Kenyan actress Catherine Kamau, popularly known as Kate Actress, has narrated how a motorcycle accident made her learn about her first pregnancy at 19 years old.
Kate, then a first-year student at Makerere University in Uganda, said that she experienced quite a rigid environment while growing up and now that she was alone in a foreign land she had the freedom to explore all her amusements.
“I was in college, my first time away from home and from a strict mom. I never used to go out, or drink, or talk to boys and now I find myself in a different country and I can talk to boys, I can go to the disco, drink, I was overwhelmed,” she said speaking to Universal Plus Africa
Two months after joining the institution, Kate added, she started dating and shortly became pregnant.
She was not aware of the pregnancy until one time when she had gone out with her boyfriend and ended up being involved in a motorbike accident.
Kate narrated that it was at the hospital, where they later visited, when the doctor informed her of the pregnancy, a cross she was not yet ready to bear.
“I actually did not know I was pregnant until when the child’s father and I went out and we had a motorbike accident and had to go to the hospital,” she narrated.
“The doctor came out and said you are okay and the baby is safe. I was like ‘what baby!’. And he was like ‘yeah you are four months pregnant’ and I was like ‘Who?” she posed.
“I am looking at my tummy and it’s flat because I was a very tiny girl and that is how I learnt I was pregnant and I was not ready.”
Despite the anxiety that had rocked their love boat, Kate decided to keep the pregnancy owing to her boyfriend’s assurance and support only for him to change tune after the baby was delivered.
She immediately returned home and enjoyed temporal soundness since her mother was not home, but could not bury her head in the sand for long.
“I remember going back home, my mum was on some assignment in South Afirca and I enjoyed my time because she was not there and dads rarely notice anything because I was always in hoodies.”
Kate says her mother, despite her disappointment, was very supportive through the genesis of her parental journey.
“I gave birth but despite mum being disappointed she was really supportive because she was in a similar situation and I think that’s why she was more understanding,” she said.
“She made me understand that life has changed and you have to be a mum, you cannot wake up at 10:00, you have to wake up take care of the baby.”
Kate is now a mother of two; her firstborn son (16) and a three-year-old daughter whose father is her current husband, film producer Philip Karanja.