby in distress, her husband had been sent home just before the surgery. She borrowed a phone from a nurse and called him. When he picked she said, “Sweetheart, it’s me Ann. I borrowed a phone.” He sounded upbeat, excited to hear from her, glad she was out of theatre. She didn’t know how to break the news so she just said, ‘baby didn’t make it.’”

“What did he say?” I gulp.

“Nothing,” she says, “I heard the phone drop to the floor. I hung up.”

One time, before they had told their sons she was pregnant her youngest son had come out of the bathroom with a towel around his waist and told her, “Mom, something strange happened while I was showering. A thought came to me that you are pregnant with a baby girl, my sister. If we had a sister, what would we name her?” They all couldn’t agree on the names. Her husband was going for Abigael. Her first born wanted her to be called Lyena. Her and her second born wanted Zanita as a name.

Now it didn’t matter. Now she was dead. She would never come home. They would never be a family of five. The boys would never have a sister. They would never have a daughter.

Moments later, she heard her husband cry before she saw him. He was crying uncontrollably in the next room where the body of their daughter lay. Crying like she never heard him cry before. When he eventually came to the recovery room where she lay, he looked like he had walked through a storm, he looked damaged. She could tell he was trying to be strong for her, for them, but the moment he hugged her in bed, he broke down and wept in her arms. She rubbed his back as they wept. She told him she was sorry she let their baby down, he said she didn’t, that it was God’s will. He later said that he was convinced that somehow their daughter had served her purpose, that whatever God wanted her to do on earth has been done. He told her that the little grace He gave us was that their daughter didn’t die on her birthday. “My husband is the most amazing man,” she tells me, “he is a deep believer, deeply entrenched in faith. Wait, let me say hello to someone…”

She’s at a funeral in her shags. I hear her speak to someone, her uncle. I take a large sip of my drink, my heart is suddenly heavy asf. Then she’s back on the phone again.

She had to stay in the hospital for another day or two. It was a general ward with nine other beds of women who had given birth. “I was the only one who had given birth but didn’t have her baby.” She doesn’t remember not crying. She had a C- section so her pain was excruciating. The kind of sadness she felt in that bed is indescribable – the strange sadness of someone who had just given birth but had no baby to show for it, knowing the baby was lying dead in a cold drawer. “In the next bed was a young girl whose baby was constantly crying so loudly and this girl would just ignore the baby, and at some point she started screaming at her baby to shut up and I just wanted to have a baby who could cry all the time, I wouldn’t mind. I’d rather a baby who cried all the time than a dead baby. I wished I was her.”

One night when she couldn’t sleep and was lying staring at the ceiling, throbbing in physical and psychological pain, one of the new mothers in the maternity room came to her bedside. She was a Muslim girl, a Cushite, very light. “She told me, ‘I don’t understand your pain but I know it because I was here last year when I lost my son at birth. I have only girls and, in my community, having boys is a big thing and you can imagine going back home after losing my son. You can understand how painful that was for me but one year later here I am with another baby, another girl. It’s Allah who gives and takes. He knows why, so give Him a chance.’” She recalls. “Those words later comforted me. This kind young girl would insist on taking me to walk to the loo. She sat with me. I found some strength from her.”

On discharge, the hospital compassionately waived her bill of 50,000.

A few days later, one of her friends brought a lady to see her. She had also lost her baby three months earlier. “I told her that I wish I hadn’t gone to deliver at Kenyatta, but she said, ‘I lost my baby at Nairobi hospital, literally across the road from KNH. It’s not the place – babies can die anywhere – don’t blame the hospital. Question is what do you want to do now?’ I told her I just wanted to bury my daughter.”

The hospital had asked her what she wished to do with the body, if she wished for them to dispose of it. “I was so saddened and angry at that word; dispose. It’s my baby not trash.”

The lady then told her how after she had lost her own baby, she had agreed that the hospital would take care of her baby’s body. Three months later when she had gone back to the hospital and asked to see the grave, the hospital had asked, confused, ‘what grave?’ ‘The grave where my baby is buried!’ They said they don’t bury them, they incinerate them. “That broke my heart anew. It was my biggest regret,” the lady told her, “It opened a new wave of grief. So you are doing a good thing burying yours.”

