This is a legacy edition story. True stories of past pregnancies in yester days (or years), as published in Pregnant Magazine.

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My shock pregnancy at older age, 16 years after my last

When I arrived home from hospital after a pregnancy test, I placed the result slip beside our bed. I felt too scared to tell my husband that I was pregnant. I grappled with the news of pregnancy at older age. He and I had long agreed on one issue: no more babies! Our last born, was 16 years old, and I was 42 years old.

As I expected, when my husband read the results that evening he was not amused. Shock engulfed him.

Like many other women, I had struggled over the years with reproductive health issues moving from one type of contraceptive to another but never getting the perfect solution. I had been on as many birth control methods as one can try in a lifetime. By 2002 I was a tired woman — unwilling to do or try any more. My husband and I therefore sought a ‘permanent’ solution. We chose tubal ligation or TL, a surgical procedure where the fallopian tubes are tied lightly using clips to prevent mature eggs moving to the uterus through the fallopian tubes. This prevents contact between egg and sperm and conception is not possible.

That procedure, though ordinarily quick and safe, nearly killed me. My intestines got punctured accidentally and my uterus also got badly damaged. I was given a course of painkillers and antibiotics upon recovery from the general anaesthesia. The next day I fell unconscious and was rushed to a different hospital where I was admitted. I was operated on again and repairs undertaken.

Apparently during the first operation the doctor did not locate my fallopian tubes. In summary, the TL was not done! I went into a severe depression. Upon discharge from hospital I was advised to take contraceptives, so I was back on the pill for about a year.

One day I woke up feeling unwell. At first I thought it was malaria but when the symptoms changed and I started vomiting, I too changed my self-diagnosis to typhoid. Later I concluded it must be a result of resuming the pill. I felt sickly and nauseated and lost a lot of weight – from 78 kilograms to 54.

Feeling better a few days later, I didn’t take the symptoms seriously thereafter. Three months easily passed as I continued taking the pill, hoping my body would get accustomed to it and that I would recover fully with time. This did not happen so I sought treatment in a hospital. An ultrasound scan showed clearly that I was pregnant!

On that agonising evening in December 2005, I was trying to come to terms with my ‘pregnancy at older age’ news. I had heard before that the pill occasionally fails and there was a slim chance of conceiving. But I had not taken this seriously—you never think pregnancy at older age is for you.

With time my husband took in stride the fact that he was going to be a new daddy at an advanced age. He calmed down and accepted the situation. Now that I was pregnant I started shopping for our baby: I shopped more than I had ever shopped for my other two children, even for my first child born many years past, on 1 December 1986.

I reflected on my past pregnancies. My first occured just six months after getting married, which was as soon as I finished my university undergraduate studies. Though I was ready to start a family, it was not easy when we started living together. We wondered how we would sustain a family on our meagre resources. The family expanded two years later when we got a daughter on I November 1988. We focused on raising our two children as well as on building our careers. My work as a sociologist involved a lot of fieldwork with communities, and convening workshops, meetings and conferences on development projects. Hence I did not think it wise to have another child. Luckily my family understood the demands of my profession and accepted our decision not to have more children.

Getting pregnant a third time came as a real shock. It was particularly frightening because I had been on the pill while pregnant, which made me fear I would have an abnormal baby. Besides that, I had heard rumors that by the time a woman is in her forties the chances of delivering a deformed child were considerably higher. My doctor reassured me that everything would be fine.

My eating habits changed considerably. I craved for raw rice and broke some teeth as a result. I disliked sugar and to date still take sugarless tea. In contrast, during my first pregnancy I would eat stones and during the second I enjoyed consuming beef, chicken and sugar. Strangely, I also totally disliked my husband’s shoes. I could not stand him getting into the house in them!

Several weeks later I went for a second ultrasound scan to check the baby’s positioning. All was fine. However at 24 weeks I the baby’s movements became suspect: too fast, at one time here and at another there! I would feel the baby kick at different places which made me wonder if I was carrying twins. During the scans I did not want to know the sex of the baby because I did not have any preference. I also did not have a preferred name.

The pregnancy was not easy to carry, though. At four months I found out that I was suffering from Crohn’s disease, a chronic inflammation of the intestines. I was in pain and bleeding, and initially thought I had stomach ulcers. This was not the first time, having suffered the disease when I was 19 years.

