Women who are childless or suffer infertility do not have it easy dealing with other members of society. They are constantly reminded that they do not have children of their own and may not belong in all gatherings.

The women face rejection and dejection. Some have unsupportive husbands, particularly when it is evidenced that the woman is the reason for the childlessness in the marriage.

Some end up being divorced. They lose their self-esteem and become desperate. They end up with psychological effects.

Auntie Naa is one of the many women who lost two marriages within the spate of 10 years for being childless. It was the shocking experience with her second marriage that pushed her into alcoholism for more than a decade.

The marital shock

This is her second marriage. Auntie Naa had lost her first marriage of seven years because as she herself looked forward to, no child was coming. She got married at age 25, and by age 28, she had lost three pregnancies. Her husband disappointed her and she had to pack her things back to her mother’s house.

It was after that she met her second husband. The marriage was sweet when it started. Her new mother-in-law was fond of her because of her industry. She is also a generous person who cooks and serves the household, including her in-laws. She became their favourite.

In fact, she told this journalist that her mother-in-law had entrusted the care and welfare of her son – Auntie Naa’s husband, into her care because she was more than capable.

She had also invested not only her emotions but money. She sponsored her husband to do his Master’s Degree. She had to protect this marriage at all costs.

However, they soon changed because two years after the marriage, she still had not been able to bear a child. As was the history with her previous marriage, Auntie Naa kept getting pregnant but along the line, she got a miscarriage. She did not make any effort to go to the hospital to check what was causing it. Neither did her husband suggest for them to go have a check together.

Unbeknownst to her, her husband had gotten another woman pregnant. He was in the habit of travelling out of town often for business, however, it turned out that the other woman was the business.

It took one of her husband’s friends to disclose to her what was actually going on. She did not have the slightest idea because she never suspected her husband to do what he did. He did not even look like someone who could hurt her that way.

She narrates: “One of my husband’s friends told me that I am a good person. That I always care and cook for them whenever they visit our home, therefore, he can’t hide what was going on from me. He must tell me.”

“It was hard for him but he opened up to me that my husband had another partner and they had just given birth. I was shocked and felt cold in my body suddenly. It was hard for me to believe it. The friend even offered to take me to where my husband lived with the other woman. We went just the following day.”

“A few metres away from where the woman lived, the friend returned home and I continued all alone. I got to the house, and the woman came out to meet me. I introduced myself to her as a sister to her husband. The truth is, he was my own husband.”

“She was happy to see me, and so she invited me into the house to see the baby. I went in and carried the baby in my arms while suppressing my tears. We had a hearty conversation while I was still pretending to be her in-law. She told me a lot of things, including the fact that she had met my mother-in-law, that my husband rented that apartment for her and he came there during weekends because of work.”

“At the end of the conversation, I told him the truth, that the man we were discussing was my husband, not a brother. Out of shock, she ran out of the room leaving me and the baby in there. I put the baby down gently and left the room.”

“On my way home, I got a call from my husband asking me where I went to. I responded by thanking him for deceiving me. But he got angry and called me a witch for getting to know something he had been keeping a secret. On the phone, he told me he could no longer put up with me because he needed children of his own.”

Reflecting on all her investments in the marriage, Auntie Naa felt weak at her husband’s remarks. She found a place to sit for a while. The next thing that crawled into her mind was to seek relief with alcohol. That was how her journey with alcoholism began.

No alcohol, no sleep

Now a close friend to alcohol, there was not a single day she didn’t visit the ‘blue kiosk’ for the locally brewed gin commonly known as ‘akpeteshie’. It became a habit to drink first thing in the morning before breakfast, and last thing before bed.

She revealed that she could not manage a wink of sleep without alcohol. To the extent that she sometimes slept in the ‘blue kiosk’ from severe intoxication and for easy access to her next rounds of the hot gin.

This new habit affected her trading business. Soon, everyone saw her as a drunk and stopped buying from her. She was selling office attire to corporate workers around the Ministry of Finance in Accra. Auntie Naa was always reeking of alcohol and that was how she lost all her customers and became unemployed. But that did not deter her from continuing the indulgence in alcohol – it was the only way she got some joy. Her grief and sorrow returned the moment she regained consciousness.

‘Further damage and ‘angelic’ intervention’

The alcohol affected her reproductive system. She stopped menstruating for the entire time she drank. After 10 years of drinking, Auntie Naa had an epiphany that her period had not been regular for years. That no matter how heavily she drank, she could not forget her problems. That if she continued that way, even children would not accord her respect.

It was at this time she decided to bring her alcoholic indulgence to a halt.  Her decision to stop had also been influenced by an encounter with an unknown elderly man on one of the days she was on her way to a ‘blue kiosk’ around the Ministries in the heart of Accra.

“The man stopped me when I was about to enter the store to buy alcohol. He asked me what I was doing there at that ungodly hour. He warned me to return home quickly and never drink again,” Auntie Naa recalled.

Two months after she stopped drinking, she saw her period again.

Epilogue

It is sad that someone who already had issues with her reproductive system that was preventing her from giving birth, further damaged it with alcoholism.

Clearly, if her husband had not treated her the way he did, she would not have gone down that path to worsen her fertility woes.

Thankfully, Auntie Naa has been successful in warding off alcohol from her life. Now, she says she does not find it attractive. She is now being attended to by fertility experts with the hope that she gets assisted to overcome infertility and the stigma it comes with.