One egg, one shot at motherhood Dr Jephat Moyo

Thandeka Moyo-Ndlovu
Medical experts say at birth, a woman has one million eggs and by puberty, only about 300 000 remain. Of these, only 300 to 400 will be ovulated during a woman’s reproductive lifetime.

Nomusa*, who got married in 1998, was left with only one egg in December last year. One last chance at becoming a mother.

This is because fertility drops as a woman ages due to decreasing number and quality of the remaining eggs.

In her 20s, Nomusa (48) thought she would spend her first years of marriage bonding with her husband, touring Zimbabwe and furthering her studies.

Before she could celebrate her one-month anniversary, in-laws had started a song well known to many women: “When are we becoming aunties, grannies, uncles?”

At first the reminders were gentle as they came in form of anecdotes but soon, she realised her marriage was also going to be a source of misery and trauma due to her failure to immediately give her new family a child.

Nomusa was not stingy with unprotected sex which normally yields “results” but all her efforts and that of her husband did not give them the much-wanted bundle of joy.

The African in her opted for traditional herbs known to unlock her womb but after five years, Nomusa realised she could be part of the 10 percent couples in Zimbabwe who struggle with infertility – failure to achieve conception after 12 months of regular and unprotected sexual intercourse. Twenty-two years later, when she had given up hope on the brink of menopause — with her last active egg — Nomusa has finally had a “miracle baby.”

All thanks to the Bulawayo Assisted Reproductive Technology Centre. “At one point my in-laws claimed that I could have aborted before marriage which was the reason why I failed to give them a child. I suffered mercilessly in the hands of family, in-laws and even the community as they reduced me to nothing since I was failing to do what a woman was created to do according to them,” she says, wiping off tears triggered by the painful memory.

“After trying everything, I eventually opted for the In Vitro Fertilisation at Dr Jephat Moyo’s fertility clinic in town. The process was not once off and when I had given up after parting with many US dollars, my last egg gave me this beautiful baby boy whom I will forever cherish.”

The procedure costs at least US$3 500 in two available fertility clinics in Zimbabwe which include Dr Moyo’s Bulawayo Assisted Reproductive Technology Centre where Nomusa did In Vitro Fertilisation (IVF), a process of fertilisation by manually combining an egg and sperm in a laboratory dish. She says due to her age, Dr Moyo told her she had only one remaining active egg.

This represented her last shot at having a child. “I had given up because I thought well, I have spent more than 20 years in marriage chasing what could not be found. I literally traded two decades of my happiness trying to please people and forgot I still had a life to live.”

Nomusa says although she has a baby, it will take her another decade to heal from the careless utterances that she was subjected to in her journey to motherhood.

Dr Moyo says marriages suffer when there is childlessness leading to psychological effects, domestic violence and even divorce. His clinic opened in 2018 and brought joy to scores of couples who had struggled to access the services in South Africa where it is quite expensive. He says the plight of the affected couples motivated him to start the clinic which helps about 75 couples every year.

“Due to the high cost of the drugs lots of couples who need the service cannot afford it. Last year an organisation by the name of Kirinakiri Foundation had offered to help but later on the help did not come and we need funding as in other countries the treatment is funded by the Government,” says Dr Moyo.

“It is gratifying to see elderly couples fulfil their dreams of having children and we have a number of couples who are around 50-years old.”

He says in IVF, the couple first goes for tests which includes hormones, scans, HIV and sperm tests on the man.

The second stage involves stimulating the woman with drugs for up to two weeks before she goes to theatre to remove the eggs from her body. The eggs are fertilised in the lab using the male partner’s sperm and afterwards the fertilised eggs are incubated in the lab for between three and five days. At the end of that period the eggs are placed in the woman’s womb and if it is successful, she falls pregnant.

“The other interesting aspect is the effect of Covid-19 as it has affected the movement of drugs and consumables. So, all the fertility clinics in the world had to close down in the last 3 to 4 months and it is only now when the lockdown has been eased that we have seen the opening of the clinics,” he adds.

Dr Moyo says sometimes, despite technology, he has had to eventually advice some of his clients to adopt after failing to help them. For a Bulawayo-based Seventh Day Adventist pastor Sikhumbuzo Dube, who has been married for 10 years without a child, procreation is not the glue that should bind couples together, it is love that should cement them. He says there is more to life than having children and his goal is to dispel the myth that to have a solid home, children must be born. “Being in an African society, having children is a must. When a child is not born, friends, or relatives, or workmates may begin to talk ill,” he said.

“As a childless man, I have received a few unkind comments in this stigma littered pathway. One was, ‘Your bullets are not strong enough’ and the one that hit me hard was said in front of many people that revered me as their pastor. The person said, ‘You are playing while others are working hard making kids.’ That really tore my heart apart!”

Pastor Dube says his wife Soneni, has had her share of demeaning words. “My source of strength has been to remind myself that my name is not others. Whatever others are doing or having, doesn’t necessarily have to be done or gotten by me. I have also found writing to be therapeutic. I’ve turned pain into poetry,” says Ps Dube who also blogs about childlessness.

Pastor Dube has founded a ministry called Shunem Care which he says is a fruit born from his pain as a childless man. “Having seen my wife go through a series of surgeries in a bid to have our own baby, wiping her tears as she battled with the anguish that comes with miscarriage, being stigmatised, bad mouthing and the pressure of losing the parental role moved me to pick the wound in my marriage to be the source of providing the needed care to those of my childless tribe.” He also took his pain to another level and researched on involuntary childlessness for his Master’s thesis.

“My ministry is a group of men and women from different faiths who share their experiences of being childless. We get our inspiration from that happened in Shunem – a small town where a childless couple who cared for Elisha lived (2 Kings 4:8-37). Though we are in pain, we are hopeful that what the couple in Shunem got we will also get. While we are childless, we are not fruitless, we are complete human beings. We believe that childlessness is not incapacitation. Our mantra is caring for each other,” he says. Pastor Dube also provides psycho-spiritual support to bereaved mothers in Mpilo Central Hospital where he serves as a volunteer healthcare chaplain. — @thamamoe.

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