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Spare a thought for women struggling to conceive or who cannot have children

The original plan was to write this on the eve of my daughter's birthday, but it is just after midnight as I start and so I am officially in the third anniversary of my mommy-hood.

I had Lesedi on May 29 in 2014, on a Wednesday afternoon. I had gone to see the doctor for a check-up when his face fell and he told me that we would have to take the baby out that day - two months earlier than her expected arrival- a reality I had been constantly reminded of throughout the difficult pregnancy.

The complications started when I was about 15 weeks pregnant, that was the first time I was hospitalised, the first of many hospital admissions in those seven months.

It was also on that day when the doctor told me that we might have to abort. I begged him to save my baby. His response was that I was his patient, thus mine would be the life he fights for first.

Up until that moment, I had not realised how much I wanted Lesedi, how much I had resigned myself to having her, although I never wanted a baby before that. That was not part of the plan.

On the day I found out I was pregnant I wept, for my life which I thought would be over, also because nor was Lesedi's father part of my future plans.

As Lesedi turns three today, that pregnancy, followed by weeks in NICU (neonatal intensive care unit) and fallouts with family, is nothing but a distant blur.

How could it not be, when Lesedi insists on being the cutest human alive?

My little sister, Kgaugelo, always asks me about this thing that happens to a woman when they become a mother, the thing that makes you look at another human being and see through them your whole heart.

I don't know what it is, except I know that Lesedi changed me, she birthed me, continues to be my greatest teacher and my light.

Now that I am a mother I cannot imagine not being one, I cannot imagine not having this thing that was never part of my plans.

I think, though, that some women have always known that they want children and that their destiny would be completed by that role.

From teenage-hood, that is a dream they look forward to. When they play house, they are always the mommies, all that as practice for a day they can be grown enough to have actual children.

Except, there is a truth about life that playing house won't teach you - that women don't fall pregnant just because they want it or because they are ready. Some struggle to fall pregnant, and some fall pregnant only to have their bodies let go.

I have imagined what it might feel like to be in that woman's shoes. I have looked into the eyes of a woman who has lost hope, who has to come to terms with a difficult, searing reality.

A woman who is first to spot a pregnant belly in a mall, and is reminded every time she receives a baby shower invitation.

I have looked into the eyes of a woman whose womb will not bend to the whims of her heart, whose body rejects the one thing her soul so much longs for.

The month of June is World Infertility Month. If you do one thing in this month, let it be to make a resolution to never again ask a woman when is she finally going to have a baby.

We have no idea of the battles people are fighting or the wounds they are nursing.

Please be kind.

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