By Emilie Tournie, Published on March 21, 2026 at 11:11
Becoming a mother is not always an easy journey. Gisèle Béatrice Sonfack, a 42-year-old scientist and mother of two children living in La Chapelle-Saint-Mesmin, near Orléans (Loiret), wanted to share her story, anxieties, and the difficulties she encountered during her pregnancies, as well as the premature birth of her second son, through her book “The Child of Possibilities: a Journey through Resilience.”
“I have a rather unusual background”: a female scientist
Born in the small village of Fongo-Tongo in Cameroon, Gisèle grew up in a modest family. “I have an atypical background. I obtained a degree in electrical engineering and then pursued several masters in the same field. After that, I went to South Korea to train as an electrical engineering instructor.”
She completed her Ph.D. in the United States and worked for a solar company in Silicon Valley. She returned to Cameroon to contribute to the country’s development, working as a teacher at the university and then as a technical director at the port terminal in Douala.
Fascinated by innovation, she applied for the Schlumberger Foundation Prize (awarded to female scientists to support their work) while focusing her research on smart electrical networks.
In 2021, she continued her research on signal processing at the PRISM laboratory at Polytechnic Orleans until the end of 2023.
Two complicated pregnancies
Today a mother of two sons, Gisèle had her first child in 2019 before coming to France. “He was born prematurely due to placental detachment. We had to operate on him, and he was very small, only 1,180g. It was traumatic because he had to be in the neonatal unit in Cameroon.”
Fortunately, the boy is now in primary school and healthy. During her second pregnancy, Gisèle hoped for a normal experience, but it did not go as planned. Due to health problems, she was advised to consider a medical termination of pregnancy, both in Cameroon and in France.
“They told me the pregnancy was poly-malformative, and if the child was born, he could have severe deformities,” she explained. Despite the challenges, she carried the pregnancy to term and gave birth to a baby boy weighing 790g. He spent three months in intensive care before coming home and developing normally.
A book to share her story
After going through all of this, Gisèle wanted to share her journey in a personal development book titled “The Child of Possibilities: a Journey through Resilience,” published by Editions Baudelaire.
“I know many parents suffer from this. It’s a situation that destroys families. It was difficult, but it allowed me to discover myself, meet extraordinary people, and give a new dimension to our experiences. I wanted to write because I am not the only one who has experienced this,” she explained.
The main message she wanted to convey? “Anything is possible, even in the most serious situations.” After this first book, the scientist is currently working on a second one.
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