Her little girl was buried in Langata on a sunny afternoon on the 29th May 2013. The world was oblivious; cars passed along Langata road as usual, planes – the seat belt signs on -descended at Wilson Airport. She has never known such sadness, such heartbreak; it gripped her chest with a large fist. The family wore black, white and red. Relatives came from shags. Friends gathered around the grave. Her sons read their tributes while crying. Her husband couldn’t read his; he had no strength. She gave a lengthy one with a voice that trembled and shimmered and halted. Her swollen breasts pained with milk her baby would never have. When she held a fistful of soil in her hands and let it drop on the coffin, her womb was torn by such excruciating pain she almost fainted. Someone brought a chair by the graveside and she slumbed on it, watching her daughter being covered in soil. A premature farewell.

It’s hard for her to describe going home from the hospital without a baby and a T-section wound. The rotating door of visitors who awkwardly grapple for words of comfort, staring at you like you are a bomb. The blank days upon black days upon black days. The pain, memories, regrets, self-blame, the unabating tears, the thousands of questions to God, your faith shaken off their hinges. The descending depression; whole days in bed, in darkness, curtains drawn. [“I’d use extra fabric to block out all light coming into the room”]. A husband, himself torn, shredded, who tries to set aside his grief to be there for her and not fully knowing how to because his own pain and grief has risen up to his chin and most days he’s drowning himself. Then the suicidal thoughts, lying in bed, thinking of ways to depart, romanticising it because what’s the point of living when your baby isn’t? But the husband, this man she describes over and over as amazing, not letting go of her hand, not letting go of her, of them and somehow, amidst this tragedy urging them to still believe in God, to lean on Him.

Then the fear of having to leave the house and deal with the innocent questions; how’s the baby doing? How old is the baby now? The baby must be sitting now. You have lost so much weight. Then months after she decided that she wouldn’t kill herself when she still had two children who were alive and a loving husband, driving to Langata Cemetry to sit by the graveside alone for hours because she didn’t want her baby to feel alone, abandoned. Because half her heart was also buried there. Because everything in her body drove her to the graveside. Because where else on earth would she rather be when her baby was under that soil, surrounded by strangers? She’d sit there, on the soil and cry, Maasai cows grazing yonder, often raising their heads to look at her at a respectful distance as if aware of her grief. She’d talk to her dead daughter. Tell her she missed her. That she should be having lots of fun in heaven. That she had amazing brothers. That her dad was so sad; oh daddy was so sad you are not here. That cucu missed her. She would not stop crying.

On her first anniversary, she went with her son who was 9 then. They took fresh flowers. He asked why she had to die and if she was in heaven and he cried and cried. For the longest time after she would go sit with her baby until her pastor told her, ‘Your baby’s body is there, but her spirit isn’t there.” Then she stopped. She understands that her baby is everywhere and around her, not at Langata.

You don’t heal from losing a baby. It’s not Malaria. That loss becomes a part of you. You still cry. Every year she wonders how old she would have been. If she would have been bubbly. What kind of friends she would have had. What colour of shoes she would have preferred. What hairstyle she would have had on her hair.

She isn’t the same. She thinks of her constantly. “I think of her more on my birthday and her birthday, a day part. I think of her when I encounter baby girls. I still can’t hold baby girls especially under one year. When I feel or see my CS scar I feel her. When my menses delay and then they appear, I feel her. Sometimes when I think of my mom who died in 2014, she loved me so much. I see her in mirrors. I dream of her. I love her.”

]

***

After the phone interview I drank more than I should. Her story bored holes in my heart. That poor poor woman – and women like her. May God rest in peace the little babies and children who went too soon and give strength to the mothers and fathers and families they left behind.

