Written by: Admin_SheEvo
Postnatal care seems to go hand in hand with the familiar scent of Dettol, the warmth of pap, and the soft puff of dusting powder. But once a child is born, not every mother steps into celebration; some step into waiting rooms, where the air is heavy with exhaustion, debt, and quiet sacrifices. I saw a woman. She had just put to bed, I could tell. Her wrapper was a mess, tied halfway across her breasts like it had given up mid-twist. The wrapper was crooked too—one end stopped at her knees while the other trailed the floor behind her. She walked with a limp, one leg dragging slightly behind the other like the pain hadn’t quite left her hips. Her face was stern. Flasks in one hand, a baby bag in the other. But there was no baby in sight. Just her, moving to and fro. Eventually, she sat across from me, untied her wrapper, and let her breasts hang loose, unbothered by who might be watching. From her bag, she brought out a small feeding bottle attached to a manual breast pump.
She clamped the device down hard onto her nipple. If she felt any pain or decided not to show it, I couldn’t even tell. She pressed and squeezed and pumped—each new clamp with a desperation stronger than the last. I saw it in how she constantly shifted on her seat, in how she took different positions—one time hunched over—and in how she flicked a trespassing braid off her chest. All I could do was will a spill of milk to gush into the bottle. Later, I prayed for just a trickle… just something.
It was hard not to look eager because I was unconsciously shifting towards the edge of my seat. I knew my brows were furrowed too. But nothing.
So I quickly ran the physiology of lactation in my head… I know all that is needed for the milk let-down reflex is touch reception; then afferents are passed to the higher centres, and subsequently, there’s a contraction of myoepithelial cells of the mammary alveoli, and milk flows in unforced rhythms.
But here, there’s more than touch reception—there’s pressure, cruel pressure, that I winced with each clamping. Still nothing. She then used both hands to press and knead the full mass of the breast like it owed her something. Still no milk, not even a drop. She switched to the other breast, but it was the same thing. I watched her body go from effort to resignation in minutes. Her face remained unreadable, but her hands told the story.
She tied her wrapper, this time properly, tightly above her breasts. Then she poured herself a cup of hot tea from her flask. I expected her to sip on it since I could see the steam rise furiously from the cup—but she didn’t. She gulped it all in one go. I don’t know what hit me more,
whether it was her silence or her desperation.
There was another woman. I first saw her while she was still pregnant, pacing up and down, hands pressed into the small of her back like she was trying to hold herself together. The next day, her stomach had deflated. I knew she had delivered.
I found her again, flanked by women in mismatched ìró and bùbá; and I caught my first glimpse of her baby—a girl, pink, wriggly cutie, perfect.
A little girl. So beautiful that she didn’t fit into the scenery the shrouding relatives painted. The baby was just in a class of her own, oblivious to the worry set deep in her mother’s eyes, to the endless stream of people passing by, to the mismatching of ìró and bùbá that all the women
donned like aso ebi, totally oblivious to the smell that is particular to the front of the maternity ward.
For the next two days, I saw the mother walk in and out of the maternity ward, baby in tow. But on the fourth day, something had changed. She was sitting on the bare floor near the neonatal unit, chatting with other women, her child at her breast. The baby’s pink had dulled. She still looked heavenly, but she was beginning to settle into the reality of her surroundings. Days passed. Then weeks. I watched them become permanent fixtures of the waiting room. It hit me then: hospital bills hadn’t been paid. She couldn’t remain in the ward anymore. Owó bed—bed fee—was piling.
She now slept on flattened biscuit cartons while the baby slept in a mosquito net cot. That initial worry on her face had hardened into despair. I watched her loneliness. I saw it in the way she walked—her head hung low, her shoulders hunched, footsteps slow, as though trying not to be noticed. I saw it in the three changes of clothes she rotated. In the way she asked a fellow waiting roomer for a sachet of water like it took everything in her to form the request. Also, I didn’t see any visitors around her again since the day after her delivery.
After three weeks, I got to see the baby’s face again. I saw her legs first, covered in reddish streaks and rashes. I was alarmed. Then, her face. She no longer looked like a newborn. Her eyes had already been lined with kohl, her stare jarring. How quickly she blended into the background weighed on my mind. I walked by faster that day—I needed to.
I wondered about the father. Then I got angry. At the situation. At the man. I don’t even know the full story, but in my head, I needed to pin the blame on someone. So I imagined him as a useless man, wasting his meagre earnings on burukutu. But when that made my chest feel too
tight, I changed the script. Maybe he was out there, struggling, trying to raise money. I let myself believe that too. But nothing worked really, so I muttered, “God abeg.”
One day, after five weeks, their corner was empty—they were gone. I missed the celebration and prayers I knew the other waiting roomers must have made at the news of their discharge, but I was relieved nonetheless.
There was another mother. She stood out—not because of herself, but because of her child. For four days, the waiting room had a new kind of brightness, and it was her child. The child was biracial—half Nigerian, half Asian. Her features were unmistakable: the curly long hair, the
small pink lips, the squinty eyes, and the flattened face. She couldn’t have been more than two years old, but she carried herself like someone who knew how much she stood out. She wore joy like it was her birthright, and she didn’t mind showing off her incomplete dentition at every given chance. She bounced around the room like it was a stage she was born for. Everyone gushed looking at her, and she returned the favour by giving high-fives and returning every smile with bigger ones—as if she knew that the waiting room needed lots of comic relief.
But her mother though… she looked like someone trying too hard and barely holding on. She was young—definitely in her twenties. She was bleached fair in complexion—you could tell because her knuckles, knees, and elbows had remained loyal to the essence of melanin. Yet, you
could clearly see that she was a beautiful woman. Her upper arm was tattooed with roses and some words that were already fading out.
The tattoo, though it had lost its shine, had become a different kind of artwork… one caught up in the meshwork of stretch marks that made their way out from her armpit. The sinewy stretch marks crawled across the ink. The bloom looked collapsed, and a rose stalk appeared to have been broken by the trespassing stretch marks.
Though rose tattoos are quite common, I wanted to hear the story behind this particular one. Maybe it’s partly because the tattoo looked like something entirely different or because this woman looked drawn and unkempt—a sharp contrast to her daughter.
Then it dawned on me—she’s trying so hard to keep her biracial kid on the pedestal. It showed in the way the girl was always dressed like she was ready to strut the runway. The fancy blouses, bouncy skirts, her curls styled differently each time, how each day came with different sneakers and crocs. The girl stood out. She didn’t fit the narrative of the room. She stood out too much. Just like a diamond in the rough… yet someone’s treasure.
The mother was making a sacrifice. She didn’t care how she looked. All her effort, all her money, all her attention went into that little girl. She wanted the world to see beauty where it hurt the most.
I never figured out why they were waiting roomers. I never knew their story. But for those four days, I watched a mother pour everything she had into making sure her child looked untouched by the weight of their reality. Maybe that’s what they mean when they talk about the joys of motherhood. But here, in the waiting room, those joys don’t always come wrapped in lullabies or pastel-coloured baby blankets. Sometimes, they look like a woman begging her breast to produce milk, while imploring a device determined to mock her. Sometimes, they look like biscuit
cartons and mosquito nets. And sometimes, they look like broken roses on bleached skin while a daughter spins in sparkly shoes.
Different mothers. Different stories.
Same waiting room. Same ache.
And still, somehow… same love.
By: Adeoluwa Deborah
