I had a complication when I was fourteen and went through eight treatments to secure a chance of having a child when I grow up.
 
The doctors had told me then that I might have trouble getting pregnant. I had a miscarriage the first time we tried. We decided to wait a few months before trying again, because we were planning our wedding, and I didn’t want to be showing during the ceremony.
 
Several months after the wedding, the pregnancy wasn’t forthcoming. I started to panic.
 
I am married to a nice black man who treats me like a queen and each time we went to see the doctor, the nurses at the front desk would give me an awful and awkward look. In this part of the world, Italy, not many white women are married to black men.
 
One day, i was going for a minor surgery as part of my pre-conception medical procedure to help me get a child of my own.
 
Before the surgery, I was shown into a changing room, I was horrified to hear the insulting me and my husband, while I was getting ready for the surgery.
 
The nurses were talking about me, a white woman getting married to a black money who did not even have enough money to pay bills for my medical procedure.
 
They were completely unaware that as I was changing, I was hearing everything they were saying. They even said that I wasn’t able to conceive because maybe I was incompatible with a black man.
 
They spent nearly five minutes talking about me, I was almost tempted to hit back but my interest at this point was to get the medical procedure carried out so I could have a baby one day soon.
 
And when I walked out of the dressing room, one of the insulting nurses was smiling at me. I forced a smile and headed into the surgical room.
 

As i lay waiting for the doctor, the comments about my body and my husband echoed on my mind. I wondered how medical professionals would make such nasty comments about my body as a patient.
 
They talked about my breasts. You know I have quite a big size of breasts. One of them wondered how my big breasts would ever fit in the baby’s mouth even if i was to have a baby at some point.
 
“I doubt if this woman will ever conceive, she has been visiting this place for five years now. She is lucky she has a black man who won’t say anything. If it was a white man, he would have left her by now,” one of the nurses said.
 
I didn’t want to be diverted from my objective. All i wanted was a baby in my arms.

Thank God, after 9 months, I was able to give birth to a baby girl. The joy of having a baby took away all the anger that I felt when I was abused by the nurses.

***I still resist the temptation to tell the nurses that I heard whatever they said because i know they would collapse under the heavy weight of guilt***

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