Pain of losing unborn children

Having experienced three miscarriages, Pinky Ghelani-Raj talks to GARDY CHACHA about her pain and the importance of mourning your loss, hoping it will help end the taboo nature of miscarriages.

When you meet her for the first time, you see a woman whose life has been nothing less than a smooth ride. However, Pinky Ghelani-Raj has had to endure several life’s hiccups. For many who recognise her journey, her story is of strive, determination, courage and audacity to look through darkness and still be able to see a twinkle of light blink from the other end.

“I don’t like talking about it because it is very personal. When I do, it is in the hope that it encourages someone else,” she points out.

Pinky has been a model, successful in many ways having won Miss India Kenya title in 2004.

“I wanted to be a model at the age of 16. Modelling gives me satisfaction and I love strutting on the catwalk,” she states exuberantly.

At some point, she was a radio presenter and worked with two different radio stations. From 1998 to 2006, she earned a living talking with headphones across her scalp.

“I wanted to go into something that posed more challenges — it was just a decision I made on my own. I got married a year later and that was only a coincidence,” she says.

As we continue with the conversation, deep into matters of motherhood, Pinky gets pensive as she narrates the rollercoaster of emotions through her odyssey.

“I have had this history with botched pregnancies and it is quite disheartening. Some women would tell me that since it would happen at early stages, it was a lot easier to get over,” she poses with an irk of nostalgia. “I disagree totally: a life is a life — whether it’s still developing or already living; a mother losing a foetus is still losing a baby.”

Dashed hopes

The first time she became pregnant was in 2008, a year after tying the knot. Carrying life inside her made her feel exuberant. However, when she visited her doctor after eight weeks for a regular scan, the doctor discovered that the foetus wasn’t showing signs of viability, as it should have after eight weeks of development.

It turned out the baby she looked forward to cuddling and nurturing as it grew into an independent human being, was no more.

“All these times through my ante-natal clinics, the baby was doing well and then suddenly in my next check-up, it was dead? It was hard to fathom,” she painfully states.

She was reluctant to accept that her baby wouldn’t make it to birth, but as fate had it, there wasn’t much she could do. She relied on her husband’s strongwill to come to terms with her loss, despite him too, going through the pain.

“Our baby hadn’t fully developed, but I was certain it was worth a human being. Through all the turmoil, Raj held my hand and suffered the loss together with me,” she says.

Not a woman to give up, she embarked on another quest to conceive hoping that all would go well in her subsequent trials. The following year in 2009, she conceived to the delight of her husband and family. Euphoric on her revamped prospects, she visited her obstetrician whom she hoped would no less confirm the existence of palpitating life in her womb. But her raised hopes came down crushing like a curtain closing on a play when the doctor, after examinations, told her she still wouldn’t be able to carry (to full term) the pregnancy.

“What the doctor told me was damning. “You are pregnant, but your womb has nothing”. It was a case of a blighted ovum where fertilisation occurs, but mysteriously fuzzes out. I found it hard to believe that I was pregnant without a baby, but I just had to contend with the news,” she explains.

It was another disheartening moment, even more painful, filled with trepidation and anxiety. It is hard for a mother to mourn the loss of two foetuses that stood the chance to mature into humans.

Though distraught and cold in the heart, she was ready to try again. A year later, she became pregnant for the third time.

“A day came when I got a positive test. I was keen on carrying this one to full gestation so I contacted a doctor who gave me hope and encouraged me. Through medication and moral support from Raj, I carried the pregnancy to term,” she says.

She had tried twice and she lost all of them. Third time around, she broke the three-year spell, giving birth to a beautiful and exuberant daughter. She named her Aryana.

“I was deeply happy. I thought it was going to be a boy and I had ‘Aryan’ in mind already; so when it turned out to be a girl, I modified the name to Aryana,” she says with a grin.

Her daughter is now 21-months-old and whenever she looks at her, it reminds her she has come a long way. Last year, Pinky conceived for the fourth time, but she lost the baby again.

“I asked the doctors to perform histology and check if there was anything wrong either genetically or otherwise, but they found nothing. I speak about my story because I want stigma on women who experience miscarriages to be rid out,” she passionately says.

Married to her long-time love Raj, she knows well the place for her solace. “Raj is the best husband and father. We’ve shared everything, both in the good and bad times and I’m at peace that he’s an all-rounded father. If I were to be away for a month, Aryana would still be well cared for.”

She is a mother, a wife and a boss at her own registered business, The Pink Company, which provides a range of services from organising fashion events to media consultancy. With a laptop, pen and paper, and a Smartphone, she runs a virtual office, mostly within her daughter’s vicinity.

“Self-employment has given me versatility; in a situation where my daughter needs me ,then I’m available,” she states.

Now, she wants to take a step at a time raising her daughter and tackling challenges as they come. With first-hand understanding of fertility debacles, she hopes many will understand what happens and provide more support to afflicted mothers for stigma is no panacea. It has truly been an odyssey with many stumbles, but she is ready to keep the fight: “If God decides to give me another baby, then I’ m well ready for it.”