When I was pregnant, everything I did upset my husband. When I was in pain and crying all night, he said I was exaggerating the pain. He would leave me in the bedroom and go and sleep in the hall. I called him on the phone to come and take me to the hospital. He told me he was too tired and wanted to sleep.
“Tomorrow is coming soon. You won’t die,” he told me.
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Early the next morning, I woke up, and he watched me go to the hospital alone. He went to work as if everything was alright. He didn’t call once to ask what the doctor had said about my pain. When he came home and found me sleeping on the couch, he teased, “Are you back? I thought you’d stay there and disturb them with your pains at night.”
He behaved as though I was carrying another man’s baby. I was eight months pregnant and could barely stand on my own. I came home from work to find him waiting for me to cook something new for him because he was tired of eating the same food all week. There was stew in the fridge. He could have eaten it with rice, kenkey, or even gari. He said he wanted fresh stew.
I put my bag on the bed and never got up again. I was too tired to do anything. He got angry and stepped out of the house. He didn’t return until midnight. I didn’t ask where he had gone or why he had left.
I asked him, “You’re angry because I couldn’t cook for you in my condition?”
He retorted, “Are you carrying the whole world that you can’t cook? One pregnancy. Every day, excuses.”
I asked if he loved me at all or if he just saw me as a machine that ought to function no matter what. Because of his behaviour, I planned to go and live with my parents after delivery. I didn’t hate him, but I wanted to be without him.
I started having labour symptoms at dawn. The pain was sharp across my abdomen. I screamed out loud. He woke up, looked at me, and asked, “What in the name of hell made you scream like that? Do you think you live in this house alone?”
I told him the baby was coming.
He said, “The baby has been coming every day but never comes.”
“This time it’s real. My due date has passed. Take me to the hospital.”
It took my husband over an hour to get ready. He went to the toilet, sat on the bowl, leaned against the wall, and fell asleep. I had to bang on the door to wake him up.
We got to the hospital at 2 a.m. I was rushed in, and a few minutes later, the baby was delivered. I passed out from exhaustion and the excessive pain. When I woke up, I was greeted with the news that my baby hadn’t made it.
My husband was there.
I asked him, “Is it true?”
He nodded without any sign of pain or frustration.
I said, “Your baby is dead, and you’re looking like that? You guys should stop playing with me.”
My husband walked out.
The nurse insisted it was the truth. I demanded to see my baby, and he was brought to me, cold and lifeless.
“Maame Nurse, are you sure this is my baby? Madam Nurse, are you sure you’re not giving me someone else’s baby?”
I was already engulfed in tears, looking around for my husband to ask him if he had seen the baby when he was born. I didn’t want to believe it. I held on to the slightest hope that it wasn’t real.
My mum came in. I told her, and she also burst into tears. I was lost. I kept asking where my husband was. I called his number, and he said he was home.
“You left me here? What kind of human are you?”
“What do you expect me to do? A nurse is telling you the truth, and you’re behaving as though someone intentionally killed the baby.”
I ended the call. I told my mum to take me home. I didn’t want to give my baby back. They forced me to let him go. I went home with a broken heart I never knew how to heal.
My husband came to see me after work. He just watched me like a stranger. In his mind, I was exaggerating the baby’s death. I could see from his face that that was exactly what he was thinking.
When he finally spoke, he said, “God gives, and He also takes away. Let it go so we can be blessed with another one.”
I looked up.
“God gives. So He looked at me and called me His daughter, yet gave me this kind of marriage?”
I told myself I would never go back to that house again. He was the reason our baby didn’t survive. He looked at the kind of father he was going to be born to and decided death was better.
When I came to this realisation, I prayed and said a word of apology to my baby’s feeble spirit.
“I’m sorry. You deserved better than what I chose for you.”
I told my husband our marriage was over. He said I was grieving and couldn’t think straight.
I still live with my mum. We’ve sent his customary drinks back to him. We are in court going through the divorce process. Through it all, he still accuses me of exaggerating the situation.
I told him, “This is the last show of exaggeration. You won’t see me this way again.”
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He’s seeing another woman even before our divorce is granted. That tells me I didn’t make a mistake by choosing divorce. The mistake was the marriage itself.
I still mourn my baby. I mourn the fact that I gave him a terrible father, and I also mourn the fact that he didn’t stay with me. But everything is God’s doing, even this one. I leave in His hands.
—Kathy
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