By Petra Akinti Onyegbule
On July 12, someone dropped an unrelated comment to a Facebook post I had made earlier. She has had a preterm baby at 26 weeks and did not know what to do – the public hospitals around her did not have a free incubator to accommodate her baby and she did not have the funds to go private. I recognised the panic and urgency conveyed in her message. I understood it too well and went inbox to ask for more details necessary to swing into action.
So why did she think to reach out to me?
It all started in an incubator.
In 2009, my daughter was born at just 25 weeks; she was so small and fragile, and yet very determined to live. She was delivered in a hospital in the heart of Abuja that had no functioning incubator and no ambulance. The scramble to get her urgent and efficient care began immediately she was confirmed to be alive and not dead as we had been told, while I laid on my hospital bed, post partum, very sad and apprehensive about the future. And thus began the journey to my most profound life experiences. Apart from my husband, I was alone. Those early days were a haze of uncertainty, fear, and silent prayers. For the first 80 days of her life, my daughter’s home was a transparent box that breathed for her, held her, fought with her – an incubator.
And it was one of those days right there in the Neonatal Intensive Care Unit of the Hospital where she was that Tiny Beating Hearts was born; not as a registered NGO, but as a silent promise to do my best no never let alone woman like walk alone so long as I could help it. So I began helping other mothers in that NICU – women whose babies were too early and whose pockets were too empty and husbands unseen. My husband supported me, and we paid for essentials or simply didn’t mind that our daughter’s stock depleted faster than it takes a popular telecom to zap our data. We bought diapers, antibiotics, cottonwool, olive oil, cannula, and paid hospital bills for those who would otherwise have gone without. I didn’t know it then, but this was the start of something much larger than me.
Though Tiny Beating Hearts Initiative was only formally incorporated in September 2013, the work began in 2009, and for the next 11 years, I served preterm babies and their families with everything I had.
When we moved to Lagos, the mission grew.
With access to a broader network of friends and increased awareness, we were able to support more babies, raise more funds, and deepen our advocacy. But the most significant impact came years later — not in a hospital or a donor boardroom, but in my living room in Lokoja, Kogi State.
In 2016, I was appointed Chief Press Secretary to then Governor Yahaya Bello and with it came the move from Lagos to Lokoja. Far from slowing down like I feared, the mission found new energy and ushered in a new phase for Tiny Beating Hearts.
In Lokoja, I was fortunate to assemble the most dedicated team of volunteers. This group didn’t just support the work but owned it:Umar Dan Asabe Mohammed, Dr. Kelechi Okoro, Victor Daniel, Kerry Haruna, Boluwaji Obahopo, Dr. Ashraff Abdulhakeem, Abdulganiyu Bashir,,Dewunmi Lagos, PriyeBokumo, Fikayo Jegede, Dr. Lucky Iyimoga Abraham, Shina Ayobami, Toyosi, Temitope, Yemisi, Oreva.
This group formed the nucleus of the movement in those years. Together, we expanded outreach, provided/refurbished incubators and equipment to hospitals, organised sensitisation campaigns, visited mothers in underserved communities, facilitated expert mental health support and gave hope where there had been none.
With this team, Tiny Beating Hearts became a household name across the state. We shifted the narrative around prematurity from shame and silence to strength and survival.
We raised funds.We told stories.We changed lives.
But by 2020, I was exhausted. Totally depleted.
Years of holding space for painhad taken its toll, very slowly but surely. I had lost pieces of myself in the process and didn’t even know it. The pressure to always show up, to always be strong, to always have answers had begun to chip away at my well-being. The last straw came when I lost my sister to Cancer of the Gallbladder after we fought so hard. I was broken. So, I stepped back. Quietly. Not because the work had ended, but because I was running on an empty tank and had to refill; I was broken and had to heal.
Until July 12 when it came again.
That message that began this piece. I had offered words of encouragement and was mobilising support when she messaged again:
“Thank you very much mommy. We have been discharged without my baby with me. She is dead. I don’t know how to bear this.”
I froze.
And just like that, the ache returned – sharp, intense and familiar. And it got me wondering:
Had I rested enough?
Had I healed enough to hold this kind of pain again?
Was I filled enough to pour into others?
I don’t know.
What I do know is that Tiny Beating Hearts was never just about charity. It was, and still is, a mission born of lived experience. A love letter to my daughter, who turns 16 this month. A reminder that even the smallest heartbeat deserves the loudest fight. That we must fight big for tiny hearts.
My daughter, the miracle that started it all, continues to thrive beyond our expectations. She walks, speaks, laughs, annoys; she lives in ways that once felt impossible. Every breath she takes is a testament to what’s possible when support meets survival.
And so perhaps the pause was never a retreat.
Perhaps it was a long, deep breath.
To come back.
Wiser. Softer. Stronger.
Ready, not to save the world, but to serve preterms and small babies again, from a place of wholeness.
Because even when we pause, the reality doesn’t.
And even in silence, the tiny hearts keep beating.
