“After I had my last baby I had an operation to stop having babies,” Stella says.
The previous child, also a little boy, who died was also born after a traumatic journey to hospital.
For two hours Stella lay in pain and agony on baggage, among dozens of strangers, in a packed public motor vehicle.
“We kept stopping at villages to pick up people,” Stella says.
“I was lying on coconut bags and cargo. One lady was with me and telling me not to push until we got to the hospital, because the passengers’ cargo was there. I pushed anyway.
“When I got on the hospital bed, my baby just came out dead.
“The cord wasn’t around his neck but he just didn’t breathe.”
The two babies were buried a few years ago in a little cemetery near their grandmother’s home in Kivori, along with their older brother and sister, who also died because of complications at childbirth.
The youngest boy’s grave – unlike the cement graves of his brothers and sister – is marked with a small mound of sand and dirt.
“We are still trying to make cement for the latest baby who passed away,” Stella says.
A bouquet of pink flowers rests on top.
“I come here once a week and talk to my babies, and say: ‘Good morning, mummy loves you’.”
There’s an overwhelming sadness every time Stella visits the cemetery. It’s her three surviving children – Olive, 15, Amy, 8, and Michael, 4 – who keep her going.
“I hate to tell my story,” she says. “When you have a baby for nine months and then the baby dies, no one can understand that.
The experience of losing four children has also taken a toll on her husband, Francis.
The children’s deaths could have been prevented if there was only better access to antenatal and healthcare services, he says.
“We don’t have facilities here to cater for women who have complications in delivery,” Francis says.
“I blame myself that I never made more of an attempt to bring Stella to a place where she would have delivered safely.”
It’s not right that a mother should have to bury her child, Stella says, and she only hopes the future will be different for her daughters and their families.
“I don’t want other women to suffer what I have suffered,” she says.
