Three years ago, if someone had told me that I would today be a mum to a toddler, I probably would have laughed. I was young, or so I thought, I was single and I was free. The thing is; the dream to have a child had always been there for a long time but since it wasn’t planned, my pregnancy came as a huge shock.
The Beginning
Three years ago, if someone had told me that I would today be a mum to a toddler, I probably would have laughed. I was young, or so I thought, I was single and I was free. The thing is; the dream to have a child had always been there for a long time but since it wasn’t planned, my pregnancy came as a huge shock.
The news that I was carrying another human being sent me on a rollercoaster of emotions. I was scared, then I was excited, then I was numb but by the time I left that bathroom, I was 100 per cent sure that I was having my baby.
In January 2015, I gave birth to a bouncing baby girl and I named her Iman Hannah Kwezi. Today, I can confidently say that she is my biggest joy and being her mother is without doubt my proudest achievement. We have literally ‘grown together’ because up until I found out that I was pregnant with her, I was also still my parents’ responsibility; with demands and expectations of my own.
The last two years have been an interesting journey. Besides God’s grace, I attribute my child’s great health to her big appetite. When she was still a baby, I found out that she had eczema, a skin allergy that requires me to buy her soap and vaseline from the pharmacy. She is allergic to peanuts and cannot eat one of my favourite sauces, groundnut sauce. Besides that, she can eat almost anything and to this day, I still find it hard to pick out what her favourite food is, though porridge and avocado (not together of course) compete for the top position on her list.
Kwezi is at the adorable stage where she has started learning how to talk. She can count up to 10 and she knows a reasonable number of letters from the alphabet. She has also learnt how to say ‘No’ and can respond ‘Yesh’ when you call out her name. She is yet to get the grip of some words like ‘look’ which she pronounces as ‘nook’, ‘bash’ for ‘brushing’ but surprisingly, she knows how to say ‘Bye, see you’ when I step out of the house and unsurprisingly, she can pronounce ‘food’.
One thing that I have learnt over the last two years is that raising a child is like studying; it’s a process where you will learn something new every day. Your patience, your resolve and your heart are always on some sort of test. But am I complaining? Absolutely not. I feel that this journey has just begun and I can’t wait to see what lies ahead.