Losing a baby can be a traumatic experience for any expectant mother. Anger, grief, disbelief and a host of other emotions come and go during that time. Oprah Winfrey was barely 14 when she lost her baby. The child was premature and now she shared that she had already selected a name for her deceased son.
During a speaking engagement in Australia, Oprah Winfrey opened up to the nearly twelve thousand fans. The sixty-six-year-old was completely candid she spoke about her disturbing childhood.
The child was actually the result of Oprah being repeatedly raped by one of her cousins starting when she was just nine-years-old. And following that disturbing experience, two of her family members had molested her. She found herself pregnant, feeling alone and hurt with a baby on the way at age fourteen.
There is still a lot to learn about premature birth so it's not always possible to explain the causes and why it happens. Factors such as infection can result in prematurely born babies but it is often more complicated than one single reason.
Depending on how premature a child is when they are born problems experienced by the baby may include:
- Problems breathing due to immature lungs
- Difficulty maintaining body temperature
- Problems feeding due to difficulty sucking or coordinating breathing and swallowing
- Jaundice
- Increased risk of infection
Premature babies are at higher risk of long-term complications, which may include visual impairment or blindness, hearing impairment, cerebral palsy and chronic lung problems. The earlier the baby is born, the more likely that he or she will have these problems.
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Many mothers of premature babies often confess they suffer from feelings of terrible guilt, wondering what they did wrong and if they are to blame. The truth is that in the vast majority of cases there is nothing you could have done to prevent premature birth.
Winfrey said a reporter had interviewed her just before she came down to Australia and it was the latter who suggested that she should name her baby son who had expired.
"So I have named him, I had a little boy named Canaan," Winfrey reportedly said, not specifying the spelling. "I did have a son. And I named him Canaan because Canaan means new land, new life."
According to the outlet, Winfrey spoke movingly about the sexual abuse she suffered as a young girl, which resulted in the pregnancy.
"I was raped at 9 years old by a cousin, then again by another family member, and another family member," Winfrey reportedly said, adding that she tried to hide her pregnancy at 14 because she felt so much "pain and shame."
At the time, Winfrey was shattered: "I took to my bed and cried for three days. I felt devastated. Wounded. Betrayed. How could this person do this to me?"
While addressing her fans, the OWN Network owner also urged them to seek their real self and respect it.
Oprah Winfrey said that her role in life was to be a help to people so that they can find out their purpose in...
...life. Forbes has estimated her worth to be about 3.2 billion USD. She further added that her granny would not have imagined the extent of her success if she lived today.
Oprah went on to say that "what I learned for sure was that holding the shame was the greatest burden of all."