***

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140 Comments
  1. This is very heartbreaking. You don’t heal from the pain of losing a baby. It stays with you forever. But with each day, things look brighter. I’m so sorry for your loss. Your baby girl is loved and I’m sure she knows it. To all women who have lost a child, may you find peace and comfort. And remember that it is never your fault that your child did not make it. It’s all part of God’s plan even though we cannot understand it sometimes. Shalom.

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  2. May God rest in peace the little babies and children who went too soon and give strength to the mothers and fathers and families they left behind….Amen

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    1. Haha, what are the odds? Your namesake got a mention :D, on a light note.

      https://himizascribes.com/2021/04/12/majid/

  3. Daaaaaamn Biko I have cried so much . Pole to that family . Last Saturday my big bro lost a son at birth. It was a sad day and I can imagine the pain they are all feeling. No death is easy but losing a child must be the most excruciating death! May the little angels rest in eternal peace!

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  4. May God heal and console the parents who didn’t have a chance to see their children grow old,
    He gives and takes in His own times.

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  5. “he was convinced that somehow their daughter had served her purpose, that whatever God wanted her to do on earth has been done. He told her that the little grace He gave us was that their daughter didn’t die on her birthday.”

    May God comfort her always. Sometimes when we question Him, we might not like the answer He gives.May His name be praised.

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  6. This tore my heart into a million pieces. More grace to parents whose babies gained their angel wings too soon.

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  7. I just forwarded the link to my gf before I even read the story. Now I don’t know how to ask her not to read it coz she recently buried her mum and this will definitely break her. Am so sorry. It shall be well baby girl. IlY

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  8. God loves us and there’s always a reason for every pain we go through. May God give parents with same experience peace and strength to carry on.

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  9. Too painful… i hope and pray she finds peace. At least she had a supporting husband. May her little angel R.I.P

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    1. I really don’t think anyone is out here with zero life scars. Every time I hear someone’s story like the one Biko just gave to us, I remember to be kinder and better in life, to be more supportive to all people. You never know what a stranger might be going through at that moment you meet. Go the extra mile.

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  10. Oh, so sad an account.
    Take heart mama.
    Death is never easy, but no parent should experience that heavy loss, when their little child passes on. That absolutely crushes the heart.
    May God continue to comfort you, and may you have brighter days.
    I like Kat Kerrs accounts of heaven in her book, ‘Revealing heaven.’ It has brought me some level of comfort and acceptance in dealing with grief.

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  11. May God give her strength, I lost my dad recently and its unbearable, I can just imagine how painful it is to loose a child , I am a mother of 3 boys and I know the desire to have a daughter and I can’t imagine the pain she felt after loosing the long awaited daughter.

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  12. Sorry for her loss, the pain of the loss of a loved one never goes away, but it gets better with time….may God heal and strengthen her and all the people going through the same pandemonium

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  13. I just shed fresh hot tears reading this…. I felt her pain. I know what it was like. Just feels like yesterday yet now its 15 years ago and I was only 23….. My Kato did not come home with me. We buried him in the ancestral burial grounds of the village in Masaka…..I miss him…very much. We all miss him terribly.
    God be with all of us, any woman who never took her baby home.

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  14. May God restore your joy and reawaken you purpose for living. Some things are just too hard to deal with by ourselves. Very sorry, mum.

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  15. It is very painful. Losing a child is the most painful experience. May she find peace and the little angel continue resting in eternal peace.

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  16. Its really heartbreaking , i cant imagine the pain and grief. May God strengthen you daily . Some things just lack explanation in this world but we live and try to be still knowing that God is in control.

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  17. So deep. People are silently going through ugly stuffs. Let’s be kind to everyone, even the unkind! We don’t know their story!
    Good read Biko!

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  18. My little girl is 8months old and everytime I see her am grateful that she’s here with me. Life is so precious and giving life is no easy fit. This is very heart breaking, I can imagine the anxiety she had in the days leading up to this unfortunate ordeal. Sorry for your loss and may God’s grace and strength be sufficient to you and others like you.

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  19. Heart-wrenching this. Be thankful for when they are born for it is nothing short of a miracle. To all that have lost their loved one’s peace be your portion.

