I was on a mission to Kakamega to gauge how readers were receiving Pregnant magazine.
The bus conductor sat next to me and seeing the copy of Pregnant I was holding, he borrowed it. Shortly after browsing through, he said it was a very good magazine.
He went round collecting fare and came back to where I was seated. “Who writes this magazine?” he asked, suggesting he had been thinking hard about its content.
“There is one thing I would like you guys to do for me – write on how one can choose the sex of the baby.
“My wife gave birth to two girls and am not pleased at all. I wanted to name both my parents, but now I have named only my mum. How could she do this to me?”
He went on: “You see we had planned to have only two kids, but now that we have two girls, we still have to give birth again”.
I tried to discuss the issue with him, telling him it was him, not his wife, who determined whether it would be a boy or a girl. He did not understand this.
I promised him that Pregnant would explain this to him in the next issue. While some couples would pay money to make a boy, Mr and Mrs Stanley Okati have been yearning for a girl.
“Twice we reserved the name of a girl, Shanell, and both time we surprised ourselves! Now I am the proud father of two boys,” says Stanley.
His wife confirms the prayer for a girl. “My husband would really love to have a baby girl. I too would have wanted to have a girl and really prayed for one but I also told God whichever sex he deems fit for us would be okay as long as it’s a healthy baby.
“I was honestly expecting and looking forward to a baby girl because my second pregnancy was very different from the first one.
“People told me if the pregnancy felt very different from the previous one, the sex of the baby is also different. The pregnancy was so difficult and I thought to myself this must be a girl.”
When she gave birth in July 2006, Christine got a baby boy. “A very handsome boy,” she asserts.
Though Stanley was surprised to father another baby boy, he had on both occasions taken no measures to increase the chances of conceiving a girl.
“We got our first child six years ago,” he reveals. “The first pregnancy happened while my wife and I were still arguing about it “safe days”.
She insisted that safe days do work, while I disagreed and cautioned her to get on to proper contraceptives.
It was quite interesting because I was worried about getting her pregnant while she challenged me to stick by her feminine instinct. I complied.”
“A couple of months later, I remember her suddenly getting very uncooperative and not wanting to see me or come close to me.
“It became so bad that we quarrelled almost on daily basis and when she could not take it anymore, she took off to a secret destination.”
“When she finally re-surfaced after three months,” says Stanley, “I was surprised to see her pregnant. I actually asked her whose baby it was!
Today I can confess that pregnancy comes with a handful challenges especially to the man, whose main role is moral support.
A lot of understanding is necessary on his part and tolerance is a must, especially on the questions of the baby’s sex.
Once a man understands he is the sole determinant of the a baby’s sex , he will not blame the wife for this or the other sex.’
“When my wife delivered our second baby in July, we did not have a name for the boy. We were still holding on to baby girl’s name.
“So I asked my wife that we name him Blessing, she agreed. We then decided to give it the Swahili interpretation Baraka. Now he is Deelan Baraka Oduor.”
Courtesy of Pregnant Magazine pregnant@integral-media.co.ke visit http://www.mums-helper.com
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