Woman 66, gives birth after 40 years of marriage
For 40 whole years Ajibola Otubusin from the Western part of Nigeria was ridiculed because she didn’t have a child to call hers, now the story has changed and she’s overjoyed!
Ajibola got wedded at the age 25 at the Methodist Church in Yaba, Lagos, on December 10, 1977, to her husband Samuel – now a
retired professor at the Department of Aquaculture and Fisheries Management, Federal University of Agriculture, Abeokuta.
Understandably, she expected to take in not long after, but that hope was one she nursed for 40 whole years.
“What I didn’t know was that I would have to wait for 40 years,” Ajibola, a retired nurse said while speaking with the Punch in Abeokuta, Ogun State capital.
Overcome with emotion, she said: “I expected to bear children and be fulfilled, but then, I started noticing I was unusually becoming sick, I was having some health issues. I initially thought they were small problems but when I went to a hospital at Kainji, I was referred to an Ear, Nose and Throat specialist at the University College Hospital, Ibadan, who told me I was still young and that I was getting sick because I was worried too much about having a baby.
“But I knew there were problems with me. I knew I had a problem with my thyroid. But the doctor insisted I would get over it. I went back to the hospital and this time round, I was referred to the Eko Hospital in Lagos, and there, they noticed I was suffering from hepatomegaly (an enlargement of the liver). They identified five other health problems and from there, I started battling with various diseases.”
In search of cure to her ailments, Ajibola said she went back to the UCH again, where she met a surgeon who took interest in her case.
She said, “The surgeon was nice to me, he said he would send me to India. So I travelled to India. At the hospital where I was referred to, they noticed it was a cystic lesion (a medical condition that causes the development of multiple small, benign cysts on an organ in the body) and that I wasn’t responding to drugs. The cystic lesion overtook my liver.
I was also tested for having sessile polyps in my colons.
However, the doctor at the Indian hospital tried artificial insemination which didn’t work but she stayed strong, returned home and intensified efforts with her husband
“I had been visiting St Ives Specialist Hospital, Lagos for 10 years before I travelled to India but I stopped going due to my poor health. But when my health improved, I went back again early this year with my husband, and I met Dr. Tunde Okewale, who understood our plight and encouraged us not to be shaken by previous experiences. We tried the IVF procedure and here we are today, with our first child!”
Going down memory lane, Ajibola gave a glimpse at those trying moments “It is normal in our environment that if you are childless, people would call you various names. But what helped me is my husband’s faithfulness and support, as well as my own positive attitude. I don’t easily get angry over issues. When people told me something negative or called me names, I would just go back home and pray instead of crying.
“Some people in my husband’s family confronted me, ‘Release your husband, let him go. Stop tying him down, you are a witch.’ But I usually told them jokingly that I was not tying my husband down. As a matter of fact, if he wanted to marry as many as 10 wives, I told them I didn’t care. It’s even better for me because I would have some peace.
“My husband taught in the university and where he worked, he could have also married any female lecturer. But he is a devout Christian. I remember a man in his family once told me, ‘You married the best person in our family. If you had married someone like me, I would have left you a long time ago.’ I told him, ‘Thank you, sir.’”
However, with the birth of her baby last Saturday the story has changed.
Source: Punch