  20. Thank you Biko especially for the last paragraph. We had a similiar tragedy, my wife and I. It was our first born, a girl. Words cant quite describe the feeling, of seeing your daughter, lying there, wrapped in sheets, with fully grown hair and nails but lifeless. Natalia was her name.

    We had been married that same year, Jan and we lost the baby in Oct. The feeling, like you say never really goes away. My wife was too weak to travel for burial, she had to remain in hospital. Together with my siblings, we took her to the village. I insisted on driving the coffin in my car. When we got home, my mother came out of the house and hugged me while crying.

    We buried at the family burial grounds, but she was the first one there as a baby. I read a letter my wife had written at the burial but it was so painful.

    We managed to recover from that, we got 2 girls now. The healing takes forever but when you see how God has blessed you with other children, you decide to focus more on the living. We haven’t told them about their elder sister yet, the questions will be too many.

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    1. It’s very painful….
      I lost my son 21 years ago, it’s still fresh….I sometimes see young boys his age and wonder how he’d look like…
      You know when they say…if you were to visit someone in heaven who would you want it to be…It would be my baby Eugene….I’d ask him why he left me so distraught! He died at 4weeks old after birth, Nov 2000.

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  21. Worse still is leaving the hospital minus a baby and a uterus. Biko, I would wish to share my story some day to give someone hope.

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  22. Seeing a dead baby, cold and wrapped in a white sheet, will never ever leave my head. The sadness is unbearable. It’s the saddest thing one could ever experience. I saw my sister’s dead baby when she had him after so many miscarriages and years of waiting to be a mum. Your story aptly puts it, “the loss becomes a part of you”. I am not the one who lost the baby, but the pain I feel makes me wonder what the mother feels.

    It is well mama! God loves you and knows why.

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  23. The pain never ends. I lost my baby in 2007 at 26yrs. He was 26 weeks. I still remember the day he was born and the 6 days he was helpless in the incubator while I prayed he would survive. He didn’t. He would have been a candidate this year. It never goes away. I’ve been blessed with 2 after that but he will always be my first born gone too soon.

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  24. What a heartbreaking experience! The pain of loss is nasty. May the Lord heal her heart and the hearts of all the parents that have had to bury their little ones!

  25. You don’t heal from losing a baby. It’s not Malaria. That loss becomes a part of you. You still cry. Every year she wonders how old she would have been. If she would have been bubbly. What kind of friends she would have had. What colour of shoes she would have preferred. What hairstyle she would have had on her hair.

    Agreed.. I experienced a miscarriage in 2019.. One of the most painful things a woman has to endure.. The loss becomes a part of you..

    Hugs mum.. Hugs…

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  26. Very painful read!
    Such experiences are tough.
    Healing takes forever…
    In the end, I say pole Sana to all parents who lost their children.
    May God’s comfort and peace fill you

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  27. Somethings don’t just break our hearts, they break everything in us. Never to be the same again. What comforts me is to know God sees and He understands…. And His arms always ready to comfort us. God give us strength each day and keep healing this pain.

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  28. This is heartbreaking. The way she would go to Langata and sit at her grave…absolutely heartbreaking. Sobs

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  29. Sending hugs to the mum and the family for the loss of their baby girl.And sending even more hugs to Biko for having to feel their pain and still being able to write it for us.

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  30. “In the next bed was a young girl whose baby was constantly crying so loudly and this girl would just ignore the baby, and at some point she started screaming at her baby to shut up and I just wanted to have a baby who could cry all the time, I wouldn’t mind. I’d rather a baby who cried all the time than a dead baby. I wished I was her.”

    The irony of life…we can never fully comprehend!

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  31. soo emotional. I now need a glass of whisky. sorry to all mothers who have lost a child. may God console you.

  32. This story is really heartbreaking,reminds me of my bestfriend who lost twin girls at KNH almost five years ago.You never forget you just learn to slowly live with the pain and loss

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  33. It’s the saddest thing for anyone to go through. You never recover, it changes you to be someone else, you learn to live with it.

