Adeu, Bisola Adio
There is this dark tunnel women must go through, if they must fulfill and multiply. It is called the ‘labour room’. It’s a frightening room that decides the fate of any woman that calls for its attention.
Some come out of it with what they call ‘bundle of joy’; some others leave the room empty handed but hopeful that they will visit again, while some unfortunate ones don’t make it: they are carried out in a stretcher, cold, stiff and very dead.
What is this mystery behind the labour room that makes it hand over different gifts to different individuals? Answers roll that it can be the health condition of the expectant mother, maybe luck or even destiny, lack of appropriate equipment and necessary skills by the hospital etc.
“When I had my only child it was frightening; it was at a popular hospital in Ebute-Metta in 1975; I nearly didn’t come out alive,” Mrs Mabel Aniagwu said when this conversation came up.
“They said it was bridge something, that the baby was lying across my womb; that time doctors were not as experienced as they are now, and there were not much equipment in the hospitals.
“I was in labour for many hours and the pain nearly killed me; at a stage, sleep tried to overshadow me in the middle of that intense pain, but the nurses slapped me many times and splashed water on my face but the baby still didn’t come. It was a traditional birth attendant they brought from Orokun Road that washed my stomach with a black soap before I could deliver. I headed for family planning after that,” she said.
All the reasons we hear could not take away the shock that touched everyone when news of death of Abisola Adio, a young mother and accounting staff of The Daily Times of Nigeria who stepped into the labour for her first baby, Bisola did come out of the labour room with her baby, but started bleeding some hours later, a situation that led to her death.
Medical Knowledge helps us understand it is called postpartum hemorrhage which is blood loss of more than 500ml following vaginal delivery or more than 100ml following caesarean delivery caused by soft uterine, expanded bladder, tearing of the cervix, uterus or vagina, pre-existing or acquired coagulopathy and retained placenta.
The answer to what could have happened to her does not answer what becomes of her child who is just some days old without the comfort of its mother, her love, and her breast milk.
Who would look after the child and who will the child look up to, who will be the person that will cry with the child, laugh with the child, listen to the child, advise the child, teach the child and help the child as the mother would?
When May Eileen Ezekiel (MEE) bled to death at a high brow hospital in Ikeja, Lagos, Pastor of Household of God, Chris Okotie said in his prayer, “God, if it is the fault of the doctors, forgive them…”
May be God did, if it was, indeed, a human error; but MEE was no more, never will be on planet earth again, and so is our Bisola.
A Scripture comes to mind that says, “All flesh is grass; as the lilies of the field and as the grass of the ground, so all life is grass; surely, the people is grass”.
O God, grant her eternal rest, and bless her gentle, innocent soul.
Amen.
