BABIES :OF THE MANY THINGS MONEY CAN(NOT) BUY.

One of the many pains a mother of five does not know and cannot relate to is the agony of TTC(Trying to Conceive). Most of her stress comes from the everyday noise roused by her children, the bottomless bellies she must feed three times a day, exorbitant school fees, new Christmas cloths, among very many other things. She laments how she knows no peace and has to shout in Soprano in other to maintain order.

Somewhere around is another woman who is praying for all these "troubles" to come upon her. She has fate, prays earnestly, does all anatomy requires yet the fruits to labour for refuse to sprout. She longs to feel the joy of motherhood and the other woman is burdened by it.

I remain in awe of God our creator. He gifts us with everything. Being a parent is very humbling. There is nothing anyone does right to earn them a right to create another human. I once saw a quote that says 'without children, my house will be clean and my wallet full but my heart will be empty and my home quite'. Some couples cross seven mountains and seven seas in search of babies who would fill this void. Some find the joy and some others don't.

Advances in medicine has dried alot of tears. At least for those who can afford it . Artificial insemination, hormonal imbalance treatment, surrogacy, etc have blessed many women with babies.  But man cannot be God. Doctors soar within their limits and charge arm and leg for it. Some couples budget huge amount of money and seek out the finest Doctors in the world. Sometimes, the insemination and implanting could be successful but the gestation will not be. In the end, the couple remain without a child.

Others have sort parenthood through some other means. Parenting may begin by birthing a child, but that does not envisage parenting. Being a parent is about being there. It is about sacrifice. Given prevailing circumstances, some people may understand that they cannot afford such sacrifices. So they commit the sacrifice to the undertaking of another who is desiring. That is the premise of adoption.

Sadly, most people in our Nigerian society seek adoption outside the parameters of legality. We hear about Baby factories. A house full of pregnant women(young girls) who upon delivering sell off the babies to couples who are desiring to have a child. It is already bad enough that we have commercialized sex, it is even more disheartening that we have began to commercialize its 'by product' as well.

Ironically, this abhorrent act is symbiotic. It takes away the shame of unwed motherhood and brings blessing to the longing mother - a child she can call her own. Our culture perpetrates this.  If so much condemnation and shame was not attached to unwed pregnancies, young girls would not be going desperate miles to wipe the shame away. Unwed pregnancy is not alien to our culture. The White man did not bring it along when they came. Young girls have been getting pregnant outside marriage since ages past.

If young girls can get support from their families, they would not resort to Baby factories as a bail out. Although not all young girls in Baby factories are victims per se. Some designate themselves as baby making machines. This 'business' is sure not without cost. A day-old baby goes for as high as 300,000-500,000 naira. While male children go for up to 800,000 naira. This was before the recession and high inflation, the price must have adjusted by now.

One would be tempted to ask what the high price is exactly for. Babies are free gift of nature. Naturally, conception does not cost a kobo. And most of these young girls come to birthing houses after their pregnancy may have gone past midway. So it is not like catering for their feeding and welfare swells up the money 'invested' on them. These girls are kept in shanty conditions with minimal care that meets the basic needs of a pregnant woman. Maybe the high price is to harden their hearts so they can feel nothing as they commit one of the most inhuman acts.

Unfortunately, it is not only desiring parents that patronize baby factories. Ritualists also 'source their material' from such places.

Baby factory operations are run in highly covert secrecy. Desperate couples in an attempt to have a baby of their own know better than to divulge an operation that made them happy parents. Every once in a while, we hear of a burst of such operations. But for any one baby factory clamped down, many more continue to thrive in the becoming business.

It is not as if Baby factories are run like an open market where you pay cash and carry your merchandise. Couples wait in line for babies to be born. Some pregnanies are booked and if unfortunately the child is delivered as a still born, the couple would have that opportunity. The Baby factory operators also for security reasons only deal with people they are sure will keep their business secret. They make themselves hard to find and put the intending parents through so much rigors that would robe them in fully into the crime.

