'Everything was shutting down because of childbirth': Reality star recalls how vital organs shut down during labour

Bamike Olawunmi, popularly known as Bambam, and her husband singer and actor Tope Adenibuyan are now bringing up their daugher Zendaya - but her birth was traumatic.

Speaking in a recent episode of the ‘Me & My Grils’ podcast, Bambam said her first childbirth experience was upsetting and worrying. She recalled that her kidney failed, her liver and other vital organs also shut down and she worried her first child would be stillborn.

“During my first labour, my kidney failed, my heart was weak, my liver…everything was just shutting down because of childbirth. She [my daughter] had detached from the placenta. If I was a second late [to the hospital] she would have lost oxygen and I would have had a stillbirth?”

Luckily, Bambam and Zendaya received the medical attention they needed, and both recovered. The little girl, who was born in 2020 just a few months after the couple married, is now five.

The star, age 35, added that she is grateful both her and Bambam are now healthy, but that she has had to have therapy to help her cope with the trauma of her labour. “Everytime I look at her, I just say ‘what if…?’ The what ifs have tormented me. They tormented me so much. I will look at her and I will just . . . even just remembering I’m getting so nervous. The what ifs were so many and they haunted me for a while. I had to get therapy to walk me through being grateful.”

Bambam and Adenibuyan met when they were both contestants on Big Brother Naija, the Nigerian version of the show, in 2018. They married the following year and now have two children. Their second daughter was born in 2022.