African Woman and Child Feature Service

positive. None of my children know what their mother is dealing with at the moment, but the older ones can see that mum has undergone a major transformation. I need to sit them down; they need to hear the truth from me.

The news that I’m HIV positive is received with dread. They want to know whether am going to die and how soon. It breaks my heart. I reassure them that mum will be around for a long time and that all will be well. I don’t believe my optimism, but these are my children- my life, and for them I will feel whatever level of optimism that I can master.

But as soon as I begin to feel in control again, things get even more complicated when am admitted to the hospital because I’ve developed extreme anemia and I need a blood transfusion.

Even in this bleak moment of my life, the abortion option is still at the back of my mind. But with little money, I know the abortion will be backstreet and unsafe, I begin to worry for my life. Like hundreds or even thousands of desperate expectant women, I could die procuring an abortion. And I need to live, for my five children.

I begin to think about giving this baby up for adoption. I will visit the Child Welfare Society, it is the lesser evil. I fill the forms and go through such other necessary procedures, am doing something good. I console my aching heart. Having carried five other pregnancies to term, it breaks my heart to be in this situation. But the baby is not mine, at least not any longer.

The delivery date draws nearer, and my pregnancy is no longer a secret, been a widow, tongues are wagging. It’s an understatement to say that my relatives are shocked and indignant at my audacity to get myself pregnant. They know nothing of the ordeal that I’ve been through this past months. Rape isn’t an issue that people are eager to help cope with. It’s usually a secret, tacked away for the larger good. Why soil the family name? That’s what rape does, it makes family look bad. Thinking about this reality hurts, I feel alone and vulnerable. I face my condemnation bravely. Thinking about it sends me into spells of desperation.

The baby’s adopted parents are in the hospital and together we leave for their home. She weighs two kilograms.

A lot is going on in my mind. Where will I tell people I’ve taken the baby? My children especially?

Before am able to at least plan my next move, am back into the hospital and I a span of two and a half months, I undergo two surgeries. I now feel as if am hanging onto life by a thread. I want my children to remain together when am gone. That’s all am concerned about. As I go to bed, something tells me that I could die, that I may never wake again.

But I don’t die, I have another shot at life. The baby that I gave up? I want her back; I’m a mother of six children. I have to call her adopted family.

The first phone call was cautious and when my intentions were known, cold hostility soon descended on our relationship. The second call was outright abusive. Of course by now, emotions were running high all round and there was little love lost. I wondered how they were treating the baby now that the possibility of losing her was real.

We scheduled a do or die meeting and they confronted me with the Adoption papers.

Armed with my son and daughter we arrived for the highly tense, teary and emotional meeting .I said as little as possible and told them that the situation had changed and could I please have my baby back. I was not there to quarrel or insult their intelligence or to con them. I just wanted my baby back.

As can be imagined, it was a meeting that both parties would want to forget forever.

But I got my baby back, Princess, that is what we call her. She’s my Princess and I will look after her, my baby.

When we got home after the highly emotionally charged meeting, we all sat together and cried, I know my tears were a mother‘s joy at having all her children with her. I don’t know what my children were crying about, but I like to believe that it was the security it gave them, that in spite of all that we have been through, we were all home together, happy. And they didn’t have to worry that I could give any of them away.

I’m a mother of six, I will take care of my children. And whatever storms life brings we will soldier on.