When babies don’t make it home
On May 9th, mothers in different parts of the world celebrated Mothers Day. But for one young woman and many others in her shoes, she did not have anyone serving her a cup of tea or breakfast in bed. The young woman is none other than PR and Events practitioner Tebatso Kgakge. Kgakge is one of many women who have experienced the emptiness, grief, pain, frustrations and the many emotions that come after the life changing experience of losing a child/ pregnancy.
Local organisation, Cradle of Hope After Loss recently called on the public to acknowledge the mothers with children who didn’t make it home or no longer with us. It is estimated that, one in four pregnancies will end in loss through miscarriage, still birth or in early infancy. Kgakge is part of this statistic. The organisation is a support group for women, who have experienced miscarriage, stillbirth and infant loss.
Kgakge’s journey to finding her feet around the constant changing maze of grief, dealing with societal perceptions around losing a child/ pregnancy, as well as her journey to recovery has been nothing short of a miracle.
Opening up about this part of her journey has taken her a while before she could share her emotions with anyone outside her close- knit circle. But even then, she is hoping that talking about this difficult transition in her life would change the life of someone else who might be experiencing something similar or even worse.
Talking about loss of a pregnancy or even a child, is something that is still a taboo in Botswana. Often times, a woman is expected to forget and to move on after such a life changing experience. But for most women and their partners this is not always the case. They are constantly dealing with shame and unanswered questions of what they could have done differently, why their bodies rejected the baby, and why their child didn’t come home in order to have a better outcome.
Opening up to Botswana Guardian, she explains that it has been a long, and lonely journey. “I honestly made it back from this loss by the grace of God, and not a cliché religious manner but literally by his grace, leading and guiding me through the pain” she explains. She adds that one of the issues that women like her face is how family and friends can sometimes lose their patience with them, expecting them to “get over it” and how they sometimes don’t know how to be there for women like her. “Perhaps they don’t know what to do? Its too painful? They don’t want to say the wrong thing?”
Almost three years ago, Kgakge was pregnant with her first born, a baby girl. Like most first- time mothers, she was ecstatic and looking forward to welcoming her bundle of joy. But God had other plans for her. She remembers that somewhere in her 28th week of pregnancy, she was feeling unwell, and thought she had stomach cramps. She went to the clinic where she was kept for observation over night. Eventually, she was sent home, after being referred to another clinic. At this point, she had no idea that her life would change in the blink of an eye.
A call to her Midwife at a clinic where she had been attending her prenatal care almost shocked her, when the Midwife told her that she was hoping that she was not having a miscarriage. A miscarriage? What is that? What did it even mean? A scan at the clinic a week before did not pick anything. Another doctor who examined her informed her that she was having Brixton hicks - fake labour pains. As a first time mom, she was really in the dark about what was happening to her. That night, she tried to sleep but could not. She remembers that in the morning, her intuition told her that she was in labour, even though she had never been in labour before.
Attempting to use the bathroom, she then felt the baby’s head and frantically let her family know. While being rushed to the ER, her water broke and she delivered the baby along the way to the ER. Her baby was alive and scratched her, a sign that she was really alive.
At the hospital, she and the baby were cleaned up and admitted, and it appeared that everything was fine. Unbeknown to her, almost an hour later, she would receive life altering news. She was moved from the communal room to a private room, and it was there that they informed her that her baby did not make it.
“A week later as I sought to find answers about what
exactly happened, no one could tell me anything,” she says. The only reason that she was given was that the baby’s organs had not developed enough. Her darling daughter was laid to rest at Phomolong Cemetery, three days later. It was after the burial that she attempted to trace her steps and see whether she could find answers to this riddle, but she came up empty handed.
One thing that she fast had to come face to face with was the fact that she had to heal on her own. “After the funeral, people pay their respects and everybody goes home.” she says highlighting that there is so much that people can do for a grieving mother if they wanted to.
“Perhaps people spoke behind the scenes to ascertain how they can help, I later found out from a friend that my mom in her desperate need to assist had offered to take me on holiday so I can heal but I needed a hug and to know people hurt as much as I do, that they lost a member of their family too, not to be taken away to heal.” She then sought refuge in support groups online, where she met other women who have gone through the same trials and tribulations.
“The truth of the matter is that you are practically on your own,” she says, as her partner was in Zimbabwe and this always somehow ruins relationships.
She admits that everyone is different, and that they deal with pain and emotions differently. But she wants society to give a holistic support to those who are going through what she has been through.
She wants society to cultivate the same practice of being there for those who are bereaved with mothers who have had a loss. “They can sit with us, not fear us, and listen to us crying,” she says, adding that her cousin was with her on Mothers Day sitting with her in her pain.
She suspects that maybe the reason that there was still a lack of support for these mothers is that people are afraid or lack the skills of being there for women, and partners. “I wish that they could sit down with us in our pain. They don’t have to necessarily say anything but they can be there with me,” says Kgakge, who shares that in her journey very few people have been able to go through this with her which somehow motivated her to relocate to Maun to heal and where she continues to find her feet.
Another thing is how there are few trauma specialists in Botswana who can offer counselling to these women.
Her goal is to raise awareness and just open up this taboo subject that affect so many women. She notes how she recently shared a status about visiting her angels final resting place, and how one woman reached out to her and told her that she has not recovered after losing her pregnancy more than 29- years ago, and not told a soul.
Something else that she has observed with her journey is how medical aid companies register a pregnant woman when they are around 20 weeks pregnant, something that she hopes can be looked into and changed.