DAILY NATION WEDNESDAY, OCTOBER 7, 2020
2 Parenting
As a parent of children with special needs, what Sylvia craves most is acceptance. But even her own acceptance of her children’s different conditions came slowly and painfully. In between, the beauty queen also had to deal with stigma and a divorce. She speaks candidly about her journey.
BY SIMON MBURU
S
Yamaha always moves to her own beat. Whether competing in beauty pageants or wearing the hat of a mother, she has led in her own terms. A condition on the spectrum, she had attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) and smooth pregnancy. She had a smooth journey when she was pregnant with Andrew until week 34 when her water broke while at work. She was 32 at the time.
“Lathering Africa Eide 202.13 Face of Africa and “The doctor took anandno MAtica United Nations, the toedthat my amicotic fadley says with her signature brilliant dis had dust,” says Sylvia with a smile which makes the pain and now 35. The doctors decided to challenges she had to overcome wait for at least another 72 hours as a pared. In this year’s African pageants, she finds solace in competition. She won the titles and 19 awards. Her determination remained the same throughout. In addition, she broke two records in the history of African pageants. In Manchester, 2021, she will represent Kenya and Africa in the Miss United Nations International Pageant finals in Canada. But the crown she’s proudest of is being the mother of her three sons. Two of her sons have special needs – Daniel is 14 while Andrew and Brad are 11 and eight respectively. For Sylvia, the boys have been the anchor of her life.
After two more inductions and 43 hours of labor, it became clear that all was not well. The doctors decided to perform an emergency cesarean section.
When Sylvia woke up after undergoing the CS, she was told that her newborn had been incubated.
“It was initial that I wanted to see him. The doctors told me that when they attempted to bring out my baby, he started turning purple. They immediately put him back in the incubator. That was the first and most prominent sign that all was not well with him. Four weeks later, Andrew developed jaundice. Then he started struggling to pass stool. We consulted a gastroenterologist who then evaluated him further and found out that his bilirubin levels were too high.”
Three months after Andrew’s birth, Sylvia noticed another bad sign. He completely regressed in terms of development. He forgot everything that he had learned since birth. Stopped babbling, stopped smiling.
“He had started crawling, then he stopped. Even stopped making sounds that babies make,” she says. She sought advanced medical help at Aga Khan Hospital where they were referred to a pediatric neurologist.
While holding Andrew, she noted that his neck was not as strong and steady as it should have been at that age.
By the seventh month, Andrew started experiencing seizures.
“We had been going back and forth to the hospital. When the convulsions came in, they wiped off all the progress we had made.” The diagnosis let me footing like someone took me to a forest and asked me to find a way out without a map,” she says.
The neurologist recommended blood tests, magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) scan for the head, and an electroencephalogram (EEG). An EEG evaluates the electrical activity of the brain. An MRI scan uses radio waves to create images of organs and tissues in the body.
These tests brought bad news. Andrew had sclerosis in his head and high electrical beam activities. To control the convulsions, the doctor put him on medication.
Sylvia says her sons are her anchor in life.
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