It was Thursday, 12.30 in the afternoon. She
had been driving around the university campus in her sleek, grey new BMW 5
series, looking a suitable place to park. It had to be a quiet place, away from
the usual pedestrian traffic that characterized a campus as populated as this
one. Quiet and shady. She needed urgently to express her milk.
So far she had tried three locations, one near
the Catholic church (shady and quiet but the occasional curious worshiper
passing too close), the university gardens (gardeners pruning hedge next to her) and near the VC’s house (security
guard looking suspiciously at parked car).
‘How did I get to this situation?’ she
reflected.
The past three years have been the best in my
life. I worked hard and success followed me. A Director before I became thirty,
acknowledged and respected by my peers and my elders in the field of accounting
and now on the fastrack to a PhD. Better still, married to the most adorable
man on earth, John Paul. JP, as he is known to his closest friends, owns a
large and successful consulting firm and is kind, loving and generous, ergo new
sleek car. Life is good.
‘Except for this blasted urge to express my
milk before my next class,’ she thought to herself in annoyance.
Pregnancy came within months of marriage, much
to the pleasure of both mother and MIL[2].
But pregnancy coincided with admission into PhD program. Why should she choose
when she can have it all? She took a long leave of absence from work and
decided to have both the baby and the PhD. After all, women have been juggling
career and domestic life since the 1950s. Look at Araba, who had twins whilst
in medical school and still came top of her class or Michelle, who built her
consulting business single-handedly whilst taking care of her three boys as her
philandering husband chased everything in skirt! It has been done before and
can be done again. Female power rocks!!
With determination and a Gucci handbag (wedding
gift from girlfriends), she set off to the classroom. In her mind, everything had been planned out
for when the baby comes, six months into the semester. Buy breast pump, find dependable
Nanny, express breast milk for baby at home , at school express breast milk at
school enough to feed baby for the day.
But the devil is in the details, init? Thus her
current drive around campus six weeks after baby Kay arrived. The College of
Social Sciences was a difficult place to find a quiet place in which a female
can calmly expose her mammary gland, attach a pump to it, pump it for between
ten to fifteen minutes and repeat procedure on the other mammary gland without
anyone interrupting. She had therefore resorted to expressing her milk in her
car. Thanks to its tinted windows, she could do this quite discreetly without
attracting too much attention. But on this particular day, the car park had
been turned into fair grounds for the annual college week celebrations and she
had to find another place.
She finally found a suitable location next to
the examinations centre and with her car air condition turned on full blast and
the car windows rolled up, she proceeded to express enough milk for Baby Kay. Whilst
she expressed she reflected on how her well laid out plan for taking care of
her baby had to be revised over and over again.
Her first Nanny quit without much notice after
only one week, both grandmothers were too busy with respective business
enterprises to be of much help and Baby Kay loved his milk. Baby Kay was born
at 4.0 kg. which is very big for a first
child. And Baby Kay wanted his milk and wanted it NOW!! And always. So much for
her plan to do exclusive breastfeeding. Having a baby mid semester meant also
that she could not take the mandatory six weeks post natal leave to allow her
to bond with her baby. She had to continue with lectures within weeks of giving
birth. Thursdays were the worst days as she had back to back lectures from 7am
to 4 pm with only an hour break. Thus she could not do the usual shuttle
between school and home to breastfeed.
After releasing the pent up pressure from milk,
she efficiently stored the expressed milk in her thermos flask and put the
flask back into her Gucci bag. Thank God for making large hand bags
fashionable. That was a life saver. Not only had it been difficult for her to
find a place to express her milk, but it was also more difficult to find a
place to safely store the milk until she could get it home. She once tried
leaving it in the car but temperatures had gone so high that day that the milk
had curdled and had to be disposed of.
The solution now was to carry it with her to lectures. At least lectures
took place in an air-conditioned room.
How is it that with a University this size,
with more than twenty thousand students, at all levels of study, from undergrad
to graduate level, the VC doesn’t think that there is the need for a nursing
room or a nursery? How paternalistic of him! There is nowhere to safely take a
six week old baby! Best university indeed!
But this dumsor kwraa was not helping,
especially with storing Baby Kay’s milk at home until he is ready to eat. With
this 24 hours of, 12 hours on electricity business, it meant she could not keep
the expressed milk for more than only a few days. The generator could not power
the fridge without causing damage. She had had to throw away milk on several
occasions due to the erratic at best and non existent at worst power supply
situation currently going on. One particular day, she expressed almost 12
ounces of milk, enough to last Baby Kay the whole day, very proud of herself.
Only to have the milk curdle because the lights were off the entire weekend and
the milk went bad by Monday morning.
After being in labour for 12 hours, she had had
to be rushed into emergency caesarean surgery. This was delayed because there
was no money to buy fuel to power the hospital’s generator. John Paul had to
volunteer to buy fuel for the generator before the Doctor could go ahead with
the caesarean section. That was a close one. Thankfully, baby Kay didn’t need
any intensive care support. She heard the Newborn Intensive Care Unit (NICU)
had to be shut down because the incubators were at risk of damage from the
erratic power supply.
So Baby Kay’s meals have to be supplemented by
formula milk as and when his milk runs out. This also has consequences. The
cost of the milk is the least of her problems. Afterall when she was working,
she spent more on lunch than she spends on one tin of baby milk. First, the public health nurses must never
know of this during their regular monthly weighing sessions at the hospitals.
All this exclusive breastfeeding mania that has taken over the country
brouhaha. Second and most significantly, Baby Kay suffers from serious colicky
sessions when he drinks the formula. It is such a sorry sight to see and hear a
baby cry for hours on end suffering from gas. She and John Paul have changed
the brand of formula a few times but with no significant results. Internet also
says that it is not advisable to keep changing the baby brand of milk as it
takes up to two weeks for a baby to get used to a specific brand of formula.
Finally, she had to order a brand from
the US and had it delivered by courier.
She has heard other horrifying tales of how
mothers and babies are suffering from the ongoing electricity load sharing
exercise. From babies not sleeping well in the incessant heat to mothers losing
their newborns as a result of equipment failure in hospitals. It is scary to be pregnant and expecting in these
times. These are really tumultuous times. We hear stories of midwives having to
deliver babies with torchlight. Infact, now in Ghana, everyone has a dumsor
story and there seem to be no end in sight.
It is no
longer an individual’s pet peeve but it has become a national issue. Ti
is not just about the lights going on and off at irregular times but how
electricity or the lack thereof, affects us all. Electricity is a key
foundation of modern times. Without that form of energy, life will be
difficult. Nii Lante lost his job at Fanmilk after a redundancy. His wife is
also pregnant and not working. Nana Aba also had to close down her coldstore
and literally gave out her stock for free because the lights had been off for
almost a week. Not sure she would even break even. Poultry farmers are also losing
out because the chicks are not putting on weight as fast as they should. Hmm,
Ghana my motherland.
How does a middle income country survive
without energy? How can we grow when our industries are suffering from lack of
power? How do our children write their exams and pass when there is no lights
for them to study at night before exams? thinking thoughts.
