LOOKING for a child has been a most harrowing challenge for a great number of men and women. The Bible has the agonising story of a woman regarded as mental because of her continuous wailing as she sought a child.
God, at last, took pity on Hannah
and gave her a child after the intervention of Prophet Eli. That was how she
became the mother of Samuel, an epic giant in the history of the Jews.
Henry the VIII of England, in his
search for a male heir, had beheaded six Queens yet he died without a son and
was succeeded by Queen Elizabeth the 1st. Henry VIII succeeded in changing the
history of Europe with his quest for a male heir when six of his marriages
simultaneously failed to produce his most desired son as an heir.
In the end, Henry VIII took England
out of the Roman Catholic Church and established the Anglican Church in what
became known as the English Reformation.
Single professional women have had
no bar to their adoption of children. They may have done so in cases where
childbirths have been difficult; when however, adoption has occurred, sometimes
successful pregnancies ensued. So far there has been no stigma involved in
adopted children; if there is; the evidence is small, although I can imagine
needling comments of the kind of women that Mama Gee portrays in Nollywood.
In some societies, women marry
younger girls for their husbands for all sorts of reasons. Our upper and middle
class women almost invariably have children, who in every other way except
legally, had been adopted.
It is not always a happy experience
but then which marriage is always happy experience? There is the occasional
friction when the woman dies without a will because her relatives may make
claims or fight to take all the material possessions of the dead, thereby
cutting the adopted child or children out of their lawful inheritance.
My mother, on the other hand, had
several adopted children, who remain my siblings till date. Dr. Gladys Duruyani
and Dr. Ishmael Hannaniya were married for 20 years and just like any other
couple, they tried to have children.
However, unlike others, it took them
several years to conceive and despite the challenge with conception and their
expectations, all the pregnancies unfortunately ended in miscarriages.
This was a very grieving deal for
them because the babies would grow to about five or six months in the womb and
then a miscarriage would occur and some of these miscarriages were for multiple
babies.
The enlightened couple utilized
their globe-trotting exposure to seek medical solution overseas, all to no
avail. Eventually as time progressed, Duruyani became ill and was diagnosed
severally with various kinds of ailments.
She developed a type of cough the
doctors could not understand and on the film some dark spots were seen in her
chest region and lungs. Being devoted Christians, they sought medical solution
to all the challenges yet committed them all to the Lord as they expected some
miracle.
Eventually the Lord took this
strange ailment away from her. Their challenges were numerous, and one day,
while they dined at a Chinese restaurant in Abuja, Duruyani began to bleed.
She knew what was happening. Her
husband, who is a microbiologist, a specialist neuro-physician, also rushed her
to three different hospitals. Unfortunately, in each hospital, the senior
doctors had all gone home.
After the third stop, he rushed her
to the National Teaching Hospital where he found out again that all the senior
doctors had also closed for the day.
At this point of desperation, he had
to take the bull by the horn, choosing to go against the ethics of his
profession that advise against a man performing such a major surgery on his
spouse. He had a vague idea of what to do, besides there were some junior
doctors around.
With the few junior doctors on duty,
they quickly set up the theatre and began the surgery to take out the blood
clot that was about to snuff life out of his beloved wife until an experienced
doctor who came around the hospital for an entirely different reason heard of
the situation and ran to take over the surgery already in progression.
On another day, she felt ill and in
the cause of seeking a medical solution in South Africa, they were told that
the blood result was bad news. The South African doctors gave the verdict; they
were shaken and took the challenge once more to the Lord in prayers.
They said, “it was a rare form of
blood disease.” The couple were shocked and torn apart for a while but braced
up, rejecting the doctor’s report and holding unto the Lord’s report.
They sought medical solution in the
UK afterwards and the doctors became puzzled and asked “who said she had a
blood disease, a rare form of blood cancer? To the glory of God, the results of
the latter test showed there was no trace of the cancer.
Did a miracle take place? They
rejoiced and praised the Lord. Soon after this great news, they got a call from
the South African doctors stating that there was a mix-up with her tests.
They investigated further and
confirmed that she did not have any form of cancer in her system. Having gone
through so much and having wailed on the Lord in the secret place of the Lord,
they remained sober and thankful for once more sparing her life from the clutch
of death.
After a while, they tried to have
children again but it was to no avail as the series of miscarriages continued.
Eventually they figured that since her womb could not keep the pregnancies,
they would consider the option of surrogacy.
