Singer Iryn Namubiru has shared a painful account of how her relationship with her mother deteriorated during her first pregnancy, revealing that they went months without speaking, even as she prepared to become a first-time mother in a foreign country.
In a lengthy social media post, Namubiru recalled that in 2002, shortly after getting married, she was living abroad with her husband, away from family and friends. When she became pregnant with her first child, she first confided in her best friend, Lydia, before informing her mother about two months into the pregnancy.
But what should have been a period of family support became an emotionally difficult experience. Namubiru said her mother stopped speaking to her when she was about three months pregnant and did not contact her again until her son was four and a half months old.
“I would have loved to receive that ‘Kulika omwana’ message or for her to be present when I had this baby,” she wrote, referring to the traditional expression of congratulating a mother after childbirth.
Namubiru attributed the fallout to disagreements over money and her mother’s expectations of her marriage. She said she had helped process travel visas for her mother and half-brother, Nicholas, to visit the United Kingdom and contributed half of their air tickets, but the support was apparently not enough.
According to the singer, her mother questioned why she had married a man who did not give her money, making a remark in Luganda that suggested Namubiru claimed her husband had no money while still benefiting from him.
The singer said she only learnt that her mother and half-brother had arrived in the UK three weeks after their arrival, when the woman hosting them informed her that her mother did not wish to speak to her.
The silence continued until a phone call months later, but even then, Namubiru said, the conversation did not begin with greetings or questions about her wellbeing or the baby.
Instead, she recalled, her mother immediately told her about a fight at work in which she had been beaten by a friend who had helped her secure the job.
“‘Hello,’ I answered. ‘Wamma twalwanye nange ne nemuluma…’ (loosely translated as we fought and it bit her) said the voice on the other end of the line, which I recognised in a second. No greetings, no questions about my life or my baby, nothing,” Namubiru recounted.
She said she later learnt more about the altercation after the woman involved threatened to tell her what had happened and the circumstances that led to the fight.
Looking back, Namubiru acknowledged that her mother had reasons for being unhappy with her, saying she had failed to meet her expectations. However, the experience left her without the maternal support she had hoped for during pregnancy and the early months of motherhood.
Namubiru’s account offers a glimpse into the complicated relationships that can exist between parents and their adult children, particularly when expectations about marriage, money and family obligations collide.
