On December 6, 2012, 59-year-old Mrs. Oloruntoyin Adeola Alabi repeated
the biblical Sarah’s feat when she gave birth to a healthy baby girl
five years after reaching menopause
. This educationist and proprietress
of Praise Children’s School, Okota, Lagos proved science wrong and
reinforced the belief that with God nothing is impossible. She laughed,
just like Sarah did when the prophets told her she would conceive and
bear a son. In Mrs Alabi’s case, the forebear didn’t tell the exact sex
of the baby as Sarah was told.
Alabi, a native of Owu Local
Government Area of Ogun State, got married on December 19, 1981, to
62-year-old Pastor Samuel Olasukanmi Alabi from Ibadan Southeast Local
Government Area of Oyo State. When NEWSMEN visited the couple’s
residence at Okota, Lagos, Mrs Alabi whose joy as she narrated her
marital journey turned into misty eyes, said the 31-year-old inter-state
marriage had passed through rough times, including three miscarriages
in 1982, 1983 and 1984 before the tortuous journey of childlessness.
Narrating
her ordeal, she said: “I am 59 years and four months old now; I’ll be
60 years by August 2013. I got married on December 19, 1981; that is 31
years ago. It was that I had problem conceiving, because immediately we
got wedded, I got pregnant but I had miscarriages. In April 1982, I had
the first miscarriage, it was a girl. In 1983, I had another
miscarriage, this time it was a set of twins. In 1984, I lost another
pregnancy. After that, pregnancy ceased and that was the beginning of my
agony.”
Extended family pressures
Though she could not
conceive again after three consecutive miscarriages, she said her
in-laws were understanding and co-operative, but her own immediate
family members were the ones that gave her sleepless nights. She said
her family members wanted her to opt out of the marriage as they felt
she might not be compatible with her husband, but as a devout member of
the Deeper Life Bible Church, she turned down their offer. When she
refused to divorce her husband, her people said she try a herbalist, who
they believed could help her get pregnant, but she held on to her
faith.
She said: “I remember my maternal uncle telling me that
maybe it was not the will of God that we should marry, and advised me to
end the marriage and look for where I could get pregnant and have a
baby. But, as a member of the Deeper Life Bible Church, I told them
whatever God has joined together, nobody should put asunder. They made
several suggestions, but we turned all of them down because they were
against our faith as Christians. It was in the same 1984 that they left
us to our faith after they had reminded me that my husband could get
married even at the age of 100 and still bear children, but as for me, I
have a limited time. In 1994, exactly 10 years after their last visit,
they came back again and told me that since my God had still not given
me children, I should go with them to an herbalist so that I could have
children, but I still rejected the idea. I told them that God would do
it and even if He didn’t, there was no cause for alarm, because your
children cannot take you to heaven. If you have 10 children and you die,
nobody will bury you with any of them; just be good to others so that
when you die without a child, there would be people to bury you. So, it
was my family that worried us. As for my husband’s family, they were
only praying for us. They believed the God we serve would surely answer
us.”
Medical trip abroad::
According Mrs Alabi, when all
efforts to get pregnant after visits to several hospitals failed and her
people were still pressuring her to find solution to her problem, her
husband’s younger brother, who lives in the United States of America,
invited them over for further medical check.
Speaking on their trip
to America, she said: “When the pressure from my people became
unbearable, my husband’s younger brother who lives in America took us
there for assistance. According to the young man, stress in Nigeria was
responsible for our problem. He made provision for my husband and I to
be together for four months doing what husband and wife do to produce
children, but when nothing happened after four months, he decided to
take us to hospital. We went to one of the best hospitals in California,
and at the end of the day doctors said the drug I was using in Nigeria,
Clomate, had damaged all the eggs in my system. I used Clomate for more
than 10 years just to conceive as prescribed by my doctor in Nigeria;
although my doctor prescribed it only once, but I kept using it each
time I saw my menses, hoping I could achieve pregnancy with it. The
American doctors said I was old and that there was no live egg in my
system again. I was 46 years then.”
So, with the verdict of the
American doctors, they came back to Nigeria and consigned their fate to
God. However, in 2007, at the age of 52, God blessed the Alabi family
with a baby girl, Ayomide, but then, the 52-year-old educationist was
still menstruating.
The prophecy::
Having had Ayomide, Mrs
Alabi looked forward to having more children before the cessation of her
menstrual flow, but that did not happen. In 2007, two years after God
blessed her with Ayomide, she reached menopause, thus signalling the end
of her child-bearing age, according to scientific postulations.