Their Harley Street doctor who is
one of the first doctors in the world to successfully deliver in-vitro (IVF)
babies had been very sympathetic to their cause and after series of the failed
IVF had suggested surrogacy to them.
They began the necessary procedures
and as embryos could be stored for years, they decided to store the excess
embryos while they sought for a surrogate mother to carry their child.
Unfortunately, the surrogacy laws in
Britain were so strict that it would have been impossible to find a mother to
carry the child. The doctor who was natively Greek suggested that they find a
surrogate in Greece.
They quickly embraced the idea but
it was soon forgotten because there was a serious problem with the
transportation of the embryos out of the region. When that failed, they tried
to transport the embryos to Nigeria but the results were the same as that of
Greece. It seemed like they would never be able to have their own children so
they opted for adoption.
They adopted a little boy now six
years old and they later adopted a girl who is now aged four. Duruyani’s body
had gone through so much strain over these years and age was not on her side as
she was classified as High Risk Pregnancy (if she took in).
On two occasions she had been
diagnosed with a strange form of cancer, and later lymphoma, she had suffered a
hemorrhage, suffered from a strange cough which left dark patches on her lungs,
she had suffered emotional, physical and psychological trauma at the travails
she had gone through amongst other health challenges too numerous to mention.
She had also been on total bed rest all through these series of pregnancies
that resulted in miscarriages.
Yet from all these, the Good Lord
delivered her from the cold hands of death. Her husband, Hannaniya, who is a
rare Igbira man from Kogi State and a distinguished gentleman remained a most
loving husband to her, an Igbomina from Kwara State and kept all their travails
away from family and friends.
THEY
loved and doted on their two adopted children and once more wondered if it was
necessary to have more children having gone through so much agony in their
quest for their own biological children.
The Lord understood
the desires of their heart and decided to seal their faith with a remarkable
gift to them in the year 2014. They got a call from their doctor in Harley
Street that the Law had lifted the storage limit of the human eggs/embryo which
negated the earlier law of five years. Perhaps because they were silently
thinking once more of their unborn children, they became expectant as a result
of the serendipity they experienced.
Once more at this
point in time, her embryos were still available and having tried all to no
avail, including the suggestion of surrogacy that could not hold for statutory
reasons, their deciding to try once more was not out of place.
This time they asked
for the frozen embryos to be sent to Nigeria and this became the appointed time
for them, as they were able to transport these embryos and implant them in
Lagos, Nigeria.
Twenty-nine weeks
after the implantation of the embryo, Dr. Hannaniya, while at work, got a call
from the surgeon that his twin baby girls had been delivered weighing 0.9kg and
1kg respectively. He could not believe his ears and questioned the time and
date of delivery to which the surgeon responded that it was either they were
saved at that point in time or they were lost like all the others gone.
Dr. Hannaniya, knowing
what everybody in this country and beyond knew which was that the babies had a
slim chance of survival in a country like Nigeria, did not get excited. He did
not worry either but chose as usual to leave this one more challenge to God.
For the first time
their babies had been delivered alive so it was clear that the Lord had given
them the miracle of an identical twin birth but with the incessant power
outages and the inadequate medical care especially for neonates in the
incubators, what would be the fate of these little ones? As usual and with
wisdom, he chose to keep the news away from family and friends for he did not
want to get excited over his preterm babies. They willingly submitted the case
to the Lord and waited for time to celebrate if it was the will of God for
them.
As God gave his
approval, both babies survived and were christened Grace and Esther on Sunday,
22nd March 2015 at the time of their expected date of delivery.
The other two children
who had been adopted were also christened on the same day aged six and four. There
was a lovely celebration of the two healthy babies and their older adopted
siblings afterwards at the beautiful event organized by the family in the
Federal Capital Territory of Abuja. Their phenomenal testimony was shared by
the husband himself and all those present were amazed as Dr. Hannaniya shared
this incredible testimony of over 90 minutes while their guests were
entertained with food and drinks.
Their parents,
siblings, relations, friends, colleagues and well-wishers were speechless and
moved to tears of joy for the Grace of God on his beloved children, Duruyani
and Hannaniya, as they finally found complete joy in their now family of six.
There were great
lessons to learn from the power of prayers and the power in sealed lips for
they did not give room to any interference or sympathy from family and friends.
They had toured the world in search of
children of their own, they had spent money over the years, the Lord continued
to provide for them and eventually when they least expected it, the Lord showed
them that something good could still come out of their own country, Nigeria,
and this was the serendipity of our Lord, the perfection of science, their
dogged hope and above all, the abundant blessings of the Great God they serve.
