My rainbow baby: Pregnancy after stillbirth

I spent the first seven years of my life in Nigeria. My parents separated when I was three years old. My dad’s family was Muslim, and my mum’s family were nominal Christians.

When my two older siblings and I moved to the UK with Mum, I would go to church with her. I didn’t really understand what was happening, and there wasn’t a youth group or a children’s church or anything. I just went because I got to dress up every Sunday!

By the time I was 13, I discovered boys. They took up my life for the next five or six years. I quickly developed a reputation for being boy crazy. Fortunately, I was very book smart, so it never affected my grades.

I was still getting A stars and got into my college of choice. At the same time, I had boyfriends and was sexually active. But I wasn’t living a double life; I didn’t hide anything from my mum.

However, I was living a life that was destroying my self-esteem and reputation. I didn’t like who I was. I didn’t like the way I looked. I didn’t like feeling like I had to be in a relationship. I think it was partly because I grew up without my dad.

I wanted to understand what it meant to be loved, and what it meant to be desired and wanted, but it was damaging me.

Hearing from God

When I was about 17, my mum moved away for work, and I lived in a house share so I could continue at my college. I met a young Muslim man and started dating him, eventually moving in with him and his family.

I remember I was in bed one day, and felt God say to me (even though I wasn’t following him at the time): “If you continue what you’re doing, you will end up marrying him, and that will be it. That will be the trajectory of your life.”

It was a wake-up call. I realised I didn’t want to marry this person. I was just messing around.

God was so merciful as he spoke to me before I even accepted him. I knew it was God’s voice because he wasn’t telling me what I wanted to hear.

So at the age of 19, I broke off the relationship and started to seek God. A friend invited me to church and I gave my life to Christ. I think the thing that made me commit my life to Jesus was the grace that he showed me. He knew everything I had done and still forgave me, loved and accepted me.

I became the first proper Christian in my group of friends, which freaked them out. I stopped drinking and the transformation was quite drastic.

Forging a career in media

I was studying media at university and in our second year, we had to do a placement. I didn’t know where to do mine. One night, I talked to God about it, asking him to show me where to do my placement. I felt him tell me to pick up my laptop and to type in Premier.

The first page that came up was the Woman to Woman radio show. I listened to the presenter, Maria, doing her interviews and was amazed to discover Christian media! I had no idea that there was an industry for Christians in media.

That was when the flame was lit. I looked up whether Premier Christian Radio had an internship coming up. They did, so I applied and had help with my CV from some leaders at my church.

I didn’t get that particular internship, but a former programme controller at Premier championed me and asked HR if I could volunteer.

I volunteered at Premier for about six months in 2014. During that time, I also got baptised. Six months into my work volunteering, another internship opportunity came up at Premier for which I applied…and I got it that time. That was eight years ago, and I am now deputy station director!

Becoming a family

I became celibate when I was 19 and asked God to help me to do things the right way. I desperately wanted a Christian family, so that I could live out a healthy family life because I didn’t experience that growing up.

One day my now husband came into the Next store I was working in while doing my internship at Premier. He tried to chat me up, and I said no. Then he said: “How will you meet your husband, if you don’t give anyone a chance?” I felt the Holy Spirit nudge me, and tell me to listen to him.

At that time, BlackBerry phones were trending. So I told him to give me his pin details and I would add him on BlackBerry. We got married in 2016 when I was 23, and two years later I gave birth to our son Gabriel. Life was good, but then tragedy struck in 2021.

In October 2020, I found out I was pregnant. We were really excited. I knew it was a girl, because God showed me a dream of Gabriel with a little sister. The doctors asked if we wanted to know the gender and I said no, because I was so sure it was a girl.

The pregnancy was pretty straightforward. I went for my check up with the consultant at 36 weeks, and she said there were no complications; everything was completely fine.

Then I went for my 38-week midwife check, where they use a doppler to listen to the baby’s heartbeat. Again, everything seemed fine.

Then when I was 39 weeks and six days I heard a voice say: “The baby is not moving.” So I played music and moved around to try to get the baby to give a kick or something. There was nothing.

I laughed because I thought: “There’s nothing to worry about, because tragedies don’t happen to me. I’ve never experienced a tragedy in my life. God always rescues me.”

Because I couldn’t feel movement, I drove myself to the hospital. The doctor used the ultrasound doppler, and there was the most deafening silence. It was like a dream, as if I was watching everything happening. The doctor said: “I’m sorry, but there’s no heartbeat.”

I tried to cry, but couldn’t because I was in so much shock. I called my pastors and my husband. For the next three days, we prayed for a miracle. We were praying for resurrection. We were praying for her to kick and I really believed that God could do it. I didn’t cry at all during those three days.

I gave birth three days later: we named her Promise, and she was not breathing.

My heart was so shattered. The rain was pouring against the hospital window. I had half an hour by myself in the hospital room, and I wept.

As the raindrops fell, I heard the Holy Spirit say that Jesus wept and that God was weeping too.

Holding on to the promise

When we got home people started visiting us. I was with some ladies from church in our living room when somebody asked: “Is that a rainbow in the sky?” We opened the curtains and over our balcony in the sky was this beautiful rainbow, clear as day. We took a picture of it, and I held on to that. I felt God was saying that we would have our rainbow baby. He would restore.

Through all the pain, God taught me the importance of understanding that we have a real enemy. The Bible says the devil comes to kill, steal and destroy. It was Jesus who came to give us life. I couldn’t attribute what happened to God. He might have allowed it. But I couldn’t say he was the one who ended my daughter’s journey so suddenly, and so prematurely.

At the end of 2021 I got pregnant again. There is nothing scarier than going through a pregnancy after having a stillbirth. This time we are believing for full restoration. The scripture we are holding onto is Joel 2:25, where God says: “I will restore to you the years that the swarming locust has eaten” (KJV).