Johannesburg - ‘I think we should bail.” It was with these words that I was informed by my doctor that I was to become a mother seven weeks early. I was not ready. Not physically and definitely not emotionally. I still had so much to do.
I had no baby things. I couldn't have the baby then. No.
But Dr Bilankulu insisted. My placenta had calcified and the baby would soon have no oxygen. I guess you can’t argue with that.
As the nurses prepared me for an emergency Caesarean section, my head was filled with superficial thoughts. I didn’t like the date – November 9. I still had a story to do that week. What about my baby shower? But we’re supposed to marry in three days? Crocodile tears fell as specialist paediatrician Dr Thwala held my hand and the gigantic needle entered my spine. None of these things mattered – it is happening now, Dr Thwala told me.
As I stared into the bright light above me, Adam was born at 10.45am. He weighed only 1.4kg. As the doctors removed him from my body, the nurses half sang in unison, “Happy birthday, Baby Ajam.” He was so small. I had never seen anything like it.
His loud cries could be heard metres away (the doctors were impressed – they didn’t expect wails like that from a premature baby born at 33 weeks) and he was as white as snow.
I didn’t get to hold him that day. One nurse came round and showed me my baby. I was overwhelmed. I told her that couldn’t be my baby. She replied that he was definitely mine.
He had to be rushed to the neonatal intensive care unit. I passed out. I woke up in a room, half-paralysed, confused. And for a brief moment I had forgotten that I had just given birth to a baby boy.
When I saw Adam again, he was hooked up to several machines. I cried – then I threw up. He looked so helpless, I couldn’t hold him. He developed many infections while he lay there. But I knew he was in good hands. The nurses at Life Roseacres Hospital in Primrose were amazing. They took care of my boy as if he were their own.
It was only four weeks – that’s how long it took my baby to reach 2kg – but it felt like four months. Three times a day, every day, I would pump my breast milk, take it to the hospital and feed my tiny son.
He got stronger every day. Every day, with hesitation, I’d ask Dr Thwala whether I could take Adam home. But every day I would go home without my child. I needed to be strong for Adam and that was the side of me I showed the world, including my husband, for weeks. But inside it was killing me.
On December 1, doctors announced that he was finally ready to go home.
That morning, I woke up feeling nervous and anxious, but mostly excited. Everything at home was ready; it had been ready for a long time.
When we walked through the door of our home, he whimpered. He was probably confused by his surroundings, the smells and the sounds. But it didn’t take long for him to become familiar.
Many people visited. Many couldn’t hide their shock at how small he was. But that’s how it was. This was my beautiful baby boy.
Adam turned two last week. It’s hard to tell now that he once weighed a mere 1.4kg and that he had had such a traumatising entry into this world. He has reached all his milestones. He is well and happy.
I will tell him this story one day. - Saturday Star
Expressing the precious gift of life
It’s because I’m donor 48. And because, as Olga Morodi from the SA Breast Milk Reserve tells me, my breast milk is like liquid gold to Joburg’s premature babies. That, and the thought of my thriving baby daughter, is what keeps me an “exclusive pumper”.
There’s also the promise I made to Morodi, the programme co-ordinator at the reserve, not to stop donating my life-saving breast milk to her human milk bank. “You have to keep pumping for at least another year,” she told me, when I asked how long breast-feeding mothers typically donate. “There are many babies who are relying on your milk now.”
Another year? I swallowed hard. I thought of lugging my industrial-sized double breast pump around, of all the sleep I had missed and events that were interrupted to sneak away to express milk. I reminded myself of the urgent, frantic need to pump every five hours at least, no matter where I was. And my husband’s increasingly irritated glares. “Okay, I promise,” I gulped.
I’ve spent the past eight months exclusively pumping breast milk for my baby – she stopped feeding from me at about three weeks – and feeding it to her from a bottle. She was not premature, but continues to thrive on mommy’s milk.
Every week I freeze and donate up to 10 bottles of my extra milk to the reserve. Just one bottle nourishes several of these micro-prems at once; most are HIV-positive and as big as a cellphone pouch. They are so small they only need to drink 1ml every three hours.
Pumping four times a day is draining. It’s also expensive – my hired pump costs R600 a month – but I’m determined to soldier on. My pump has gone everywhere with me – weddings, children’s parties, family braais, and now that I’m back at work, to stories in emergencies.
It’s all worth it. Even though the reserve has 65 donors in Joburg and Pretoria, only about 10 are active, including me. Ten. To feed thousands of babies.
This is nowhere near enough. So Morodi traverses Gauteng every day, imploring mothers in hospitals to express and donate their extra milk; even better, to become regular donors whose milk will sustain these tiny babies in state hospitals.
“I call it liquid gold because you look at a 450-grammer, that baby ends up weighing above 1.8kg and it’s because of breast milk. That’s the wonder of it,” said Morodi.
So, even when I feel like I’m missing out on life, I think of my beautiful, chubby daughter. And I remember those premature infants who depend on my milk for their survival. Besides, there’s that promise to Morodi I have to keep. - Sheree Bega, Saturday Star
Two weeks on donated breast milk can save a life
It’s just enough milk to save a life. That’s how Stasha Jordan describes the two weeks that premature babies across South Africa are nourished on donated breast milk – and survive.
If Jordan, the executive director and founding member of the SA Breastmilk Reserve, could do so, she would ensure these newborns in neonatal intensive care units at government hospitals were fed breastmilk for longer. But there are only 1 000 donors supplying the country’s 44 milk banks.
“Our target population is the under 1.8kg baby that is born in the public sector and HIV-exposed,” says Jordan.
“Two weeks is enough to save a life. We use the donated breast milk as medicine to reduce infection, to colonise the gut and promote healthy digestion. As soon as you feed these babies artificially, we find there is more than a 60 percent chance of them dying.”
The reserve feeds about 1 500 premature babies a year.
The biggest problem, she says, is that only 8 percent of mothers in South Africa breastfeed exclusively. “We are telling women… breastfeeding is the first human right.” - Sheree Bega, Saturday Star