If I ate certain foods such as rice, some of it would come out undigested in my stool, as white as I had consumed it. I ate food but sometimes it would not digest. That was scary! At other times I had diarrhoea which left my stomach empty. I could not undergo immediate surgery due to my pregnancy. Doctors advised that I consume soft foods. I also avoided painkillers with steroids as I was told they could harm the baby.

I was not adding weight as expected even as the pregnancy progressed and the doctor suspected I was going through depression. He advised me to try to eat better, to drink milk and enjoy the pregnancy. Indeed, I tried to relax and enjoy the pregnancy, and swam virtually daily.

As the months progressed I lost more weight. We all got worried about the stagnating weight of the baby. I had lost 15 kilograms. Bowel motion was a nightmare. I could stay for a whole week without passing any stool. I conserved my energy by reducing physical work and labourious movements. At 30 weeks the doctor prescribed some iron-boosting micronutritious substances that nourish the body and are essential for both mother and the growing foetus. I got hospitalised.

My two children, aged 20 and 18 years, supported me tremendously. My son especially was always there during his school holidays. He would go home to change and come back to the hospital. He would hold my hand while my daughter combed my hair. My children gave me hope, in just the same way I had encouraged them when they were young!

Eventually I got lipoprotein medication. It is an organic compound that helps to transport fatty substances in the blood. It looks like milk and drips slowly in a process I found very painful. The procedure involved three holes being made on my arm, through which tubes were inserted and nutrients injected in small doses. The nutrients were to fatten the baby and my body too. My friends lightened my spirits by nicknaming my unborn baby ‘Tyson’, joking that the child would be born as strong as the fighter.

I had three doctors managing my condition—a general practitioner, a gynaecologist and a nutritionist. In all, I received eight pints of the lipoprotein. My weight improved, I gained five kilograms, leading to discharged from hospital to continue recovery at home. Unfortunately, I lost all the five kilograms within a week! I had to go back to hospital.

My doctor took me through tough decisions. He was reluctant to discharge me from hospital until I delivered because the situation was not improving. He also ruled out a normal delivery because of the previous operations on my uterus during the failed tubal ligation debacle. There was a risk of uterine rapture if I attempted a normal birth, as the scar could give way under the stress of labour. My previous deliveries were normal, so one can imagine my anxiety.

Unfortunately, all the love and care did not improve my condition. It continued to deteriorate. My doctor concluded that an alternative strategy was necessary. I feared I would lose the baby. Finally the verdict was to have our baby delivered before the full pregnancy term. In order to mature the baby’s lungs, I received an injection. At 32 weeks I went to theatre for a C-section.

The baby weighed 2.5 kilograms, which was not bad at all! We named him ‘Hawi’ which means blessings in my mother tongue. Hawi spent his first 24 hours in an incubator. A a yellow discolouration of his skin indicated jaundice; hence treatment using phototherapy. This involved exposure to fluorescent light containing a high output of blue light.

Life slowly returned to normal and my friends threw a party for the baby; it was a great baby shower! I had visitors virtually every day during the first few months. Some of the visitors could therefore not believe I was having another baby at my age, nearly two decades after my last pregnancy. They would wait until they saw me breastfeed to prove to them that the baby was mine by birth, and not a “miracle baby”!

How my family reacted to my pregnancy at older age surprise

My children wanted to be with me or talk to me all the time after they found out that I was pregnant. They were both in boarding school and would often call me to enquire how I was doing. They had always wanted another sibling, especially my son. I remember when I Informed him and his sister that I was going for tubal ligation he asked me whether I would ever have a child after that. He really wanted a baby in the house!

Interesting was that after I delivered my daughter became jealous for about two months. She would not relate to me the same way she did before the baby was born. So I decided to be leaving the baby with her and to share my attention more equitably. She came to love the baby so much — and even became very possessive. Both she and her brother are now very close to Hawi.

When my mother learned of my pregnancy she was happy because she had always thought I had too few children. The news of my pregnancy made my dad pleased too. That really made me happy. It was an interesting coincidence that I conceived when my last born was joining university as that is exactly what had happened to my mother. When my youngest brother was born I was in university!

My mother-in-law was supportive — I think most mothers love it when their family tree grows! My immediate family really demonstrated love for me and let me know that they saw me as an energetic woman who would take good care of the baby despite my age.

It’s a difficult situation when you get pregnant in your forties, have teenagers in the house grappling with fresh issues every new day and at the same time you have on infant in your arms! Not to forget your career which itself is a challenge.

END: PG 05/04-07