Written by Miracle Okah
It was the year 1996. General Sani Abacha, the military head of state, ruled with a heavy military grip in Nigeria. In one small corner of that tense world, my mother had fallen in love and gotten pregnant by my father, an Urhobo man — a man my grandmother, her mother, was not entirely in support of.
My mom was young, but she wanted that child desperately.
The baby was from a man she loved.
She had imagined little fingers gripping hers, and so she looked forward to having her baby.
To becoming a mother.
When her day was due, she packed her bag and went to the hospital with my father.
The doctor examined her during his rounds. Everything looked fine, he had said— she was almost fully dilated and would be able to push soon. So, he handed her over to the nurse and left for the day.
That night, the nurses came in briefly, checked her, and then went off to sleep. My mom, young and inexperienced, drifted off too, unaware that the sleep could cost her everything.
The next morning, she woke up to a heavy silence.
Not just the absence of sound, but a silence that rang through her body.
Her stomach, which was once alive with movement, was still. Too still.
That was when she knew that the baby was gone.
“Stillbirth”, the doctor said, his face folding into something grim. One clinical word for a love that had already been named in her heart.
But to my mother, it felt more like a theft. Just a day before, she had felt the baby kicking, a small, pulsing reassurance of life. Now: nothing.
She sat motionless as the doctor began shouting at the nurses.
“She was supposed to walk around, not sleep! She is a first-time mother. How could you leave her alone like that?”
He kept ranting and raving, but it was too late. My mother had lost her child, and her grief was already too loud.
She returned home with empty arms and a heart full of rage.
Angry at herself, at the nurses who left her to sleep, at the silence that cost her child’s life.
They could have warned her.
She would have walked the hospital halls all night if that’s what it took.
She could have fought for her, with her, if only she had known the baby was fighting for her life while she slept.
It didn’t get better for a long time.
Some days, she would go through her baby’s clothes, lifting them one by one from a small basket by her bed.
She would pull out a pale yellow onesie — tiny, cotton with an embroidered duck near the collar — and hold it like it was a child. Her child.
She would lift it gently, cradling it against her shoulder. Rocking and whispering.
Then she would press it to her chest tightly. As if the warmth of her body could bring it back to life.
She did this over and over again, until even the cloth smelled like grief.
She wept silently most days. Other days, the screams came. But the pain stayed the same.
A few months later, she began trying for another child.
My mother got pregnant three times in a row, and each time, it ended in loss. Three times her body held onto a fragile dream, and three times, it slipped away.
Each pregnancy came with its own cruel ending; a miscarriage that came like an ambush in the middle of hope.
Soon, she started to fear mornings. She’d wake up to check herself obsessively, praying for a dry sheet, one without red stains.
Then, in the late months of 1997, she conceived again.
This time, she clung to the pregnancy with all the faith and fire she had left.
She prayed, fasted and wept.
Every Wednesday, she went to church.
She cried out to a God she couldn’t see but desperately needed to believe in.
This pregnancy was different.
Every morning, she woke up with no sign of blood. And for the first time in a long time, she allowed herself to believe.
Until one day, she woke up to blood.
Panic gripped her throat.
She ran to her family nurse, already grieving the loss she believed had come again.
But after a series of tests, the nurse told her the baby was still alive.
Weak from the blood loss, but alive.
The nurse discovered her blood pressure was high and immediately placed her on bed rest.
Nine months passed. Her contractions finally started.
She rushed to the hospital and stayed for two days, but her due date came and went — still, the baby would not come.
The doctor warned that if the baby stayed longer than three days, it might die in the womb. Her amniotic fluid was drying up.
They would have to operate soon to remove what might already be lost.
Terrified of history repeating itself, she left the hospital and went to a well-known midwife in town.
There, she endured six excruciating days of contractions.
Six long, painful days of labour that yielded nothing but exhaustion.
By that point, she had been pregnant for 10 months.
And then, the morning after Nigerians woke up to the news that Abacha had died, she gave birth.
The baby was small, wrinkled, weak and quiet.
Her skin creased like paper from the dried womb. But she was alive.
Against all odds, she had fought with her and made it.
My mother held her close, stared at her with trembling joy and named her Miracle.
To her, I was the Miracle she had hoped and prayed for.
Miracle Olúwá?eunfúmi, which in Yoruba means “God has done something for me”.
A name full of faith, survival and testimony.
And so, I carried the name like a story stitched to my skin.
It is not just a name.
It is the weight of my mother’s prayers.
The echo of her grief.
And the testimony of a life that has refused to give up.
Miracle Okah is the first daughter of two teachers. She initially dreamed of becoming a doctor but ultimately found her true calling in writing, where she discovered the power of words over stethoscopes. Passionate about African literature and amplifying the voices of Black women, her work has been featured in Amaka Studio, Black Ballad, Better to Speak, Black Girl X, and beyond. She is on the writing track for the 2025 Adventures Creators Programme.
