DOGS Corner

Are women crazy?This question  is worth asking. 

It may seem so out of place to even think they are but I have the sneaky feeling that the average woman spends a great deal of her day just being insane.

 Her world wouldn’t make sense otherwise. Any man who has accompanied his wife to a labour ward will understand why.

While dating my wife, I clearly told her I wasn’t really gung-ho about having kids. If they came, fine. If they didn’t, not a deal breaker. And I meant it. 

Trying for kids soon after our wedding wasn’t a priority for me. I couldn’t really be bothered. But no woman was going to have that and certainly not when her mom (not mine o, hers!) was beginning to sniff around asking if she was pregnant already. 

I held off that pressure from my wife for a year before acceding. She was already beginning to wonder if I was okay downstairs.

I sat her down, we went through her cycle together and we planned and timed accordingly. The first pregnancy was a swim. No mood swings, nausea, fatigue or exhaustion, no nose from hell, no added weight, nothing. It was such a stress-free pregnancy that we wondered what the fuss was all about.

 Our neighbor, a medical doctor, was of great help and among other things, suggested we get an epidural which was around 130k then or so. I was all for it because I wanted the childbirth to be as smooth as possible. My wife however, had other ideas. In her words, “I want to give birth like a Hebrew woman.” I go stop her before? No be me dey push na.

A week to our (yes o, na our) EDD we were in the hospital. Most of the days were spent gisting and doing exercises that the doctor recommended. Until 2 days after our EDD. 

I think my wife tried being strong suppressing the pain but as the hours wore on, the pain became more intense. She got wheeled to the delivery room and my goodness, I may not really know how people sound in hell, but I think I got a rough idea that day.

 The screams, the wailing, the utter guttural sounds of desperate misery I heard from the different women there, my spirit almost left my body. I squeezed my wife’s hand one more time as the doors to the delivery room closed behind her. Before long, her own voice joined that of the others. She was wailing her lungs out.

Little over 25 minutes later, I heard a male voice inside the delivery room screaming at the women to shut up. I wondered what the hell a man was doing in there until my neighbor explained what an OB/GYN is or does and that the man inside the delivery room is an OB/GYN. 

I looked at my neighbor in shock. I think doctors are a generally weird bunch but that there are doctors who actually make a living by sticking hands in V-Jay from morning till night and most of them are male was very mind bending for me. The way I glared at the OB/GYN when he came out of the room, if looks could kill, I would have scorched that man with the heat of my unpleasant gaze.

An attendant came out with a message from my wife. She wanted the epidural after all. Madam was barely 2cm. I paid and it was administered. Less than 7 hours later, I held my son in my arms. I didn’t see my wife for a while more. The delivery had torn her up pretty bad and she was being sutured up.

 We were discharged the next day. A pretty uneventful pregnancy all things considered but I told myself I wasn’t going to ever visit a delivery room again. One child is enough. Madam had other ideas however. 

Person wey I dey pity.

My wife belongs to the school of thought of women who believe in giving birth to kids in rapid succession and then resting. We’ve been to that ward 2 more times. Each of the two pregnancies came with their challenges. It was exhausting. Certainly to me it was.

 I actually got a very close understanding of what pregnancy can do to a woman’s body. Any woman that survives pregnancy is simply a miracle in the flesh. We battled preeclampsia, gestational diabetes and much more.

Yes, I knew it was my child she was carrying and I could see how the pregnancy was practically remolding her into something else, how the second trimester gets to be so tough on her and all the one thousand and one things she went through just to birth our kids and I asked myself why? In a country with the highest maternal mortality in the world, why will any woman risk her life again and again to give birth to kids? And not only that, after a long nine month journey, the child then gets to bear someone else’s name? Only one thing explains it; they must be crazy. You can’t pay me to carry a pregnancy even if I biologically could. I too like myself. Or maybe I don’t have the required level of craziness.

This December will be my ‘Last Pampers’ party and I’m going to really celebrate it. I don even order for the cake sef. Na chicken wey we go use do peppersoup for the party I dey look for so since na Christmas sellers dey stock for. 7 years in marriage, bought pampers back-to-back for 6 of them. I am sooo done. The wife is beginning to make her familiar noise of wanting to add just one more but that’s her business. I no follow her dey craze. I no just hang my boot, I fling am. Make I catch myself.

I no wan carry belle again.