  34. I cant even read the comments. I cant stand peoples excerpts from the main script. Its sad. Just sad.

  35. Whoa this is just gut wrenching, it takes a brave mother to share this . Thanks.
    This will go to tell somebody going trough something that they can survive too.
    Peace be with you.

  36. Damn, this is sad.

    Away from the grief, who else is happy to note that we can formally use ‘asf’ as a figure of speech?

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  37. Questions may abound that you may not have answers to. It’s in God’s hands and only He has the answers. The transition is very troublesome but we are mere mortal beings. It is not your battle, leave it to Him. You shall heal. God is still on the throne.

  38. It’s true, you never heal from losing a baby. I feel so sad for this lady. There was a baby who was born when I was 4 and died after 4 days. Till my Dad’s dying day, 10 years later, he refused to speak about it. There were 2 others born after him, yet when my Mum died 23 years after the baby’s death, we found a sweater and mittens that she had made for that dead baby, that were never worn by my younger siblings. Such is the death of a baby. Terrible.

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  39. Oh lord gracious… I have heard those stories in the 3 countries I have lived…. pain and torment for the victims.

    This is a birth control story!
    Slapping my face and raving ovas s so hard….

  40. Saddest story I have read in a long time! I lost a childhood friend last week. She and her baby didn’t make it Peace upon all those who lose their loved ones too soon. May the little angels rest in peace.

    Jumbledthoughtsme.wordpress.com

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  41. This left me in tears, we have lost five in one way or another (Death, Miscarriage & Termination) between 2012 and 2020. It’s always painful. May she take heart.

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  42. Premature departure. May she, and all the little angels that flew long before their time rest in peace. And, more strength to their loved ones.

  43. When you lose your spouse, you are either a widow or widower, an orphan when you lose your parents, but child loss is a pain so indescribable, the English language cannot capture it in one word. With child loss, you lose the entire future, the toddler that your baby would have been, the teen, the young adult and on and on. It is endless grief at each turn, you never ever ‘recovery’ from it, the passage of time simply dulls the pain that will forever be part of you. To you Ann, I feel your pain, I have been there and send you my love. God bless.

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  44. What a coincidence? I lost my first-born daughter too, in May, at KNH. A very beautiful girl. My wife had attended her clinics at a private hospital but we agreed she would deliver at KNH after friends convinced us that it had best doctors and it was free.
    However unlike her who had two sons at home, my wife and i had none, just a pile of baby clothes and an empty cot. We buried her in Lang’ata. We were however blessed with two boys later(such a coincidence).
    Its 13 years down the line and i cant say I’ve healed. The weird thing is whenever i meet a girl of the same age my daughter would have been, my mind subconsciously reminds me about it. I can feel her pain,time will however teach her to live with it. Am sorry for her loss.

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  45. Always a great read! Kudos albeit sad… We lost our first child 10years ago but still feels like yesterday….a mother doesn’t stop grieving.

  46. Biko!!!

    This is so sad! May God give her strength continually. I’ve lost mine in miscarriages… It’s tough. I have a teenager and a toddler….in between them are miscarriages. I often imagine how it’d be with a full house of noisy children. I almost lost my mind with the last loss.

    To every family that’s experienced loss, may God strengthen you.

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  47. The pain never goes away. I lost my son in 2016 at KNH too. And I have never healed completely. But it does get better with time. I used to love being around babies but not anymore especially baby boys. My daughter asks about her brother once on a while and I have to hold my tears when I tell her he is in heaven and happy.
    May God rest in peace the little babies and children who went too soon and give strength to the mothers and fathers and families they left behind.

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  48. Biko, next time you post such a story, please make sure to include a caveat; something like, ‘you may need some strong whisky after this read’.
    Reading this story, my tears overpowered me and I let them flow. The same way the Nile flows.

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  49. I thought I was strong and I could relate with her story but wait….reading the details brought so many painful memories. Death is painful. Death at birth is even more painful. It crushes all hopes. Women have a lot of Grace. All I know is once you get yourself there you have to seek for Grace and face it.

