Photo: Woman delivers baby from four-year-old pregnancy in Ogun

33-year-old Oluwabunmi and her 42-year-old
husband, Bankole Ogidan both pictured above,
welcomed their first child at a hospital in Ogun state
on Wednesday January 27th from a pregnancy she
reportedly carried for four years.

Narrating the unusual experience
to The Nation,
Bankole who has been married to Oluwabunmi since
August 2011 said

“We were full of hope about having children and
raising a complete family. But we had to wait till
August 2013 before she got pregnant exactly two
years after.

We went for pregnancy test and it was confirmed
positive. A few days after, my wife complained that
she was feeling pains in her womb. We went to a
midwife who told us that the pain was not a problem;
that the pregnancy was intact. I was not satisfied, so I
took her to another hospital (name withheld) where
we did a scan but the doctor said he didn’t see any
pregnancy.

The doctor said there had been a
miscarriage. I asked him that shouldn’t there be an
outflow of blood if she had a miscarriage? The doctor
said yes. I told him that we had not witnessed
anything like that and he was shocked.".

Worried by the doctor’s report, Bankole decided to
seek spiritual help and so he went to meet with the
pastor of his church, Prophet Emmanuel Ogbara, who
assured him that God had told him the pregnancy
was intact.

A couple of weeks later, Bankole went
back with his wife to the hospital but they were told
that what she had in her womb was fibroid. They left
for the General Hospital, Gbagada, where they were
asked to see a gynaecologist. Again, the gynaecologist
told them that what he saw in Oluwabunmi’s stomach
was multiple fibroid with no chance of conception.

“All this while, my wife’s menstruation had ceased,”
Bankole said. “It was only once after the pregnancy
was sighted that we observed that little blood came
out but stopped almost immediately. We left there
for the Government Hospital in Owode, Ogun State.
Thereafter, we returned for a scan session.

The
gynaecologist said there were three sets of fibroid
where the baby ought to be, but that the way my wife
looked, she appeared like a woman who was ready
for delivery. He said he would act fast and do an x-
ray that would reveal more. That was on March 25,
2014. We did the x-ray but we were told that though
they believed in God, from all medical indications,
there was no more pregnancy in the womb.

They said
the uterus was elongated, blocked with a
concentration of urine fibroid and the white fallopian
tube was outlined. They concluded that it was fibroid.
I asked if she could get pregnant and they said no.”
Meanwhile, Oluwabunmi’s stomach had protruded as
if she was due for delivery. Bankole said he could not
even think of sleeping with his wife because of the
delicate nature of her condition all through the
period.
“There was pressure from all corners, family, friends
and well-wishers, who all had their suggestions as to
the solution. Some said we were hearing wrongly
from God,” he said.

Asked if he was not afraid that his wife would die in
the process of waiting for a baby, he said:
“I did not worry about death at all. I was only more
inspired to wait on God. As a matter of fact, we
stopped going for medical opinion. As far as we were
concerned, they had no good news for us, so we
resorted to our church and prayer. On the 10th of
September, 2015, my wife became terribly ill with
signs of labour. I had to look for any hospital in sight
because her condition was bad.

 That was how we got
to this hospital. After giving her the initial treatment,
we were told to go for another scan. To the glory of
God, the doctor here said he had seen a baby; that
my wife was carrying four months pregnancy.”

But the mystery was how the pregnancy could be
four months old when he was not making love to his
wife, and his wife’s protruding stomach was there for
all to see?

“At the church, the prophet confirmed again that the
child had all along been there; only that scan could
not pick it. So the hospital continued to nurture the
baby for antenatal. But here again, they still saw
fibroid in the womb. But to the glory of God 27th
January this year, our baby finally arrived,” Bankole
said.

But that was not all. During the delivery, the baby
was said to have “got lost” in the womb.

The hospital’s matron said: “We had to do an
operation. When we did, we found that contrary to
scan reports, we met a different thing in the womb.
It was a sac with pus inside. It was not fibroid. And
looking inside, we didn’t see any baby.

But I
remembered that I used to hear sound inside Mrs
Ogidan’s womb, so the doctor searched further; the
baby was hidden in the uterus. We thank God. It’s a
miracle. The sac was so big that it swallowed up the
uterus where the baby was. The sac was so big that
the uterus could not be easily found. The doctor said
he had never seen such a thing before.”

Speaking on the uniqueness of Oluwabunimi's
pregnancy, Dr Sam Akinyemi, a consultant on
naturopathic gynaecologist,

“This is an abnormal medical record. But nothing is
impossible in this world. All homo sapiens must take
note of that. It is the joy of every pregnant woman
that at 40 weeks or before then, the woman must fall
into labour.

When it does not happen, it becomes a
major concern to the physician and the patient
herself. In natural medical gynaecology, we have had
cases of that nature. It can be the result of
retardation in hormonal production in the pregnant
patient or mother. And metaphysically, nature won’t
seize to amaze us in its power.”