Is this possible?

What you need to know:

  • Exclusive breastfeeding after every three hours, apart from offering the best and adequate nutrition for the baby, helps prevent unwanted pregnancies
  • Mothers may ovulate before the six weeks after delivery, and may therefore get pregnant before attending post-natal clinics when most women are advised about family planning

I am pregnant five months after giving birth by C-section. Will the pregnancy harm the scar and should I stop breastfeeding?
Naiga

Dear Naiga,
It is recommended that mothers breastfeed their babies exclusively for the first six months after which they do supplementary feeding.

In case a woman gets pregnant before the six months of exclusive breastfeeding, she can still continue breastfeeding unless the baby refuses the milk because of its changed taste in pregnancy or when the breast milk dries up. It is also possible to breastfeed throughout pregnancy.

Exclusive breastfeeding after every three hours, apart from offering the best and adequate nutrition for the baby, helps prevent unwanted pregnancies.

That said, it may be difficult for mothers to breastfeed every three hours since at the time they may be too lazy to wake up to breastfeed at night and if they are working women, they will have exhausted their maternity leave and gone back to work.

Expression of breast milk for the baby to feed every three hours will not carry the same contraceptive effect as breastfeeding every three hours. Women who breastfeed may take long for their periods to return but may still get pregnant without having seen their periods.

Mothers may ovulate before the six weeks after delivery, and may therefore get pregnant before attending post-natal clinics when most women are advised about family planning.

The solution then is for the advice to be given after delivery when still in hospital or even insert a coil (IUCD) at the time of having a C-section.

Family planning immediately after delivery ensures that one does not get pregnant too quickly before returning for post-natal care. Getting pregnant too quickly before the body, mind or pocket get completely healed from a previous delivery can spell disaster.

Since you have become pregnant quicker than you wanted to, it is important that you do not carry out an abortion but rather attend antenatal care more religiously. Though it is unlikely that your scar will give way, you still require closer medical monitoring.

I am 16 years old and nowadays I wake up to a slightly wet bed. My mum says I am having wet dreams. Is this possible?
Jackie

Dear Jackie,
As a girl goes through puberty, her body starts producing higher amounts of the sex hormones, which help her mature into adulthood.

Apart from growing breasts, a big body including the bum, getting periods, she will grow hairs around the private parts and the armpits. Usually girls, just like boys, may have dreams that have sexual images and find out that they have had a wet spot on their bed.

Although humans may dream many times a night, most of the dreams may never be recalled and with wet dreams one may never remember having had any.

Also, wet dreams though commonly occur during sex dreams, may sometimes occur without dreams.
Although girls do not ejaculate, they can have an orgasm during a dream and get a wet dream.

Wet dreams in girls therefore are a normal part of growing up and there is no way one can control or stop them but once one starts having regular sex the wet dreams will get fewer or even completely disappear in adulthood.

Is it true that men can be given charms to get stuck while cheating?
Anne

Dear Anne,
What Ugandans are used to is a condition called vaginismus, whereby an involuntary vaginal muscle spasm makes any kind of vaginal penetration painful or impossible.

This may be during sexual intercourse, manual penetration, insertion of tampons or insertion of herbs.
A woman with vaginismus does not consciously control the spasm but this happens in the blink of an eye in response to an object coming towards it. This, though may happen without cause, can result from fear, anxiety or stress. The local treatment in Uganda has always been attempted strangling.

However, the dose of strangling being unknown has led to suffocation and sometimes death.
Likewise, a man can penetrate and out of the blue without conscious control by the woman, may develop a vaginal spasm and arrest the man inside.

This so-called penis captivus, because it is rare has been thought to be due to black magic yet it can happen due to extreme guilt, fear and excitement in a woman.

Naturally, women may have temporary spasms of their vaginal muscles when orgasming, but these are temporary and not strong enough to cause penile retention.
Attempted strangling and pouring cold water on the woman are the two first aid options, failure of which, a doctor has to be consulted.