For This Child, I Prayed.

On Pregnancy and Childbirth

Ten fingers, ten toes, and a head full of hair.
Flutters became kicks and then loud cries…

After reading Buchi Emecheta’s Joys of Motherhood in secondary school, I remember thinking, “If motherhood is so hard, why are people clamoring for it?” Women are constantly hounded about having children, and more children, despite how difficult it is. To say Nnu Ego suffered greatly would be putting it mildly because wetin Nnu Ego eye see pass suffer. Notwithstanding, here I was expecting a baby and a part of me was excited. Did I really want to suffer too?

E ku ewu omo. That’s the Yoruba congratulatory greeting on the birth of a child. It translates to “congratulations on surviving the ordeal of having a child” and I like how it subtly attempts to convey the difficulty of pregnancy and childbirth. I have always wanted children and I knew they would come someday when the time was right, but I wasn’t sure I could do the hard work.

My baby girl arrived around 3am after about two hours of labour. I prayed for a smooth delivery from the beginning of my pregnancy because I had heard and read too many stories about the great pain of bringing a child into this world but nothing prepared me for that level of pain. There aren’t as many things in this life as hard as…