The first of October 2013 was a very happy day for my family!!! God blessed us with a beautiful baby girl who we called Anne-Margaret Barbara Agasha. Family and friends celebrated with us. Crystal and Marky were excited at the new addition to the family. We were soon discharged from hospital and went home to add onto our family memories.
I stayed home with Ann-Ma while Daddy, Crystal & Mark went to work and school respectively each day. They always looked forward to coming home to see the baby. Crystal loved carrying her, something I initially was not thrilled about however, I eventually allowed her to carry her and I must say that was always the highlight of her day. Our sleep schedule changed but we accepted it knowing that this was our last baby and therefore it was important to enjoy each moment rather than complain about it. Daddy would walk Ann-Ma around between 4:00am and 5:00am each day before preparing to go to work.
Our dreams for a bigger family were however shattered on the 17th of November 2013 when we suddenly lost Ann-Ma. Our beautiful girl breathed her last in my hands as we struggled to take her to hospital after she developed seizures shortly after waking up . Reaching the hospital, she was confirmed dead!! We were very devastated particularly because there was no phyiscal sign of illness. The only time we thought she was unwell was the night of Thursday 14th November 2013 when she developed seizures and we were able to get to the clinic where she was examined and we were assured that she was well.
We resolved to do a post mortem to understand the cause of her death. Preliminary results from the post mortem indicated that she had a big hole in her heart, one of her valves was not well developed and the artery responsible for pumping blood to her body was constricted! We felt let down by our health system particularly because we were told that this was a treatable condition.
This condition could have been detected during pregnancy but also at the time of her birth, at her six weeks' immunisation check or on Thursday when we took her in to see the doctor but it was never detected!!! We believe that God took her for a reason and we choose to look to him for strength as we go through this very trying time.
We will use our experience to encourage all pregnant women out there to be more vigilant and demand for services that will ensure that both mother and child are healthy or at least get the required medical attention before they are released from hospital.
