Lisa Rolls Helberge
Explains the differences between pregnancy and birth practices in Kenya and the United States of America
My husband and I started trying to get pregnant immediately after we got married but it took us about a year before I conceived. I had been trying to get pregnant by using an ovulation kit and I thought it would happen within a short time. Apparently, this is quite normal for people who have been on the pill for some time. I had been on it since I was 18 years old. I took the pill to regulate my period and just never stopped!
Before I moved to Kenya, I lived in New York City. I was married but I didn’t want to have kids because I was developing my advertising career. I thought I would have children later because I was young, only 22 years. However, after ten years, the marriage ended and I was a single woman again, at 32.
I decided to follow a childhood dream and move to Kenya to start a safari company, Virgin Bush Safaris. I have been in Kenya for eight years now; I met my husband two years ago. We met at a restaurant in Lavington Estate. We talked for about 15 minutes and I invited him to a wedding. I was actually going on safari with some clients and when I came back we went to the wedding together, and that was our first date.
I found out I was pregnant at while at a popular upmarket coffee house in Nairobi. I was with my best friend of 24 years, who is also my business partner, and I had bought one of those new high-tech pregnancy kits. It has a cap that indicates whether you are pregnant or not. It’s supposed to turn either blue or red but my results turned purple, so I didn’t know what to think! We bought another pregnancy kit, which confirmed I had conceived.
I took the result and put it in a balloon. I blew the balloon, tied it, and put it at the dinner table. Then I told my husband to pop it; he did and got very excited. When I told my mom, who moved out to Kenya with me, she was thrilled, especially because I am her only child. There are just the two of us in our family because my father died 11 years ago.
Mum was thrilled because she had completely given up on ever having grandchildren. She lives just near us and my husband always says she will be a good nurse for the baby. She says she is preparing for sleepless nights when the baby comes because she will be the one to take care of the baby while we sleep!
I kept an open mind about the birth; I did Lamaze classes with an American woman, Jennifer Carroll, who comes very highly recommended, to see how things would progress towards the end of the pregnancy.
In the USA, if you are 35 years or older, an invasive test such as amniocentesis, to determine one’s risk of having a baby with a chromosomal disorder such as down’s syndrome, will automatically be recommended since the risk goes up with age. However, there is now a new form of non-invasive- testing, called nuchal translucency scan pioneered by a Greek doctor in London. His clinic is on the cutting age of technology and has developed a test that is based on blood work and a scan that measures the thickness at the back of the fetus’ neck, the nasal bone measurement and the health of the heart valves. This information is then fed into their database, which calculates your maternal age based on these factors. Based on age alone, mine was 1 chance in 77 of having down’s syndrome. After the full test analysis, it was 1 in 1500. My recalculated maternal age was 15! Their equipment is so advanced you can watch the blood pump from the umbilical cord to the baby.
At that time we also found out that, I was carrying a girl, with 80% accuracy. We really wanted to know the sex so we could name our baby and start to bond with her at an early stage. We had to choose a name that will work for both of us. My husband is Finnish and his first language is Swedish so it had to work in Finnish, Swedish, Swahili and English-a name that sounds good and is easy to pronounce. That is why we started looking for a name early. We chose the name Zoe Rose because when we started dating my husband always gave me roses for special occasions. Her Samburu ‘world parents’ have called her Nashipai – meaning lovely one. She is the big thing in our lives now.
It’s interesting here in Kenya how elective C-section is quite a popular option; in the United States of America, they will never let you do that, primarily because if you choose to have a C-section, the insurance company will not agree to pay for it. I know in Kenya insurers will not pay for it either, but the difference is that it’s less expensive in Kenya than in the USA. In the USA, you have to stay in the hospital for almost six days after a C-section and that costs about $1000 per day. In the USA, the epidural is standard as a way of relieving labour pains. and it always works. but in Kenya. it is not practised much. There is a lot more uncertainty in labour pain relief in Kenya. Perhaps that is why some women end up wanting C-sections to avoid the pain.
In my case we tried for a natural delivery with the help of my incredible labour coaches, my husband and Jen, but I had to have a C-section in the end because the cord had caught up the baby. Therefore, I got to experience both!
I am very happy having even one child, but my husband wants two, so we are going to have two if I can and probably quite quickly because time is not on my side! Right now I feel we could have another child right away but then I think of all that it entails … I think we will wait and see!
END: PG 07 /30-31