Photo: Woman delivers baby from four-year-old pregnancy in Ogun

33-year-old Oluwabunmi and her 42-year-old husband, Bankole Ogidan both pictured above, welcomed their first child at a hospital in Ogun state on Wednesday January 27th from a pregnancy she reportedly carried for four years.

Narrating the unusual experience to The Nation, Bankole who has been married to Oluwabunmi since August 2011 said

“We were full of hope about having children and raising a complete family. But we had to wait till August 2013 before she got pregnant exactly two years after.

We went for pregnancy test and it was confirmed positive. A few days after, my wife complained that she was feeling pains in her womb. We went to a midwife who told us that the pain was not a problem; that the pregnancy was intact. I was not satisfied, so I took her to another hospital (name withheld) where we did a scan but the doctor said he didn’t see any pregnancy. The doctor said there had been a miscarriage. I asked him that shouldn’t there be an outflow of blood if she had a miscarriage? The doctor said yes. I told him that we had not witnessed anything like that and he was shocked.".

Worried by the doctor’s report, Bankole decided to seek spiritual help and so he went to meet with the pastor of his church, Prophet Emmanuel Ogbara, who assured him that God had told him the pregnancy was intact. A couple of weeks later, Bankole went back with his wife to the hospital but they were told that what she had in her womb was fibroid. They left for the General Hospital, Gbagada, where they were asked to see a gynaecologist. Again, the gynaecologist told them that what he saw in Oluwabunmi’s stomach was multiple fibroid with no chance of conception.

“All this while, my wife’s menstruation had ceased,” Bankole said. “It was only once after the pregnancy was sighted that we observed that little blood came out but stopped almost immediately. We left there for the Government Hospital in Owode, Ogun State. Thereafter, we returned for a scan session. The gynaecologist said there were three sets of fibroid where the baby ought to be, but that the way my wife looked, she appeared like a woman who was ready for delivery. He said he would act fast and do an x-ray that would reveal more. That was on March 25, 2014. We did the x-ray but we were told that though they believed in God, from all medical indications, there was no more pregnancy in the womb. They said the uterus was elongated, blocked with a concentration of urine fibroid and the white fallopian tube was outlined. They concluded that it was fibroid. I asked if she could get pregnant and they said no.”

Meanwhile, Oluwabunmi’s stomach had protruded as if she was due for delivery. Bankole said he could not even think of sleeping with his wife because of the delicate nature of her condition all through the period.

“There was pressure from all corners, family, friends and well-wishers, who all had their suggestions as to the solution. Some said we were hearing wrongly from God,” he said.

Asked if he was not afraid that his wife would die in the process of waiting for a baby, he said:

“I did not worry about death at all. I was only more inspired to wait on God. As a matter of fact, we stopped going for medical opinion. As far as we were concerned, they had no good news for us, so we resorted to our church and prayer. On the 10th of September, 2015, my wife became terribly ill with signs of labour. I had to look for any hospital in sight because her condition was bad. That was how we got to this hospital. After giving her the initial treatment, we were told to go for another scan. To the glory of God, the doctor here said he had seen a baby; that my wife was carrying four months pregnancy.”

But the mystery was how the pregnancy could be four months old when he was not making love to his wife, and his wife’s protruding stomach was there for all to see?

“At the church, the prophet confirmed again that the child had all along been there; only that scan could not pick it. So the hospital continued to nurture the baby for antenatal. But here again, they still saw fibroid in the womb. But to the glory of God 27th January this year, our baby finally arrived,” Bankole said.

But that was not all. During the delivery, the baby was said to have “got lost” in the womb.

The hospital’s matron said: “We had to do an operation. When we did, we found that contrary to scan reports, we met a different thing in the womb. It was a sac with pus inside. It was not fibroid. And looking inside, we didn’t see any baby. But I remembered that I used to hear sound inside Mrs Ogidan’s womb, so the doctor searched further; the baby was  hidden in the uterus. We thank God. It’s a miracle. The sac was so big that it swallowed up the uterus where the baby was. The sac was so big that the uterus could not be easily found. The doctor said he had never seen such a thing before.”

‎Speaking on the uniqueness of Oluwabunimi's pregnancy, Dr Sam Akinyemi, a consultant on naturopathic gynaecologist,

“This is an abnormal medical record. But nothing is impossible in this world. All homo sapiens must take note of that. It is the joy of every pregnant woman that at 40 weeks or before then, the woman must fall into labour. When it does not happen, it becomes a major concern to the physician and the patient herself. In natural medical gynaecology, we have had cases of that nature. It can be the result of retardation in hormonal production in the pregnant patient or mother. And metaphysically, nature won’t seize to amaze us in its power.”