"S-P-LEN-D-DID," he spluttered as his legs violently thrashed up and down in the space between the driver's and the passenger's seats. Yes. There I got through to him at last.

As I sat holding him down tightly on my lap in the middle of the back seat, I tried to get through to his con- sciousness somehow. I called his names, his full names, Oyewole Olusola Oluseun John the Baptist Adenubi. There was no response. Then I called him by his pet names, "dearest", "pet", "daddy's darling", and "mummy's sweetheart".

He acknowledged none of these. I even sang snatches of some of our play songs. He demonstrated no recognition. Then I remembered what had become a password between the two of us..."Splendid". I now called out as a question as he was wont to say it, "Splendid?" I kept repeating "Splendid?" "Splendid?" At last he had spluttered "S-P-LEN-D-DID" in response.

That was to be the last sound I heard Wole utter. The last spoken communication between us. I did not know it then. I had no cause to expect that he would not recover from this mysterious condition. Wole had passed through so much, and had survived it all. He was a survivor, and a cheerful one at that. I had no cause to expect that he would not come out of this state alive. Yet, the following day, 14 November 1986, Wole, born on 24 June 1976, was dead. The death certificate read, "primary cause - post meningitic hydrocephalus (with V. P. shunt in place). Secondary cause - venticulitis producing status epilepticus." It put the time of death at 11: 15 a.m.

Wole was our third child, and the product of my seventh pregnancy. Our first child, Olukemi, a girl, arrived, eight years before him on 22 February 1968. Our next child, Olumuyiwa, a boy, was two years older than he was. All three of these children were delivered at the Lagos University Teaching Hospital (LUTH), Idiaraba, Lagos. I had spontaneously aborted earlier pregnancies since Kemi's birth.

By the time I had my fifth pregnancy, my English obstetrician, Professor Ursular Lister, had decided to insert a Shirodkar stitch around my cervix. This, I was informed, was to prevent the cervix from opening up prematurely, and permitting free passage to the fetus before it had reached full term. It was not known what mechanism triggered off the process that dilated the cervix and prepared it for the delivery of the fetus. It had been found that if the cervix could be artificially prevented from opening up prematurely, a pregnancy, which could have been lost, could be saved. However, a fortnight before the expected delivery date, the Shirodkar suture would have to be located and removed to enable the natural process of labour to be safely completed.

Professor Lister had carefully explained this procedure to me. She had even sketched for me, on a piece of paper, what the cervix would look like after the operation. She drew vertical cuts around the cervix, in and out of which the decron tape would be passed. The two ends of the tape are then pulled together, tying the mouth of the cervix fairly tightly. A knot is then made. As the baby grows, taking up all available space in the womb, the Shirodkar knot is pushed aside, and has to be felt around for at removal time. My condition was labeled "incompetent cervix", a concept that seemed not to be fully understood by even the doctors, but a condition for which they sought a remedy.

While I was in my last year as a graduate student at Stanford University in 1972, a young doctor at the Stanford Medical Center in California, to which I had been referred from the University Health Center for ante-natal care, had even suggested that my abortions could have been caused by overgrown fibroids. He explained how fibroids, growing on the outside of the uterine wall would push against it, preventing a growing fetus in the womb, from gaining a secure foothold on its wall. Such fetus would eventually drop off and be evacuated. I lost my fourth pregnancy at the Stanford Medical Center that year.

I had brought up the fibroid suggestion with Professor Lister, hoping that she would go on to investigate it, but she had dismissed it with the observation that, "most African women carry their pregnancies to full term with huge fibroids!"

I was admitted into LUTH with the fifth pregnancy for the Shirodkar operation early in 1973. Something went wrong with this pregnancy too because, in the twenty-sixth week I started having abdominal contractions. I was wheeled to the labour ward as an emergency case, and the Shirodkar stitch was removed. Soon after, the fetus was expelled. Although it came out alive, it was exhausted, and it soon died.

In my desperation to have another child, I became pregnant soon after this loss and another Shirodkar operation was performed. This time, I was managed by the Nigerian obstetrician and cricketer, Dr. (now Prof.) Okikiolu Coker, as Professor Lister was no longer a staff in the hospital. This sixth pregnancy brought forth Master Olumuyiwa Adenubi, on 22 May 1974. For this miracle, I was hospitalized from the fourteenth week of pregnancy until he was safely born. Most of this time, I was on "complete bed rest", which meant that I did everything lying on my back. Two student nurses gave me a bed bath in the morning. I ate all my meals just turning a little onto my side to spoon the food into my mouth, and I took medication in the same position. I emptied my bladder and bowel on my back with a bedpan pushed under me. The latter process came very infrequently, however.

Kemi had been an only child for six years, a sometimes stressful experience for both child and mother. Of- ten, when Kemi had needed a playmate, I had filled the role. But, sometimes when I was too busy to spare the time to play with her, she would become unhappy. She would demand more attention; I would get angry with her, she would cry, I would relent, feeling guilty that I was depriving her in some damaging way. I would then grudgingly sit and play with her. At such times I would do this unhappily, aware that I was neglecting something else that required my attention also.

Muyiwa arrived rather late to be a real playmate to Kemi. The age gap between them was too much for that. It was to save Muyiwa from Kemi's unfortunate experience that my husband and I decided to have another child soon after him. We hoped that this seventh pregnancy would also produce a child. It too was managed by the Shirodkar procedure.

On 17 November 1975, I was admitted into LUTH for the third Shirodkar operation. Dr. Okikiolu Coker again performed it, and I was fourteen weeks pregnant. This time around I was not hospitalized for the remaining duration of the pregnancy, as I had been with Muyiwa's pregnancy. However, I was put on a course of sedatives, to be taken three times a day, as was the case with the earlier Shirodkar treatments. I was discharged from the hospital two weeks after the surgery. Although I was encouraged to return to work, I was advised not to strain myself unnecessarily.

I returned home to our second floor apartment on the University of Lagos (Unilag.) campus, where my husband, Dr. Deji Adenubi, taught Mechanical Engineering in the Engineering Department. I soon resumed duties at the National Technical Teachers' College, where I taught Sociology of Education and Principles and Methods of Teaching Course to large classes of teacher trainees. These and other pedagogical courses they took in the Department of Education. I taught all my classes after my conditional discharge marked and returned all answer scripts to students on time. Mr. Louis Folivi, the college principal then, was sufficiently satisfied with my efforts that he did not insist that I remain at my desk in the staff room throughout the working hours. I returned home directly after teaching my classes, taking with me students' scripts and other assignments, for necessary action.

At home, I ate my meals and took my medication before resting as prescribed. My health was generally good, at this time. I went to the nearby Unilag Health Center weekly for the oil-based Primolut injection. It was rather painful, as the content of the syringe was heavier than water. It was absorbed more slowly into the body and so it had to be released slowly. I was told that this hormone supplement calmed the uterus and discouraged it from giving erratic signals that could start the labor process.