Enduring the odds and seeing a promise to fruition

May 19, 2013 News

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By Sharmain Grainger

Not only can she write lyrics good enough to be put to music, but Leah Ruth Elisa Singh has the amazing ability to listen to a song once, and deliver it almost identically. She also has a special talent for designing and has been directing her exquisite aptitude to the field of cosmetology, even as she embraces plans to delve into garment construction.
While her skills may suggest that she is no different from any ordinary, blossoming young lady, a few years earlier many would have thought her achievements would be impossible. You see the 17-year-old singer/cosmetologist is nothing less than a representation of what could happen when you “stick to your beliefs” even in the face of daunting medical predictions.
It was exactly this tactic that was utilized by her mother, Dhanmattie Singh, even when medical experts were certain that there was no way Leah would be born alive. Although her birth defied medical expectations, the subsequent deduction was that if she lived past one month she would be mentally challenged.

This certainly was not going to be the fate of Leah, at least not if her faith-driven mother had anything to do with it.
It was a long hard road to conceiving her lone daughter, and so Dhanmattie was not prepared to have her baby, though very tiny, snatched away because of a few medical forecasts. According to her, it was not only an emotional and at times physical battle for her daughter’s life, but she believes that there were spiritual interferences added to the equation.
In fact, Dhanmattie recalls that her life had taken a complicated turn after she left her mother’s home at Goed Fortuin, West Bank Demerara, to tie the knot.  Her father had years earlier died, and as the eldest of eight siblings, she was working to lend support to the family.  However, following her marriage in 1973, she and her husband started cohabiting at an abode in West Ruimveldt, Georgetown.
Dhanmattie would however soon discover that procreation would not be as simple as she had initially thought. It became perhaps the hardest undertaking of her life, which was compounded by thoughts that her marriage wouldn’t survive if she didn’t give birth.
Although she would conceive quite easily, she repeatedly suffered miscarriages. In fact, she disclosed that the miscarriages were so many over the first three years of her marriage that she actually lost count.
Moreover, Dhanmattie was subjected to numerous visits to several doctors, as her mother-in-law, much like the young couple, was understandably quite anxious for the family to be extended.
As destiny would have it, the young wife would be taken to one doctor who would offer some recommendations that would see her not only conceiving, but carrying through a pregnancy to full term. She became the proud mother of a healthy baby boy and was soon after ready and even eager, to give her husband yet another child.
But again each new conception for her would be brought to nothingness as miscarriages continued to occur.
“I went to all the doctors, even bush doctors, to get help; I did all sort of things…everything that everybody told me to do, but the same thing continued.”
Frustration coupled with desperation became features of her life as by this point her husband wasn’t too understanding.
“He was telling me he was going to leave me if I don’t make more children,” she recalled.
Worrying soon led to depression. In 1989, she embraced Christianity, and it was during that same year that she would seek the help of a popular private doctor to help preserve yet another pregnancy.
“The doctor told me he would stitch my womb and put me on bed rest and a whole lot of things he told me to do…and I did them all.”
However at an advanced stage of that pregnancy, Dhanmattie would again lose another child under very disturbing circumstances. She remembered going into labour at a privately-operated institution one night and there was no nurse to attend to her until the following morning, by which time the baby was dead.
And since her family was cash-strapped at the time, she said that she took her own discharge the same morning without undergoing a thorough medical examination. She would eventually become seriously ill and was rushed to the hospital where it was discovered that remnants of afterbirth was still inside her.
“When it came out it was as if I was making a fresh baby, but all I know is if I didn’t accept Jesus as my personal Lord and Saviour, I would not have survived,” Dhanmattie reflected.
But her desire to have more children was not daunted. And though she hadn’t the words to aptly explain her experience, Dhanmattie said that she became convinced that she was destined to have another child.
“I remembered praying to God and explaining my problem as if I was talking to another person…and then an inner peace just came to me. There was no one else for me to tell how I was feeling inside, so I told God,” she said.
She was sure that something miraculous was about to unfold one day when, after praying, she turned on the television to a religious programme where a pastor was speaking directly to her problem.
“The same thing I was praying about, he was talking about…and he said God would fix everything.”
With certainty that it was nothing short of a sign that things would change for her, Dhanmattie made the decision to visit yet another doctor to assess her physical condition. She was however bluntly informed that her womb was “too worn” to allow her to ever conceive, much less give birth again.  Her only hope, the doctor had informed, was to undergo a costly operation to restore her womb. That move was financially impossible for Dhanmattie who tearfully broke the news to her husband.

 

A promise fulfilled
And it was just at a point when she made a conscious decision to stop thinking about having another child that she conceived again. At first she paid no heed to the changes in her body and refused to visit any doctors this time, even as she held on to her belief that if she was to have another child “God will have to see me through, not the doctors.”
By the time she was able to confirm that she was two months pregnant, Dhanmattie was suffering from immense bouts of high blood pressure, which according to doctors, was linked to her age. She was 37 at the time.
Unwilling to take medication, she decided to make use of home remedies to stabilize her pressure. She believes that she was granted divine wisdom to care for herself throughout the pregnancy, and recalled that she even became a fruitarian throughout that pregnancy to avoid consuming too much salt.
A routine medical check-up at the end of her seventh month of pregnancy would see the attending doctor insisting that Dhanmattie be admitted to the West Demerara Regional Hospital “‘to save your life…we can’t tell you anything about the baby’.” An ultrasound had revealed that the baby growing within her had no heartbeat.
Not willing to accept defeat, Dhanmattie said that she decided to hang on even more to prayers as plans were being made for a Caesarean Section to be done to remove the unborn child from her womb.  During her hospitalization, she recalled being visited by the pastor of the church she attended who, after praying with her, assuredly informed that she would give birth naturally.
That was in fact a comfort to her as she recalled that it was during the early stages of her pregnancy she had received a prophetic word that “you will give birth to a girl who will sing for the Lord.” The divination, which was offered by a woman who attended the same church with Dhanmattie, came during the second month of her pregnancy.
Approximately six months later, on September 20, 1995, to be precise, she gave birth to a baby girl who was barely over one kilogram, even at a time when the attending nurse was insisting that she was not nearly ready to deliver.
Following the birth, Dhanmattie recalled how doctors had observed that her baby’s brain was not fully developed and there were several predictions that she wouldn’t live for very long.
“She was so delicate…I couldn’t bathe her for months. I couldn’t even breastfeed her. I had to feed her with a syringe.”
Dhanmattie remembers praying with her husband that their daughter would be “a living testimony to the world,” even after being informed by a Paediatrician that she would be “retarded.”
But according to Dhanmattie, “if people have faith and believe in God this world could be such a better place. God can take nothing and make it into something.”
Although the predictions about Leah’s life were made with conviction they were immediately rejected by Dhanmattie, and by the age of two, the little one was singing in church, and has since been developing that and other talents.
Having endured the odds, Dhanmattie was quite satisfied that a promise had been seen to fruition. Proof of this is that Leah was successful throughout her schooling years and was duly awarded for topping L’Aventure Secondary School in the area of Business, when the exam results for the Caribbean Secondary Education Certificate (CSEC) were unveiled. Since graduating, Leah has opened a thriving cosmetology shop at her 829 Belle West Housing Scheme, West Bank Demerara home.

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