WANJIRU KIHUSA knows how it feels to be pregnant and has had an experience with labour pains, unfortunately she has lost two babies to miscarriage. She tells MUNDE OKUNA how her loss gave her a new purpose in life.
Not many people are fortunate enough to be able to tick off three items – let alone three big items – from their bucket list in one short year. But for Wanjiru Kihusa, the gods seemed to be smiling on her in 2012 as she was able to complete her IT Bachelor’s degree in April, get married in June and get a job, all at the tender age of 24.
Oh, and it was not any old job she got –while many people struggle with unemployment for months or even years after completing college, Wanjiru got herself a managerial job. She was a customer service manager at an IT firm.
Everything was going well so in June 2013, Wanjiru and her husband Andrew tried for a baby and she conceived in a month. But dark clouds started to appear when after six weeks of pregnancy, she had a threatened miscarriage. She experienced some spotting and her gynaecologist prescribed some hormones to sustain the pregnancy.
Although Wanjiru says the hormones made her feel like she was “pregnant times four” – the nausea worsened – they helped stabilise her and she was off medication by the twelfth week. But when she was 16 weeks along, she began to feel sick again. Wanjiru got an infection which doctors could not diagnose and this caused her to get severe cold episodes and cramps.
Early November, Wanjiru and her husband visited their former college JKUAT - which is where they met – for a Christian Union seminar. She was five months pregnant. Despite the heat, Wanjiru felt very cold and even had to go back to the car for a while and switch on the heating. She had painful cramps but as she says: “I was used to enduring pain from an early age. My dad died when I was just 10 years old and my mum had to struggle to raise us. She would always tell us that perseverance is part of life.”
So Wanjiru tried not to pay too much attention to the cramps. Later on that night, Wanjiru and Andrew for the first time discussed the plans they had for their daughter in detail.
“Sometimes when you get pregnant, you don’t really think of plans for your baby until you get to an advanced stage,” she confesses.
After the exciting conversation, they went to sleep but not for too long because at about 2am, Wanjiru felt excruciating cramps (she was later to find out that the ‘cramps’ were actually labour pains). Putting aside what her mother had told her about persevering when in pain, she quickly woke her husband up they went to hospital.
When she reached hospital, although the baby’s heartbeat was feint, it was still alive. She was admitted. Wanjiru was in stable condition but a few hours later, she started bleeding.
“I knew something was wrong. I am not a doctor but I know cramping plus bleeding are not good signs,” she says. Wanjiru was put on medication to stop premature labour but it did not work and her gynaecologist said the baby could not be saved so she went through the labour and she delivered her baby. The doctor let her see the baby’s body before it was taken away.
When a post-mortem was done, it was discovered that listeria, a bacterial infection, had aggressively attacked the baby’s lungs and caused them to collapse. Listeria is caused by eating contaminated food. The bacteria had attacked the placenta and quickly spread to the foetus.
Giving it another shot
While there are some women who do not want to try and get pregnant again for some time after a miscarriage, Wanjiru wanted to give motherhood another shot so after a three-month resting period, they gave it another shot and sure enough, they had no problem conceiving. But their joy was even short lived this time – she miscarried at seven weeks.
Faith tested
Though she had a Christian upbringing, Wanjiru says she found herself questioning her faith. “Is there really a God after all? If so, how could he let this happen to me?” Wanjiru stopped going to church for three months and became bitter.
But after some soul searching, she came to this conclusion: “If it takes just a miscarriage to question God’s goodness and existence, then what kind of Christian am I really?”
Wanjiru made references to the Good Book – the parable about the sower and how she had planted her faith on rocky ground that was shaken after affliction. Wanjiru says everybody needs to get to that point where their faith is tested and they need to pass the test by coming out saying: “Although bad things can happen, God is still good.”