Made in secret

Viona Mwende, 35, and her husband planned to have only two children after they got married.

“That way, we were sure that we would be able to provide the best towards their development. We would not struggle with their school fees or any of their needs or wants,” she says.

And so after their second child was born, they consulted their gynaecologist who recommended various options, including a vasectomy, which Viona’s husband rejected. They settled for an IUD.

Three years after this, Viona began to desire having another child. “I felt I was not satisfied with the two we had. I wanted to get pregnant and add to our family,” she says.

However, she was afraid that her partner would not agree. He was comfortable with the two children they had. “And even when I brought up the subject, he dismissed the idea,” says Viona, an accountant.

In spite of his resistance, a year later, Viona decided to make the decision to have another child by herself. “I thought, if I conceived, we would have no option but to raise her.”

SECRET REMOVAL

She had her IUD removed secretly. “I didn’t tell my partner what my plan was. Once I fell pregnant, I told him that the IUD was giving me problems and that I needed to see my doctor.”

She says that her husband was furious when she revealed that the IUD had been removed because she’d accidentally fallen pregnant.

“He said it was highly unlikely that I would get pregnant with an IUD intact, and that if I did, then I’d have suffered a miscarriage. I felt cornered and I told him that I’d gotten pregnant behind his back because he’d not have agreed to have another child,” she says.

ABANDONED CONTRACEPTION

Eva Koech, 42, also abandoned the contraception she was on in order to get pregnant despite her partner’s opposition.

She had been married for six months and although she’d agreed with her partner to have a child after two years, she felt like her biological clock was ticking too fast for her to delay.

“I got married at 38 and my spouse wanted us to delay having a baby for a further two years. I’d be 40 and I feared that I may fail to conceive or carry a pregnancy with developmental problems, but I didn’t want to rock the boat.

I wanted get pregnant while still healthy,” she says. So she began to miss her contraception injections deliberately.

“I got my system in a good position and conceived.” Eva says that she told her husband that she had accidentally conceived while switching between contraception options.

Susan Kibe, a family therapist based in Nairobi, says the seeds of tension and distrust are sown in a relationship when a woman decides to conceive on her own.

“A spouse will feel cheated into having a baby that they were not prepared to have,” she says. “If there are other children, this tension and distrust may trickle down and affect them, regardless of whether the parents have forgiven each other.”

According to child therapist Damaris Kamau, the increased stress levels that may result from arguments around the pregnancy may affect the mental development of the foetus in the first trimester.

“The first few months are considered delicate to foetal development and conflicts resulting from how the child was conceived may negate proper development of the foetus,” she says.

TRIMESTER TENSION

Viona has witnessed these arguments firsthand. “There was a lot of tension at home, to the point where I began to feel guilty. My husband would sometimes burst into a fit of rage and say that he could never trust me again.”

And whenever they had an argument, it would always revert to her conspired pregnancy, irrespective of the subject matter. Eva, who is currently nursing her four-month-old baby, says that her partner has been more receptive of their secondborn than he was of their firstborn.

“I fear that as my children grow, the older one may feel rejected and less loved than his sister by their father,” she says.

SUBCONSCIOUS FAVOURITISM

Damaris notes that in scenarios where a woman opts to have a child without her partner’s consent, the common result is usually favouritism among children.

“Other children are likely to be favoured, sometimes subconsciously, by the parent who was not privy to the withdrawal from the contraceptive.”

Consequently, the child may take the blame for every mishap that occurs at home, especially if they find out how they were born. This is what happened to Magdalene Nasimiyu’s daughter.

“My relationship deteriorated after my spouse found out that I’d gotten pregnant behind his back. As she grew up and demanded attention, he kept saying that I’d betrayed him by having another child when he was struggling financially to raise our three daughters.”

Aged six years, her daughter overheard her dad say she was an unwanted child in one of their confrontations. “My daughter came down with depression. She felt like she was the cause.

Her academic performance hit rock bottom. She even stopped socialising. It was too much for her and I opted to separate with her father. Magdalene reconciled with her partner in May 2013.

“I was on the wrong and felt guilty that my daughter was blaming herself for our separation. When her father apologetically reached out to us, I agreed to patch things up.”