Jennifer Namatovu, a mother of four from Masaka, shares her most challenging and peculiar experience, when her second-born child needed a blood transfusion after being involved in a very nasty accident on her way to school.
According to Namatovu, one morning while at work, she received a call from her husband, informing her that their daughter had been involved in an accident and had been rushed to the hospital, where they needed to do a blood transfusion because she had lost a lot of blood.
“After receiving the news, I rushed out of the office like a mad man and drove to the hospital at a very high speed. On the way, I kept on asking God to save my little girl,” said Namatovu.
“On getting to the hospital, my husband told me he had already given blood, but a few minutes later we were informed he was not a match.
“I told them to take mine; however, since I was pregnant, the doctor declined. At the moment, none of us paid attention to the not-matching group; his sister gave it, but she was not a match either. That is when the red flags were raised in my husband’s mind.”
“He pulled the doctor aside and inquired why his and the sister’s blood was not a match for our little princess. The doctor just told him that what was important at the moment was to save his daughter and to ask questions later.”
Namatovu says they started calling other family members and friends until one friend’s blood was a match, who donated it, and our daughter’s life was saved.
However, Namatovu says after the hospital, trouble started in her marriage as the husband started asking so many questions and suggested a DNA test for all his children, which she says she was ok with because she was confident the children were all for the husband.
“Surprisingly, the girl was not his. I was in shock because I had never cheated on my husband; how could that be? I told him the results were wrong, but he would not listen; he ordered me to leave his house and talk to the girl’s father,” Namatovu said.
Faced with that dilemma, she packed her bags and returned to her parents’ house. She shared her story with them about what she was going through, and her father told her that if she was so sure that the child was for her husband, she needed to start looking for answers to make sense of what had just happened to her.
The father advised Namatovu to conduct her own DNA test on the child; at first, she declined, but because she needed answers, she gave it a shot. While she was waiting for the results, she kept on pleading with her husband, reiterating that she had never cheated on him, but he would not hear of it.
Finally, the results were out, and shockingly, they were not a match either. More confused, she rushed the results to her husband, who did not believe the results either but accused her of forging them instead.
Disappointed, Namatovu went back to her parents. Her dad told her to go back to the hospital where she had given birth and seek some answers.
“I went back, talked to the midwives and doctors, and what I learned there shocked me. One midwife (close to retirement now) who preferred to talk to me in secret revealed that, my baby was exchanged at birth by another midwife who left the country shortly after; she had exchanged my baby boy with a baby girl for some other family who wanted a boy,” Namatovu revealed.
After knowing the truth, she went back home and told her parents. Her father met the husband and explained what they had learned. We reconciled and chose to raise our daughter; to us, she has always been and will always be our little princess.
Namatovu advises that with the increasing damage of DNA testing, parents should proceed with caution, as in her case, there could be many such cases too.
