Temporarily staying at their place, I left my daughter not
feeling on top form around 11:00 a.m. for work. She was 35 weeks pregnant and
the pain in her legs and lower back refused to go away.
In fact, only a couple weeks or less prior, I had noticed
that her neck had darkened, looking a sickly black-blue. It reminded me of when
I was pregnant with my first child 28 years ago and a similar colouring overtook my neck. I mentioned the darkening of her neck and how similar to
mine it looked.
I did not mention my anxiety.
Less than three months before, I was in Jamaica with
every intention of staying there. My daughter and my relationship was again on rocky
ground – ever since November 2013 when I refused to allow my mother
to suck me back into her well of darkness and devour me with her self-centred,
money-grabbing ways.
Source always beckons or rouse me out of my sleep around 3:30
in the morning. As I turned in the queen-sized bed in my mentor’s guest room in
Kingston, Jamaica, an image flashed across my mind.
It was my daughter and she was pregnant.
It was my daughter and she was pregnant.
Not able to go back to sleep, I messaged a mutual friend to
ask whether she knew if Abi was pregnant. Her almost immediate response to me
was, “How did you know?” After telling her that it came to me in the early
morning, she told me that she had heard rumours of the pregnancy.
A couple or so weeks later my daughter sent me an image via
Facebook messenger. It was an ultrasound picture of my granddaughter. In that moment, I knew I would be returning to
Canada. There was no question. It was just a matter of when and for how long
but the early news from Source was my cue to come back to Edmonton.
On June 30, 2014 as I said goodbye and told my daughter to
call me if she felt worse, Source again whispered to me. I was not sure what was being said but felt a need to be ready for move quickly. So when my daughter called at 4:00 p.m. to say that she still
was not feeling good even after doing what I told her at lunchtime, I knew we
had to get to the hospital.
The child’s father was out of town on business and, as I did
not want her to drive to the hospital where I would meet her, I left work early
and picked her up. As we sat in the triage area, a knowing came over me. Her
neck had darkened more and the pain in her legs and back was now as debilitating
as it was back in 2003 when she was diagnosed with sickle cell anemia.
Hours later, a young doctor came in and checked the chart,
the baby’s heart rate and in ten minutes was about to discharge my daughter
with a prescription for painkillers.
My daughter has big eyes – and they are as communicative as
mine. She turned them on me and I could see the fear and question, “What do you
think, Mommy?” She did not have to ask twice. I was piercing into that intern
with my own gaze, slashing him with caustic words, dismissing his diagnosis as
the same misdiagnosis that was done over a decade ago. “That is unacceptable,”
I said.
After I detailed:
- my daughter’s journey with sickle cell
- my own journey as the carrier of the trait and one whose iron level has been officially diagnosed as abnormal
- the similarities in her physical presentation as mine when I lost my first child, and
- the fact that the well-known Edmonton-based obstetrician had not properly managed my daughter’s pre-natal care (in my expert opinion) – no folic acid, no iron supplements, no monitoring of her sickle cells, no amniocentesis and absolutely no testing to see whether the baby was thriving in the tummy of a woman whose pre-existing condition made her extremely high risk
the poor
intern ran out and called a top level obstetrician-surgeon. That was around 11:00 p.m., five hours or more since we were
at the hospital. By midnight, the decision was made to remove the baby by
C-section.
Mahalia Fausu was born at 1:39 a.m. on July 1, 2014 – Canada Day
– weighing 4lbs 1 ounce.
Her parents were worried but I was not overly. There was a
team of prayer warriors ministering to her – my Sistahs of DOS, her grandfather
and his family in Jamaica, my 2,000+ followers on Twitter and friends of my
daughter all over Edmonton and the world.
Through this journey, I realised why my first child died. My
mother had also lost a child – who knows whether the medical issues were
exactly the same. Mahalia broke a cycle of child-death in our family. 
It is #WorldPrematurity Day and it holds special meaning for us. I
am sure my daughter will proudly and gratefully attend the Royal Alexander and
the Grey Nun’s Hospitals each year, as she did today, to pay respect to the teams that worked
tirelessly to prevent the grief and devastation that would have overtaken her
had things gone differently on June 30.
Do enjoy the rest
of the evening.
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