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  50. This is totally heartbreaking. Carrying a pregnancy to term and undergoing CS then your baby doesn’t get to make it can totally drive one insane…….I hope that with time,this lady will heal from the trauma

  51. It’s hard to lose a child. It’s hard to lose the mother too. But, sometimes fate decides to hand you a double.portion of pain……I lost both the mother and the child…. Childbirth is supposed to bring joy and happiness, but for me it brought so much pain and sadness that for the longest time I would lose a heartbeat whenever I saw a pregnant woman! To make it worse, I was and still works in a hospital with an office near the MCH clinic….lemmi stop before I start crying again.

  52. Three miscarriages back to back, I do not understand her pain, but I know that darkness, I know the self blame, the what-ifs and the loneliness even when surrounded by family and friends. Most of all I know the sudden outburst of sadness and emotions that hit you out of nowhere when you thought you were well into the healing process months or even years later. Nothing prepares you for this kind of heartbreak. NOTHING

  53. May the good Lord heal you mama. Yes a mother never heals from the pain of loosing a baby. Heartbreaking to the core. But God in His own Mighty way holds you tight. In the midst of your tears may you find God’s strength and comfort. That Scar and no baby is a nightmare, those questions of how is baby, are heart-wrenching, but God in His own Infinite way holds you close. Hugs Mama.

  54. This article was very painful till I shed tears….may God bless and give comfort to all parents who go through such experience.

  55. Oh God! This just broke my heart reading it. Can’t stop the tears from flowing!

    No you don’t heal from losing a baby…its not Malaria. Certainly not from losing anyone close to you.

    I hope she finds the comfort and peace she needs to carry her through.

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  56. Tears…..
    The loss, many don’t understand. It’s painful and the pain never dies, because you remember them everyday. I feel and share in her pain. Crying for my own…..

  57. This story reminds me of my mother who lost three girls at birth all who were born after me. It was always painful to see her come back from the hospital without a baby when we were always hopeful that we could baby sit our sisters. The pain changed her and we have always asked God why did all the three girls die, why He could not even leave one to survive. I hope she will find peace.

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  58. This post has triggered me in ways I can’t explain. My own losses and how they each killed a part of me. How AKUH put me in the maternity wing in a room full of babies yet I had just lost my own. How it took so much grace to get up each morning. I thought I knew pain until I lost part of myself. Years later I’ve been blessed with the cutest son, but my heart still breaks from my two angels that I never met. Hugs to any woman who has experienced this terrible journey.

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  59. May God rest in peace the little babies and children who went too soon and give strength to the mothers and fathers and families they left behind.

  60. i knew there was a reason why my heart kept postponing reading this story. 8 months pregnant and this is my worst fear. may she continue to gather strength needed to go on daily. and God bless good supporting husbands out there.

  61. I underwent a similar loss too, you never stop crying It’s 11 years since I lost my daughter too. But you learn to accept God’s will. I believe one day i will see my daughter in heaven.

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  62. When you lose a child, you live a lifetime of wonder… I often wonder what kind of child my son would have been, what color he would love, if he’d grow to finally look like me or would forever look like his father. Most days go by fine but for the last 3 years, not a day goes by that I don’t think about him.I hope he is happy! I hope he is at peace, my Reign ♥️♥️

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  63. This struck so close. I have been there,I cried while reading this. May God give you peace Ma’, only He can.

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  64. This is my story almost to the letter. 17 years later and still I remember my daughter…….I’ve just read this story in tears

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  65. 2013 was the same year my mom lost our last born she had given birth through a C-section she had to get blood transfusion from it .weeks later we lost the baby …8 years down the line and reading this has just made me feel like it was yesterday. I know how it feels to see a little coffin in your family to see parents bury an infant with a promised future they cannot save…I wish she stayed longer I wish we got chance to tell her how much we wanted her…May God give strength to all those who have gone such losses and may all the lost soul find eternal peace.
    AMEN.

  66. This is sad. I know the pain of losing a child. May God give strength to all Mothers and Fathers who experience such loss.
    Oh,Father’s,they cry uncontrollably in the secret of their rooms.
    God give them comfort.

