Depression amid three bundles of joy

Rebecca Musyoki was 26 years old and a HR intern when she found out that she was pregnant.

She was terrified of letting her parents down. Then the worst happened - the man she was dating went quiet on her. At one point, she even got suicidal.

The first time Rebecca heard two heartbeats on her first prenatal scan, she broke down in tears. They were a confirmation that she was carrying not one but two children.

While this would ordinarily have been great news, she was 26 and a human resources intern. She was still living with her parents. How was she going to raise two children?

Up until this point, Rebecca’s life had gone according to plan. She had done well in high school, taken a diploma in law and then another in human resource.

REVELATION

She was also in a relationship with a man she had met at church. None of this, however, prepared her for the task at hand.

"I remember the day my life changed. It had been a normal day at work until I bought food and lunch. From the taste, I thought the food was stale and made a lot of noise.

It was my friend who suggested that I take the pregnancy test which altered the course of my life,” she recalls.

Finding out that she was pregnant was terrifying. She was terrified of letting her parents down. But you can only hide a pregnancy for so long. When she was three months pregnant, she decided it was time.

“I decided to do it at breakfast. I just came on out and told my mother I was pregnant,” she recalls.

DNA TEST

Her mother was disappointed. Then came the questions, who was the father? How was he handling it? What was his plan?

Rebecca told her the truth. Her mother knew the man that she was in a relationship with. “My mother then hugged me, she told me that she loved me and reassured me that we would go through this together.”

At this point, the man she was dating seemed like he was up for the idea. Even after Rebecca found out that she was carrying twins and called him crying. He calmed her down. And told her that this was a blessing in disguise.

Then somewhere along the way, around her fourth month of pregnancy, he appeared to have a change of heart.

“He just went quiet on me one day. When I called him to find out why, he told me that he needed us to do a DNA test. His saying this hurt as if someone had pierced through my heart with a sword. Still, I was ready to do the test.”

TRIPLETS

Determined not to be a part of Rebecca’s life, her now ex-boyfriend told anybody that would listen that the children she was carrying were not his.

“He even wrote a letter to my parents telling them the same thing. It was painful. Very painful,” she narrates, holding back tears.

And she was in this state, hurt, rejected, stressed and anxious when she found out at her 20-week anomaly scan that the children in her belly were not two but three.

The sonographer tried showing her the three sets of spinal cords, but she wouldn’t look. It was too much. This time, she called her mother who reassured her that all would be well.

She soldiered on. Her triplets - Joshua, Joab and Joel - were born on January 23, 2012 through caesarean section after her month-long stay at the hospital.

BIRTH DISORDER

A day after she was discharged with her children, she was readmitted with a hole in her intestine which occurred during the caesarean section.

“For weeks, my life was a blur. If I was not breastfeeding, I was changing diapers or bathing them. I hardly had time to rest,” she recalls.

Most of the time she was stressed. At one point, she admits, she hated being a mother. It was tough. The hardest part was when one of the boys, Joab, was diagnosed with hypospadias, a congenital condition which needed six surgeries to fix.

He had the first one when he was just three months old. “This was my lowest moment. We would cry together,” she recalls.

No one around her knew that she was struggling with post-partum depression. To make the situation worse, she and her ex-boyfriend finally had the children DNA tested when they were a year old.

COUNSELLING

They were proven to be his. He still didn’t take responsibility. It was tough being everything for her children.

“I would get very agitated especially when the children cried. No one understood why. I was expected to be happy, grateful. At one point, I even got suicidal. I just wanted to get away from all of it.”

Things began looking up when she finally got a job at a local university when the triplets were two and a half years old. Once she began fending for herself, the depression slowly wore off.

Even with a stable job, being a solo mum of three children all the same age hasn’t been easy. Even when it gets tough, she does what she has to do.

“I want my children to have a good life, and I want to be the best mum I can be to them. This is why I went back to school to get my degree,” she says.

Eventually, she was able to find The multiples to multiples society, a local support group for parents of multiple births, where she has been able to interact and get psychosocial support from other parents of multiples.

“From here, things can only get better,” she smiles.