How baby making is like a government project in this day and age

It would begin by a kid racing into our home and whispering shyly into my mother’s ear. Whatever it was that was whispered would cause the old girl to whip off the ground like she had been slapped hard across the face.

She would leap into her bedroom, pirate a new razor blade from her husband’s packet of Nacet, grab a roll of thread and trot off while hurriedly wrapping a khanga around her waist. Bubbling with curiosity, we would follow, only to be swatted away like stray mongrels.

Back then, making babies and giving birth was an adults’ only affair.

An hour or two later, mama would come home and announce that one of her co-wives had ‘untied’ herself, that is unleashed a brand new screeching baby. And for the next day or two, that would be the trending topic in the village.

“Are you breathing, wa Mama (son or daughter of my mother)? Even me I am breathing. I don’t know what is happening these days. It didn’t rain yesterday, or the day before. But God has been kind. The wife of Likhutu, the Luo one, the one with a long neck- she untied herself yesterday. God is good!” the originator of the greetings would announce.

The two would shake hands enthusiastically at the news and marvel at how great God is to have enabled Likhutu’s long-necked Luo wife to ‘untie’ herself successfully without forcing the village into two funerals. But greetings being a typical news bulletin, bad news would invariably follow.

“By the way, do you know that stupid son of Shikhongo, the one who stole his father’s cow last year and caused his mother so much anguish by calling her a prostitute? You remember how she cursed him by undressing in broad daylight near the big omutoto tree behind the posho mill? Well he hanged himself...”

Reflecting back, I marvel at the bravery of those village women. They gave birth again and again, without a doctor or nurse present, a process so dangerous that the whole village sighed with relief when they made it through unscathed. Those girls never planned to get pregnant. It just happened.

Couples didn’t sit down and say, “Honey, let us have two children.” The just kept shovelling babies out until the eggs dried up. There were no baby showers, no baby cots, no suitcases full of baby clothes and no education insurance cover. The babies came and grew like the birds of the air.

You would have a 38-year-old woman pregnant with her eighth born child, when her 22-year-old daughter was balancing a third born on her lap. No questions asked, apart from whispered gossip and muffled giggles at the village stream.

These days, the process of making a baby is so convoluted that it takes a newly wedded man five ridiculously long years to construct a protrusion on his wife’s belly.

Maybe these young people quarrel every day and erect a wall of China on the bed every night. Maybe the men drink every night and crawl home too wasted to be bothered. Maybe all these fatty foods we eat are making men fire rubber bullets. Maybe years of swallowing birth control pills frighten women’s eggs into a foreign country.

Whichever way you look at it, having babies these days is like a government project. There is so much planning, so many consultancies, and so many finance proposals to be written and approved before couples bring forth life.

The house must be big enough. An insurance cover for university education must be in place. A gynaecologist and house help must be found, interviewed and referenced by six women. Maternity hospitals must be inspected and approved.

All those muhindi shops on Biashara Street that sell kiddie stuff must be visited one by one. Loads of research must be conducted on Google. Note that all these time, the two young fools are yet to begin the process of making the baby!

The day that a woman discovers that she has something growing in her tummy is such big news that she reacts the way William Ruto did when UhuRuto won the presidency in 2013. Tears, laughter, calls, selfies, Facebook posts... For nine months, she is fed on fruits, leaves and water, running to the doctor each time the rascal in her belly kicks harder than it did last week. Nothing, absolutely nothing, must go wrong

Well, I doubt my grandmother ran screaming to river where her hubby was grazing goats and said, “Oh my gosh, Ibrahim! I am pregnant! We are going to have a baby!”

Or that her man bothered to rise off his stool at the busaa den the day she gave birth.