Odeluwa Abba speaks in an exclusive interview with Chude about her twin boys birthed through surrogacy and the backlash she got from the media.

In her words, “My boys are so precious to me and I hated that anything about them would become politicised – so on the one hand I thought ‘I wish I hadn’t talked about it’, but on the other hand, there is no way I am going to lie about the process of birthing them”.

“I am hoping that if anything good comes out of this, it would be that more women are less ashamed of talking about reaching motherhood through non-traditional means. Because our society is so judgemental, and I don’t think that that is good for anybody”.

She also said, “I felt that there were many women who would then be pressured by people saying ‘look Chimamanda is 47 and she had kids at that age, what about you?’.

“And just in general, I think there is so much shame around issues of fertility, that I just think it’s too much of a burden for women. Women are ashamed when they have fibroids, women are ashamed when they have issues getting pregnant, and I don’t believe in that sort of shame”.