Surprise surprise! I’m super glad to share today, on our 2nd wedding anniversary – God has blessed us with a beautiful baby!
I had the most amazing pregnancy experience and I have my Heavenly Father to thank for that. Before I get into the whole journey I have to give you guys some context, so let’s get into it!
Way back in 2021 before even getting married, we did our blood tests to affirm marital compatibility and my genotype came out as AD and Samuel’s as AS. AD is so rare and there isn’t any known disease associated with it – but for the slight possibility that there was a genetic issue, the NHS offered us IVF for free for whenever we were ready to have a child, which was the plan.
Fast forward to 2023 after we’ve had our beautiful marriage blessing and reception and we revisited the children conversation, the logistics involved with the IVF looked a lot more stressful as we now lived 3 hours outside London and would have to go back for each appointment – so we went with Faith and decided to trust God to select our baby’s healthy genes himself.
We got pregnant within a month of prayerfully making this decision which was such a joyful moment but the shadow cast by the feeling of uncertainty was still looming as we had to wait several weeks before they could test the baby’s blood type. In the meantime the doctors retested my blood and Samuel’s since we were in a different city from where we did the original ones.
One day I got a call from the fetal hematology midwife (blood specialist) saying the blood tests show that there’s no AD in my blood. I was perplexed – so she asked me to come back in for yet another blood test to confirm what they had found, which I did and my people truly I didn’t have AD – instead I have a genotype called G-Philadelphia – which is well studied and has absolutely no diseases associated with it!!! Because I’m a medic she actually offered to forward the email chain of all the professors and scientists involved in reviewing my blood tests which I highly appreciated. I remember dropping that call and just weeping on my knees. When I prayed for a healthy blood type all I had thought was that God will pick AA for our child, but a whole genotype change for me?? This was the stuff of testimonies and so I give God all the glory. As the genotype is harmless, the amniocentesis test (a really invasive pregnancy genetic test) which I really didn’t want to do – was canceled as it wasn’t necessary anymore. See, I was overjoyed that I could finally tell my family and friends the good news without any fear and doubt!
Second trimester went without any hitches, I carried on my regular lifestyle and quite frankly wasn’t even showing haha. I graduated from my masters in this period, so one day I’ll tell my baby they crossed the Royal Albert Hall stage inside me
Third trimester came around and I suddenly started fainting at work, like literally saw stars and felt my legs give way type of fainting. Thankfully, each time I fainted – I was in the hospital for my once a week clinical day when I worked in women’s health – so my colleagues always knew the signs and got me to lie on the ground before I actually fell. After the second time I had a blood test done and it showed I had suddenly become anaemic which does tend to happen as the baby grows and increases blood demand from the mother. I just got put on blood tablets (ferrous fumarate) which got my blood levels back up and the fainting stopped.
This was also the period that my friends and family threw us the most beautiful baby shower! I had no idea what they were planning, they just handled everything and it was exactly the type of shower that I wanted. Huge shoutout to our friends and family that gifted us, you guys really went all out on our baby registry! We don’t take the support for granted at all.
I also traveled abroad twice in my third trimester haha, first was to Finland for Joyce’s masters graduation and it was the first time going on a vacation with my husband, my parents and my siblings – it was such a beautiful milestone and was amazing to see everyone get along seamlessly. Samuel and Joyce are like cat and dog at times and it’s hilarious to watch haha!
The second trip was for our baby moon to Montenegro which was an awesome way to kickstart my maternity leave! It was such a blissful holiday, where we relaxed and took time to review how far we’d come as a couple and truly appreciated what God had done for us.
One thing I’m very grateful for is that God gave me the strength to maintain my exercise routine throughout the pregnancy – I worked out 4-5 times a week and was in the gym right up till the day before I found out I was in labour. I think keeping active truly helped me manage the changes gracefully and kept my mind and body functioning as optimally as possible.
So as for the labour and delivery itself – I’ll go into details in the next post as this post is already long haha, but we thank God for the safe arrival of our son at a healthy 3.44kg (7lbs 8oz) with absolutely no complications to him or me – glory be to God!!
Life as a mother has been super super amazing. I had a whole team of support: my mum and dad, Samuel’s mum (who landed in the UK on the day I went into labour!), my sister Joyce and my darling husband Samuel. Special shoutout to my friends turned family Anu & Efosa – they were absolute troopers throughout the delivery and early days of motherhood!! They did a whole lot, that will be reserved for the next post but for now – thank you so much to my superstar support system!! Between them, they took utmost care for me throughout the labour and right through the first few weeks of recovery, so I could focus on getting back to myself. And our darling boy is absolutely perfect; he’s not a fussy at all, he eats lotssss haha and sleeps readily!
Thank you Jesus!!
Till next time,
Dr ETK xo
