Emily laughs heartily as she begins this particular session, and there is the contagion that comes with laughter, kind of like a yawn, you just can’t help but fall in.
‘Pole, sorry. I am aware that I should be sending you a ka-whatever, but then I travelled and I forgot… leo actually nilikumbuka, but I was kind of busy during the day. Anyway, let’s do this now.’ She sounds jovial, and I can’t help but smile with expectation and anticipation. Some emotional cocktail.
‘I think niliachia kwenye…kwenye nimepelekwa hosi. So we are at the hospital, and the labour pains are kicking my ass, wueh! Okay, now that I think about it, I think I was being dramatic. But no, mimi sinanga pain tolerance, uchungu kidogo mimi nishameza dawa.
So nikapimwa, nikaambiwa to walk around for a while. So nikatembea, and I was sleepy, ghai! I was sleepy!’ she emphasizes the sleepy part, and I can only imagine the zombie feeling I usually have after weekend-long parties followed by week-long trans-nights up, working on articles and et cetera.
She proceeds, ‘Because you can imagine, I had slept a mere hour and some minutes. I was sleepy. I just wanted to sleep. And then again, the labour pains couldn’t let me sleep. Actually, at some point during our walk of patience, I told Sharon to let me sleep.
I said, ‘I need to sleep. I want to sleep.’
She simply agreed with me and said I should sleep if that’s what I wanted to do. We had been padding up and down a field within the hospital grounds, and there were benches.’ She laughs heartily, again. And I can’t help but develop that feeling; “Someone is in a good mood.”
‘At first, I tried to sleep on a bench, but it was super uncomfortable. So I had to try the grass out.’ She begins to laugh again.
‘And I spread a sheet on the grass so that I’d sleep.’ She laughs.
‘Every time I tried to sleep, I’d get hit with a contraction. Well, I did suffer that day. Sooner than later, Sharon and I both agreed to go back to the labour rooms and check out what had changed. So I got checked for dilation, and apparently, I was ready to deliver –well, at least that was when I was assigned a bed. And that was also when I realized that this was real. It was happening. I was going to give birth to a living, breathing human.
Before that moment, I simply thought, “I am tired of being pregnant, I want this baby out.” But at that moment, “Lord Jesus, someone should have warned me.” She laughs, less heartily this time, more contemplative, more like a reckoning kind of laugh.
‘I was let into the delivery room, while everyone who wasn’t pregnant was asked to wait outside. Sharon brought my package of clothes and left too. So… yeah.’ Emily pauses and laughs slightly, nervous.
‘So there I was. I think there was something sikua nayo, and Sharon was told to go and get it. I can’t clearly remember what it was. And this public hospital are truly shitty, we even had to buy our own surgical gloves, even though they weren’t exactly what we were asked to buy at this particular time.
I got in there, nikapatiwa gown, nikaambiwa to change, (I was so clueless, I’d come in sweat pants).’ She laughs. So I got changed and re-emerged in a gown. I was asked to lie on the bed, on my side. I remember one of the students had a tough time finding a vein in my arm.
Now, I am terrified of needles. Imagine getting pocked at several different parts of your arm, like, si hapa, no, si hapa… and on this other side, labour pains are kicking your ass a good one.’ She begins to laugh again.
‘Eventually, there was a huge nurse who came to my rescue. She simply came around, inserted the needle, wakaniekea drip, and then she left.
After the IV was running, sijui kama ilikua accelerant, but after that, the contractions were now on steroids. I had just watched The Hand Maids, sijui kama umeiona. So in that movie, whenever they’d get contractions, they’d be asked not to let out a sound, not to scream, or cry out, but to hold it in. That was what I was trying to do, and it actually works, because…’
She sighs, lets out a short laugh, and then she goes, ‘When I recall some of these things, I just want to laugh. Anyway, it works.’
‘So there I was, getting my ass kicked by labour pains, and Sharon came back with whatever she’d gone to buy. At some point, there was this pain running through my uterine walls, and I wanted to call her, normally, just to tell her something.
Well, what came out of my mouth was a mighty yell, with the name Sharon plastered upon it. I literally yelled Sharon’s name, especially considering she had already left the room and wasn’t even allowed to speak to me. Because the nurses were like, “Hey hey hey, you’re not supposed to be here, blah blah blah, you just go!
So I was there wondering internally, “Why have you left me, why have you deserted me? Why? Mbona mnaniacha hapa pekeyangu?” Haya,’ she laughs again as she proceeds, ‘now I was feeling like puking. And before we left the house, by the way, nilikua nimeuma food kiasi. Walikua wameniambia nikule.’ She giggles as she lets the last words roll out in laughter. ‘So nilikua nimekula, chapo. Let’s estimate that to kanusu, half of the chapatti and stew ya minji which had extra garlic. And now I was feeling like throwing it all up.’ She laughs again. ‘Aki nakumbukanga these things and I want to laugh hard. So I told this kanurse that I wanted to throw up, and she pointed at a bin in the corner, a meter away. Nikienda kusimama nitapike, she said, “no-no, just throw up from your position vile uko.
‘Now, what do you mean vomit from there? I am lying on a high bed, the dustbin is a metre away from me, and I am on my side! How am I supposed to do that?’
So I thought, you want me to throwup from here, cool, got it, then Imma throw up! And I threw up, way up.’ And then she begins to laugh again.
‘Kumbuka nilikua nimekula nini? I remember one of the doctors alikuja and she had her nose turned up, asking why it smelled like garlic all over the place. Well, that was before she noticed my messy dunk. Anyway, they came and cleaned that up.
At this point, the labour pains were actually hurting worse, and even with my hatred for puking, I really cared for less that day. I had no embarrassment, and I didn’t care.
There were three beds in that room, one right next to mine, the other on the far end. So there was a girl in the middle bed. That girl alikua ananiingiza woga zaidi because she was yelling like an ambulance. I later learnt that she’d been in labour for two days straight. And that she had been transferred from another hospital. So you can imagine the levels of harsh life she was playing at and the intensity of agony she was experiencing. There was this very foul-mouthed male doctor or nurse who kept insulting patients, and I totally detested that. He’d just go heavy (verbal Kismayu) on a pregnant lady. “kwani hivo ndio ulikua unaambia bwanako akikupea mimba?”
And then there was a woman –in her thirties I think –who came in (there was a first one who came in and left) and she literally sat on the bed, pushed the baby out and left almost immediately. Even the nurses were there screaming, “Catch that baby, it’s sliding, it’s falling!”
And I was there on my bed agonizing and wondering why I couldn’t just pop this baby out like my fellow ladies.
theScribe 