  67. Really sad…No parent should lose a child
    “May God rest in peace the little babies and children who went too soon and give strength to the mothers and fathers and families they left behind.”

  68. I totally understand your pain. I lost my daughter at birth in Nairobi Hospital on 12/11/2013 and she too is buried in Lang’ata. Her emergency delivery caused so many complications that sent me spiraling into ICU for some days so I never got to see or hold her. I could barely stand during her short funeral service in Lang’ata. The thought that I was leaving her behind at the cemetery with strangers almost killed me with grief. It still breaks my heart that I didn’t get to see or hold my baby girl. I got a rainbow baby boy two years later after losing baby girl. The grief/ pain never ends but we soldier on……God comfort you in ways that only He can. Hugs.

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  69. I have never shed tears on any funeral… like real tears the way I see people wail or anything deep… but this read…. ohh gosh! It had me bleeding with tears from my stomach. It is so painful ehh! My heart and feelings reach out to all who’ve had such a loss! It really is heartbreaking

    Ps: the young Muslim lady was God-sent

  70. I have been through such an ordeal.
    Painful, very painful.
    I believe my little angel is watching over me from heaven.

  71. How beautifully you capture her pain.. when you loose a child.. you loose a part of you.. I remember praying for women that I saw pregnant that they would get to see and hold their own babies.. six years on and still.. ❤️

  72. Oh nooo..
    This story takes me back to Dec 2017. What I remember is watching newborns with their mothers; and refusing to feel anything because I couldn’t understand why I wasn’t holding my baby too.
    Too real. Déjà vu

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  73. I’ve postponed reading this piece for two weeks now and I’ve read it but I can’t bring myself to go past the second paragraph.
    Losing a child is something one never moves on from. Whatever they tell you it’s never the same. Holding my 22hr hold dead baby with a dazed boyfriend on the side is a picture I can’t erase. The being moved far from the maternity wing to avoid baby crys, begging the doctors to discharge you from the damn hospital, and finally walking out with just a pack of drugs and your baby’s clothes is a pain one can never describe. You keep replaying these in slow motion over n over again, just trying to get an inkling into what cud have gone wrong but they all say God knows. As days go by, the leaking breasts and healing cs wound and the tears just won’t stop. It never goes away, you never move on, I’ve never loved again. You just can’t bring yourself to. You keep wondering how she’d have turned out to be, what type of mother you wud be, what Milestones……. I can write a whole episode on these. I’ll read her story maybe one day wen am at my lowest n maybe drunk or high

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  74. Losing a baby is not easy at all. I also lost my baby girl five days after birth in 2011. Every year I mourned her until last December when God give me a son as a comfort. Hang in there sis.
    The pain is real

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  75. This story broke my heart. Esp this line ..her swollen breasts pained with milk her baby would never have..

    God give you strength at the dawn of each day.

  76. This reminds me of when we lost our first born son at birth through a C-Section as well. I had just moved to another country and I missed his birth. When I received the news, on that July 4th, as this country celebrated its independence i was mourning the death of my son. July 4th has never been the same for me. I remember walking aimlessly across busy highways in a foreign land, in the dark trying to figure out why God would allow that. That boy, dark and handsome, looked my exact copy and all I have now is picture of him, in a box, sleeping peacefully. We were blessed with another boy almost 2 years later but every now and then I pull up that picture and stare at it and wonder; “what would it be like if he lived?”

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  77. Heartbreaking and even worse she has this scar which will be a constant reminder. Hugs……May God comfort her.

  78. I cried so much reading this. I don’t know the exact pain she is going through. I never saw mine because i lost them earlier in pregnancy, that can break someone. Hugs and May God give you comfort.

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  79. Almost six years ago my son died 3 days after he was born!!! I was in shock. I don’t even think I cried until a week later when I woke up in the middle of the night and just could not breath!!!!!! Oh life! This is written so beautifully. It’s a pain that can never leave you. I pray for your family mama.