Deborah Akinyosoye
Popular Yoruba Nollywood veteran actress, Dupe Jayesimi, has chronicled her story of being childless at over 60 years of age.
Jayesimi made the revelation on Saturday in a podcast with Abiola Adebayo’s ‘Talk-to-B’.
According to her, she was just unfortunate to be in the situation despite several attempts to be a mother.
The Ibadan-born actress added that her mother and family refused her plans to adopt a child when her desperation heightened, stressing, “If you adopt any kid, I will feed them to death. It was then I knew that I was in for a long ride.”
“I got married on October 22, 1988. I had started theatrical works then. In our marriage, we had no child for several years despite conceiving before the wedding ceremony. After the ceremony, I had a miscarriage, which was when our problems started. We had too many tests, with several attempts to conceive. My husband and I had a misunderstanding when he left me for months without checking back when we were already five years into our marriage. The problem lingered that he would begin to use a pillow to demarcate the bed.
“He began to make plans to make me leave the marriage. I had to pack out when I could no longer bear it. Two weeks after I left the house, another woman moved into the house, pregnant. I resorted to taking alcohol and sobbing for years. I had to move on when the problem was becoming unbearable. I summoned the courage to say that I wouldn’t get married again, but my parents rejected the plan, urging me to remarry.
“So I met one Alhaji who tried his best to make me conceive. I did IVF twice, and it didn’t even work. So one day, I conceived, without even knowing. At the point that I wanted to urinate when I came back from a location one night, I couldn’t, it was too hard, I had to call for a nurse who gave me pain relief and advised that I head for the hospital the following day. When I got to the hospital, the doctor said I was pregnant, but it was an ectopic pregnancy. I cried hell. Then I was already 40 years old. I was operated on and since then, I haven’t conceived. I had to leave the Alhaji because his wife began a war with him,” she noted.
She maintained that she had stopped overthinking the issue, believing that God would make her bear a child someday, especially because of her experience with men who would lie to sleep with her.
With tears while narrating her story, Jayesimi said, “There are several men who would lie that when you marry them, you will conceive. It is a lie. They want to sleep with you. Not that I don’t think about it, but I know God’s time is the best. I have taken a lot of steps to conceive. Those whom I trained their children mock me at the end of the day.
“This acting job is just a blessing in disguise. It has helped me sustain the watered ground of mockery. What I want to do now is get a child who will be my company. If I had not listened to my mum, I would have adopted a long time ago. I am not fighting with my mum, but I want her to stay clear of me because she’s the cause of my childlessness.”