IBIKUNLE OLAITAN – 15 years
More than anything, she remembers the excruciating labour. The peeling blue paint of the hospital’s walls. She recalls the deadness of the rotary fan above that ignored the heat of the room. Heat and terror gathered around her. She thought to herself; Is this how I die? “I remember pushing hard and losing all my strength and feeling faint and weak and when I couldn’t push anymore the doctors had to conduct a caesarean section to bring the baby out.” She recalls the labour. “For about two days, I couldn’t have my bath nor eat.” Ibikunle Olaitan is a 15-year-old girl, who got pregnant in February 2022 and endured a traumatic birthing experience. She was in secondary school, SS2 to be precise.
There were hefty hospital bills to contend with. “Before I gave birth, my packed cell volume (PCV) was only 8%, so three pints of blood were transfused into my body, which cost 90,000 Naira.” She says. “I also had a case of severe malaria after the birth. It was so hard for my family as they couldn’t afford to balance up the hospital bill”. She found herself in this position because she fell in love with and started engaging in premature sexual intercourse.
With a child at her age, her dreams of being a fashion designer drifted further and further away from her, like a ship without a sail. Things looked up when one day she took her baby for immunisation at a local health center where the provider informed her about the 9ja Girls program. “I was intrigued.” She admits. The provider walked her through the Life Map session and it made her aware that another unintended pregnancy served as a barrier to achieving her goals.
Shortly after the session on Sexual Reproductive Health, she took a method (Sayana Press). “I plan to go back to school when my child is a year old. It is important to adopt a contraceptive method to achieve my goals because it would prevent me from getting pregnant again, and I can now focus on my studies.” She says. “My mother has promised to take care of my baby so that she can focus on her studies.” Although Ibikunle regrets her mistake, she is grateful to God for her child, and this has also given her a newfound respect for her mother and women like her after going through the pain of child delivery.