20/05/2025
“I Heard My Husband Telling His Friends That I Smell So Bad After Giving Birth to Our Child The Secret I Was Never Meant to Hear
There are moments in life when your soul fractures—not with a loud crash, but with a silent shattering that only you can hear. I still remember the afternoon the pieces of my heart scattered like broken calabash on the floor, the very day I overheard my husband, the man who once knelt under the mango tree to ask me to be his wife, laughing with his friends as he said words that pierced deeper than a blade ever could.
But let me take you back a little. Before the scent of shame. Before the betrayal. Before motherhood became a battleground.
My name is Ijeoma. I am the daughter of Mama Njideka and Papa Anayo, born and raised in the thick heart of Abia State, Nigeria. Our compound was one where chickens scratched the red earth beside sleeping goats, where the smell of fried ogbono and smoke from firewood cooking mingled in the air, and where neighbors became family without asking.
Growing up, I was known as the girl with the brightest smile. A smile that could disarm even the sternest elders. I worked in our village health clinic before I moved to the city to study midwifery. That’s where I met Chuka—tall, broad-shouldered, and confident like a lion but with eyes that melted when he looked at me. Or so I thought.
Our love blossomed fast. Within a year, we were married. I moved into his family house in Owerri, where his mother, Mama Chuka, lived upstairs with two of his cousins. I tried to be the perfect daughter-in-law—respectful, hardworking, silent when insulted, and ever-smiling when pain knocked.
The day I found out I was pregnant was one of the happiest in my life. Chuka had come home with yam and suya, and I made bitterleaf soup with the strength of a lioness. We danced that evening, our bare feet thudding the tiled floor of our sitting room as music from our little radio filled the air. That night, he whispered, "You will be the best mother."
And I tried. Oh, how I tried.
Pregnancy was not easy for me. My legs swelled. My back ached. My sense of smell turned against me. I vomited endlessly in the mornings. My skin darkened around my neck and armpits. I barely recognized myself in the mirror.
But I endured. Because that’s what we were taught as African women—to endure. To take pain and fold it neatly like our mothers folded wrappers. To tie it around our waists and keep moving.
Then came the delivery. A long, harrowing labor that lasted almost two days. I screamed into the cotton sheets of the hospital bed. My mother was there, reciting prayers in Igbo while I cried for the ancestors to come take the pain away. But I delivered safely. A baby girl. My star. My Ada.
She was my mirror. My proof that God still remembered me.
But the days after birth…those were the true test of womanhood.
I bled heavily. My brÂŁ leaked uncontrollably. I sweated at night as if I was being steamed like moi moi. My hair fell out in clumps. And yes, I smelt. My body had changed. Hormones made my sweat sour, my breath metallic. No matter how many times I bathed with Dettol and salt, the smell clung to me like old shame.
Still, I believed that Chuka understood. I believed that this was just a phase. That his love would cover me even when I could not cover my own shame.
But the truth is, I was wrong.
It happened on a Wednesday. The sun was hot that day—so hot that the walls of the house radiated heat like a furnace. I had just finished bathing the baby and was sitting in our small parlor, fanning myself with an old calendar, when I heard laughter coming from the backyard.
Chuka’s friends had come to visit. I knew that laugh—his friend Ebuka’s booming voice that always echoed before it arrived. The men were standing under the mango tree, sharing bottles of Hero and roasted groundnuts.
Then I heard it. My husband’s voice. Clearer than I had ever heard it before.
“My guy, I swear, since that woman born, e be like say dead goat dey stay for house,” he said, and they all erupted in laughter.
My breath caught.
He continued, “I no dey even fit sleep near her again. I dey use excuse say pikin dey cry, make I shift go other room. The smell no be here, I swear.”
The men laughed again, one clapping the other on the back.
I froze.
Every word etched itself into my bones. Every giggle from his friends was a nail driven into my chest. I sat there, numb, my baby asleep on my lap, unaware that her father had just thrown her mother under the bus of shame.
I didn’t cry. Not immediately. My tears betrayed me only at night, as I sat on the toilet seat, holding my pad soaked in blood, trying to understand what I had done to deserve such mockery.
I wanted to ask him. To scream. But my voice failed me.
Instead, I began to shrink.
I stopped going outside. I avoided mirrors. I bathed in silence, scrubbing until my skin turned red. I soaked wrappers in perfume and sprayed deodorant until my chest burned.
Yet, nothing changed. Not his attitude. Not his insults wrapped in silence.
African culture teaches us that a woman must not disgrace her husband. That the home must be kept intact by the woman, even if it’s burning down around her.
So I endured.
But inside, I was dying.
His mother began to notice the tension. Instead of support, she blamed me.
“You must be doing something wrong. A man doesn’t just change. Maybe you are not keeping yourself well,” she said, shaking her head, her wrapper tied tightly across her chest like armor.
My confidence evaporated. My baby began to cry more at night. And I, too, cried with her.
People say the postpartum period is a sacred time. That a woman should be surrounded with love, praise, care, and rest.
But I was surrounded with judgment, silence, and rejection.
There were nights I rocked my child in the dark, whispering stories of strength to her. I told her about Queen Amina of Zaria, about Yaa Asantewaa, about Nwanyeruwa who stood against colonial oppression. I told her these stories not for her sake—but to remind myself of the blood that runs through my veins.
Still, the pain persisted.
Weeks turned into months. And one morning, as I tried to join Chuka at the table, he shifted his chair and said, “Go and brush again. You dey smell.”
He didn’t even look at me.
I nodded, stood up, and walked away.
But that was the day something broke, and something else awakened.
I picked up my phone and called my aunt, a woman who lived in Aba and ran a fabric business. I told her everything. She listened. And she said, “Ijeoma, come home. Bring your baby. Let us take care of you.”
That night, I packed one small Ghana-Must-Go bag, wrapped my baby in a shawl, and left. No note. No explanation.
Only silence.
I arrived in Aba the next day, broken but breathing.
My aunt’s house was small but warm. She bathed me in herbs, massaged my back, made soups that nourished my bones, and reminded me that I was not disgusting—I was divine. That the changes in my body were signs of sacrifice, of strength.
That I had carried life. And survived.
Slowly, I began to heal.
Emotionally, physically, spiritually.
I joined a local mothers' group. Women from different walks of life—traders, teachers, tailors—all with stories etched in their eyes. We shared tears, laughter, and balm.
I found a new purpose. I started volunteering at the local maternity clinic. Helping women who had no one to support them. Teaching them that motherhood is not shameful. That sweat and stretch marks are medals of honor.
And one day, as I helped a young girl deliver her baby in a small, candle-lit ward, she looked at me and said, “Ijeoma, you smell like hope.”
And I smiled.
Because in that moment, I knew—I had turned pain into power.”
