The Irony of Unwanted Babies

The Irony of Unwanted Babies

Life is full of ironies. While many women are desperately searching for the fruit of the womb without success, some others are having their own babies and abandoning them by the roadsides or just anywhere because they do not want them. There are women who have been married for years without a child to show for it, and they will do anything to be called mothers. But alas, some women out there do not want the babies that they called for, and they carried the pregnancies to full term. After delivery, therefore, they quietly take the babies somewhere, mostly under the cover of darkness, dump them and simply walk away!

Last week, I read a story about a three-day-old baby girl who was dumped by the roadside by her mother along Kpakungu-Bida road. She was found by a Good Samaritan student of the Federal University of Technology, Minna, named Usman Idris. He said he found the baby wrapped neatly in a cloth with a feeding bottle containing some milk kept by her side. His first reaction was of fear, which tempted him to leave the baby there, but on a second thought, he was moved with pity and decided to carry her. Usman took the baby to the government orphanage but was dissatisfied with the environment, so, he took her to the Niger State-owned Newsline Newspapers, urging the management to help find her a reliable care centre.

The management promptly contacted the Social Welfare Department of the Minna General Hospital for onward transfer of the baby. Nurses at the hospital ran some tests on the baby and confirmed that she was hale and hearty.

Thank God that Usman arrived in time and had the courage to save the poor infant. Cases of abandoned babies are said to be on the increase in recent times. Women who sleep with men outside wedlock, especially teenagers, students of institutions of higher learning and other unemployed women are likely to end up dumping their babies in the event of pregnancies. These categories of women have no means of livelihood, so, if pregnancy results from their affairs with men, and the men deny the pregnancies or are not ready to take responsibility for those children, they are usually left with two options: to have an abortion or deliver the baby and abandon it. They tend to take the last option when they are scared of abortion which could lead to complications or when the pregnancy is too advanced by the time they are sure that the man responsible for it would not be persuaded to accept and care for the baby. Also, some ladies would not want to shed innocent blood via abortion, yet, they cannot fend for the babies, so, they give birth to them and abandon them to their fate.

It is a mystery why babies cling to people who don’t want them, and shy away from those who would do anything to have them. Those who have been married for years without issues do have the same sexual relations with their spouses as other couples do; yet, children are not forthcoming for them, whereas those who don’t want the children are saddled with them. That is one of life’s several ironies.

Ladies who are not ready for motherhood should stay away from men to avoid having to abandon their babies, because some of those infants may not survive the ordeal they are being made to go through. They could die of pneumonic cold in the open where they are dumped or fall into the wrong hands of ritualists and the likes. It is very cruel and unfair of women to bring children to the world and abandon them in places where the worst fate could befall them. Some women who abandoned their babies have been known to be sterile by the time they were ready to become mothers which could be a kind of punishment for their act of inhumanity.

By Nike Oluwole. 

(First published on July 1, 2010)