How I Convinced My Wife to Start Accessing Child Spacing Services…. Gombe husband shares his role
Aminu Salisu Mahadi is a forty-year old man married to Shamsihya Adulhazeez and resides at Bolari quarters in Gombe metropolis.
He is a Teacher and a father of five children who in the past saw child spacing as a taboo and a means to stop people from multiplying but the story changed when he met with a friend who introduced him to child spacing service.
Mahadi in an interview with a team of journalists at residence said he did not know the importance of child spacing until he met with a friend whose wife although in school, but was coping and doing well with the house management.
“My friend told me that they are using one method that is helping them space their children and that gave the wife opportunity to school, I got interested and told him I also wanted my wife to go school. He advised me to start child spacing because the way my wife conceives almost every year will not augur well for us,” he said.
Mahadi said he saw sense in what his friend told him and then went on to discuss with his wife on the need to start practicing child spacing but to his surprise, she refused vehemently.
He said, ”that was when problem started. I even asked her parents to help to talk her, she refused, went to traditional leader all that was fruitless she said I wanted to bring a second wife that was why I did not want her to continue having children for me.’’
The husband added that the problem continued to the extend she left the house for a while but returned after some pleas.
Asked how he convinced her, Mahadi narrates ‘’I told her if she does not further her education, i will marry a woman who is educated and the second wife will be going to work while she stays at home to be taking care of the children, and you know women do not always like issues of second wife so that convinced her and so I took her to Primary health facility close to us and there she started accessing services”
” Today I am a very happy man, because I carter well for my children in fact they are in private school now. I feed and clothe them well unlike in the past when my money was always spent on nursing babies because my wife gives birth like every year. My economic status has improved I rear animals and even take care of other people’s needs,” Mahadi added.
He advised husbands to allow their wives access child spacing services saying” this life is about planning; you have to plan well to raise good children in the society but if you keep having children, you may not be able to train them well and they will become nuisance to the society.”
When contacted to hear her version of the story, the wife by name Shamsiya Abdulhaziz a twenty-nine-year-old said she did not consent to child spacing because the society had me feel she should keep giving birth until she is old and then she rests.
“My husband had a tough time convincing me to start practice I thought he was being unreasonable because people kept telling me to keep on having children so I get pregnant while I am still breast feeding. I lost three children to miscarriages,” Shamsiya added.
She said when she continued awareness by social mobilisation team, she decided to give the practice a trial.
She said, “I went to the PHCC Bolari and started with injectables, later changed to implant after three years I removed it and then pregnancy after delivery I went for jadelle implant of five years but after two years I started experiencing bleeding so I returned to the hospital for removal and then opted for pills so currently I am on pills.”
Shamsiya attested that the child she spaced is much healthy and active than the others and that she now has adequate time to care for the children and her husband as well.
“Before, while I am taking of a child, the other will also need my attention kai! It was not easy .Spacing is really beneficial,” she added.