Although she had wished for more children, she decided to console
herself with Ayomide. So, in January, when a woman prophesied that she
would conceive and bear a child this year, she did not believe the
woman.
Speaking about the prophecy, she said: “I am a member of
Deeper Life Bible Church and every January we have a covenant prayer
with our General Superintendent (GS) Pastor Kumuyi. It is a one-month
programme and when I came back one day from the programme, a woman,
whose children attend my school, greeted me and said God had given her a
message for me. I offered her a seat and listened to the message. She
said she was praying when God told her in a vision to go to ‘Mama
Praise’ and tell her that He would visit her with a baby this year,
2012. I just laughed and said okay; but she said I should not laugh
because it was a message from God. She started raining curses upon
herself if the message was not from God, but I intervened and stopped
her. She is a member of another church. Immediately, she left, I went to
my pastor to narrate what the woman had told me. That was because I
didn’t believe what she told me. If I believed her, I wouldn’t have gone
to tell my pastor again. But my pastor said well; let’s believe because
there is nothing God cannot do. I still didn’t believe. As we were
praying during the second Sunday of that January programme with our GS, I
went into prayer mood. I was praying with my assistant pastor who has
about nine children and as the prayer went on I held on to the woman and
was saying, ‘God, this month should not pass me by. Let what you have
said come to pass.’
Knowledge of pregnancy::
When asked how
she knew she was pregnant, she said she went to hospital when her body
was aching. She didn’t go to hospital for pregnancy test because she
didn’t suspect anything; she had only gone to know why she was feeling
pain all over her body:
“When I began to feel pains all over my body,
I went for a medical check. After examining me, they asked if I wanted
to be the biblical Sarah of today; I didn’t believe what they were
saying. They told me I was five months pregnant.”
Life after medical check up:
When
she came back from hospital with the result, she said: “I was only
eating. I stopped going to church because the distance is far and I was
having pains. I was attending the church in my house. I stopped working
completely. I needed adequate rest and I was eating lots of vegetables
and fruits. I discovered that I consumed more food than before. So, when
the pregnancy finally showed, I was filled with joy; I had the joy of
the Lord, but I sent for many pastors to pray for me because I still did
not believe a baby was inside me. Could it be a disease? I was
confused.
“When it was time for delivery, the baby only took
about 10 minutes and it was through the normal virginal delivery. Her
name is Oluwatobi Ayomikun Victoria.”
On her husband’s reaction when
she told him of the prophecy, Mr Alabi said: “I just said, let the will
of God be done, because there is nothing God cannot do, especially with
the gift of our daughter who has been a great blessing to us. It’s like
she was prophesying when she said, “mummy give me a sister.” We tried to
tell her to ask for a brother, but she kept saying sister and that
statement touched me because I didn’t want her to be alone. She is now
seven. Today, God has answered her prayer and she now has a sister. To
me, our God is so good; a God that can bring life out of death. So, it’s
like God is bringing life out of death and that’s what really gives me
joy.”
Like Mrs Alabi, who said her Christian belief never gave
her cause to fear that her husband could take a second wife, Mr Alabi
also said: “There was nothing like taking a second wife because of my
background. I got married in Deeper Life Bible Church. We have been
taught that marriage is for life and we believe that. We understand each
other.
My ordeal – Mr Alabi
Although, it is all joy today as
the family of Alabi now has two lovely daughters and everybody seems to
have forgotten the journey so far, Mr Alabi is not in a haste to forget
what his family passed through in the last 31 years. Remembering the
past and relating it with the present, he said: “I want to add that the
journey was not all that easy. After series of miscarriages, the
pregnancy ceased. The last miscarriage was so serious, because it was
about five months old and it was an ectopic pregnancy, (a pregnancy
located outside the inner lining of the uterus). She was operated on and
one of the fallopian tubes was cut off. She almost died. So, she has
only one fallopian tube now. Since then, we have visited several
hospitals, in and outside Nigeria.”
More children wanted if…
Although,
his wife no longer sees her menstrial flow and he knows very well that
even the birth of Victoria was a miracle, Mr Alabi wouldn’t mind more
children if it’s the will of God. “I have no option; whatever God does
is my wish. Let the will of God be done.”
In the same vein, Mrs Alabi
would happily welcome more children if God so wishes even as she said
it is not easy to care for new born at old age. She said: “Yes, I will
be happy to have more children if God allows it.”
God is so faithful,what a miracle