Men only: When the conception isn’t so immaculate

Over past few days, we have been feasting all over the place as we celebrated Christmas, the Birth of Christ.

Good Christians know Jesus wasn’t born of a man, like Other Normal Babies ... His was an ‘Immaculate Conception.’ But don’t try this at home!

If you are a woman, and your man has been away in Doha since January, and when he returns and finds you six months preggers, don’t tell him, ‘Gabriel appeared and told me I’ll conceive ... blah blah blah.’

For sure if you do, you may really need a Saviour!

Yet there are quite a few men raising children given to their women by other men, a la the book, ‘The Secret Lives of Baba Segi’s Wives’ by my pal Lola Soyinka.

Maybe — here goes the plot —like Baba Segi, the man is impotent but very self-important. So the woman decides to get him some ‘usaidizi’ secretly. And the fellow goes around proudly saying ‘see how my son has a thick neck just like his grandfather did?’

For women, if it is they who are barren, it can be worse — especially if the husband is a ‘true African.’

In the past, and even sometimes in the present, such a woman may discover that her man has sired outside of their union in desperation. At worst, she may even be cast out of the house, and a more fertile partner taken in by the man.

‘As barren as the Gobi Desert!’ may be the insult that is added upon the injury and indignity.

‘Men Only’ spoke to Dr Sarita Sukhija of the Fertility Point IVF clinic in Nairobi.

On the very week that we celebrate the divine birth of Jesus that occurred after the Immaculate Conception of March 25, Year One B.C. (a Friday night, for history buffs interested in precision), Dr Sarita, a senior IVF consultant and fertility specialist, says eggs can be sought and taken straight from the fallopian tube, if my layman’s understanding of the procedure is sound, and stored within the clinic’s spotless labs.

There are also a number of fertility procedures they conduct that may not be explored at any length at all in the size or (stetho)scope of this article.

But the cost is not as prohibitive as one may imagine. Starting at about Sh250,000, the cost of nice horsehair that some ‘sonkos’ buy their chicks in Dubai.

If it is the man with a low sperm count, then that’s no problem. Dr Sarita says they can take the spread, and use IVF to get the desired end result of expectancy/ pregnancy.

Even when a man is ‘shooting blanks’ (which makes sex sound like a nocturnal battle, with one party having mistakenly carried rubber pellets to the theater of warfare), the good doctor says the testicles can be medically ‘scraped’ for those live cartridges required to get the job done.

Then there are the frozen sperms and embryos’ services. Let’s say you are 23, and a girl fresh out of university. In two years you finally land a promising job, but have decided to dedicate a decade to career (you finished with all your decadence in college, unlike a 40-year-old friend of mine I’ll call Andrea Mutuku).

You can now get a financial package from the likes of DIB bank for these in-vitro services (and I somehow like the poetic ring of an actual bank offering unique ultra-modern services like egg freezing and sperm banking — giving new meaning to the phrase ‘leave a deposit with us’ ...)

So now you are 35, career consolidated, and belatedly join the dating game at 36 — only to realise it is full of dickheads (like con men, dead-beat men or Ben Tens looking for ‘security.’).

But because you are one of those beautiful, brave souls who hang in there, at 39, you finally meet your King Charming, who you want to have children with, but your bio-clock is tricky.

No sweat at all – you find your perfect eggs from when you were 25 still cool in the bank.

Merry Christmas – and don’t be part of the holiday mob mentality that gives us late September babies.

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