I’m all set to have another baby, and nothing anyone says will discourage me

By Asunta Wagura

AFTER PUBLISHING MY decision to conceive and, God willing, get a baby girl, I was inundated with responses ranging from the good, to the bad, to the downright ugly.

I’d like to say right from the start that I appreciate and respect other people’s opinions, but I’ve set my mind on this, and I’m going to do it. Watch this space.

I’m thankful that God has blessed me with good health, despite my HIV-positive status. I’m grateful for each extra day He gives me. And I’m determined to give Joshua and Peter a younger sister or brother.

Though age has caught up with me, that little matter won’t deter me. I see my childhood dream of being a mother of three — or more — being fulfilled. Kenya’s fertility rate is 4.9 children for women in the reproductive age, which tells me that I’m not going overboard.

No college or graduate school class taught me, but God’s grace and tough life lessons gave me a wake-up call. As Martin Luther King Jr once said, the time is always ripe to do what is right. I believe that, at 45, the time is ripe for me to add another child to my family.

I strongly believe that there is no limit to this. If I were to place limits on what I can achieve, I would automatically set limits to what I can succeed in doing. I have the resilience, patience, endurance, and tolerance to have another baby.

Sometimes, living with HIV can grind one down, but those are the moments I try to get away from it by going down on my knees and praying, or joining others who are in the same boat for encouragement.

I understand that deciding to have a baby when one is HIV-positive is a very delicate matter, but nothing is difficult to accomplish if one is determined. Plus, medical research has demystified some of the myths about conception and serostatus.

This will be the second time for me, so I’m better prepared (In Peter’s case, I was thrown in at the deep end and had to swim or sink). Yearning for a baby when one is HIV-positive is like being on perpetual red alert. Unlike what some folks insinuated, I don’t have a big ego, no. And I thank God that my pregnancy with Joshua was uneventful.

I remember one thing I missed as a child was motherly attention. To be specific, it was motherly love. That’s it. Love. Since I was the first-born, my mother would cuddle my siblings, but not me. She’d tell me that I wasn’t a baby.

I would watch her soothe my younger brothers when they cried as a result of minor mishaps which I thought boys could handle. When it came to me, I was no longer a Mama’s baby.

As a child, I shied away from self-indulgent celebrations of a normal child because I was like a mother. I had chores to do and was brought up to view with horror anything that could be regarded as “showing off”.

I promised God that when I got kids of my own, I would love them all equally. It was when I was in college that the devil came and threw another spanner in the works.

After I accepted my HIV status, I swore that HIV would not take away my dream of having a full life. And with antiretroviral drugs, God has added me the bonus of a family.

I believe that God has given me good judgment. I’ve refused to let my sunny days be clouded by my anxieties. Every moment I live is a glorious gift from God. By deciding to have another baby, I have a strong belief in my life, and a strong belief that life will repay my belief.

I have this burning passion to hold another baby at the ripe young age of 45. Every fibre in my system is tingling with this richness of bringing forth another life into the world. I’m bursting at the seams with enthusiasm. If I don’t do it now, I’ll run out of time.

As American writer and poet Carl Sandburg wrote, time is the coin of one’s life. It is the only coin I have and only I can determine how I will spend it. I don’t want to lose this coin.

Source: Daily Nation