Sadly, these babies may be born with a congenital disorder that manifest as they grow. Some carry genetic predispositions to certain diseases or health conditions. Some may die at infancy. Some may grow up and begin to cause their adoptive parents troubles. If it is any consolidation, peoples biological children can also be born with any of the above. So I suppose it does not really matter.

Children are children. Irrespective of any circumstances surrounding their birth, regardless they sprout. They jump and play around just like any other child and thrive if the environment  is enabling enough. If meddling interlopers do not inform the child about the circumstances surrounding his/her birth, the child may never find out. And if the parents show the child all love and support as a parent should, no matter the whispers, the child would remain a proud bona-fide member of the family he/she found him/herself in.

In times past, given the prevalence of polygamy, much pressure was not put on only one woman to procreate and preserve the lineage of a husband. If a woman shows signs of fertility challenge, her husband quickly marries another who would sire offsprings for him. As he would have married another woman either way. This handicaps the woman in her search for the fruit of the womb as she is now on a lone journey, without her husband in the search. Even though women bear more groan in the search. On the other hand, if a couple are having fertility challenges and the man seeks out a wife, the woman also can abandon the marriage and remarry. Sometimes, such a woman ends up having very many children for her second husband. But in a monogamous setting, the husband does not explore the option of another woman, neither does the wife remarry another husband. Together , the husband and wife would explore more(desperate) options in search for a child. Couples explore more options now,maybe because more options are available(to be explored).

It may seem that infertility is on the rise these days despite good medical fertility options that improve chances of bearing a child. It seems. But in reality, we live in an interconnected world today where people have a wider scope of people they know. In times past, people barely knew people past their relatives and villagers. Circles were smaller. In these small circles people recorded a small number of infertile women/couples. Amplify this small recorded number by the larger number of people within ones (very large) circle today and it seems the number has exploded.

Again, due to many factors of modernization, women bear children in later ages now,sometimes ages past their peak years. So by the time they begin to desire to have babies, they would be racing against their biological clock. In the olden days, girls get married on the average between the ages of 13-18 years of age. If they have any fertility challenges and try to conceive unsuccessfully for up to 10 years. Such a girl would be at most 28 years of age after 10 years. But most women these days get married at this age. And if they struggle to conceive for that long, they would have drawn close to menopause. This is against the the younger bride whose 10 years of trials was within her biological prime age, therefore giving her better chances than the older bride who is driving closer to menopause. If women in times past had tried conceiving at later ages , they most likely would have been bugged with the (same) challenges women who try conceiving at a later age today face.

Igbos have an adage that says 'nwa bu nwa'(a child is a child). I would refer to this adage in a different context from its usual meaning. A child is a child irrespective of any circumstance or pathway he/she came into a home. Women who delivered their babies through surgery used to be mocked as not being the mother of the child since they did not push such child through the natural pathway. Surrogacy has even given us another pathway to motherhood/parenthood. Likewise adoption. We must learn to embrace the later. If we do, its processes would be shrouded with less secrecy and illegality.

Another Igbo adage says 'ofu onye adigi azu nwa' (one person does train not a child). Going by this, parents should allow others to partake in raising and owing their child, and also, couples without children should feel no shame partaking in the responsibilities and joy of raising other peoples children.

Couples spend the most of their married lives bearing and raising children. Children who at best, if they turn out to be successful would leave home and establish a nest of their own. Leaving their parents alone and coming around sparsely to visit. And in worse situations, would remain at home, constituting nuisance, troubles and liability for their aged parents.

Parenting is not always bliss. Some children so much infuriate their parents that their parents lay curses on them. Some parents neglect their children and rank them low in their priorities.

Life continues to give us an illusion of where we think our happiness lie. When we catch the chase, we realize that our happiness, fulfillment or satisfaction was never hinged on that which we pursued.