Mothers in Kharkiv maternity hospital hide babies under blankets during bombardment

Shelter of Kharkiv maternity hospital. Jana, 32, is holding her three-week-old son, Misha. Photo: Dmitri Kotjuh

Thirteen infants who were born immediately before the war or during it are spending their first days of life in the bomb shelter of the Kharkiv regional hospital’s maternity center.

“He is already a hero,” says Yana, 32, about his son Misha, who is by today 19 days old. Misha was born prematurely on February 19. He weighed 1.4 kilograms and stayed in the intensive care department of the maternity hospital until the war broke out. Together with his mother, he was then relocated to the shelter which is actually the cellar of the hospital. He has spent already 12 days in the cramped conditions underground.

“Of course you can hear here how the city is being bombed,” Yana told us. “I am terribly scared at these moments, I try to tuck Misha tight under the blanket and protect him, so that he would not be afraid.”

The maternity hospital is half a kilometer away from the Kharkiv Freedom Square, which came under intensive bomb strikes of the Russian air force on March 1. Houses in the streets surrounding the hospital have also received hits. The hospital has been spared so far.

The apartment of Yana’s family was in an apartment house in central Kharkiv next to the Ukrainian air force flying school hostel. The Russian air force attacked the hostel on March 1 as well. Yana’s house was hit by three rockets and she says that nothing was left of her apartment.

“My grandmother left the city for the countryside with our eight-year-old daughter, but her father is at the front, he is defending us. He has not yet seen Misha,” Yana said.

Misha sleeps well in daytime but not so well at night. “I cannot sleep,” Yana said. “Sometime we manage, sometimes it is hard,” she added about her own emotions.

Yana does not know yet when she and her son can leave the hospital shelter. “He cannot yet eat and his body temperature is unstable,” she said. She promised to leave for the countryside to her grandmother after being discharged. “Grandfather will come to take us.”

On a bed next to Yana sat Yelena, 36, with her daughter Milena, who was born on February 14. Yelena hoped yesterday that they could be discharged the same day. “We shall immediately leave the city for Kupyansk. It is more peaceful there,” she said. Kupyansk is a small town 120 kilometers from Kharkiv.

“Of course, there is stress,” she said about the effect of the constant bomb strikes on her and the baby. “One has to keep calm. Yana and I support each other. It will all be all right.”

Irina Kondratyuk (50), director of the 140-place maternity hospital, says that they are trying to discharge all mothers as soon as possible. “Many leave the city immediately after being discharged,” she added.

A separate room of the shelter was reserved for two infants without mothers. One of them was three and the other four days old, having been born during the war already.

Vika Komava (43), obstetrician of the hospital’s complicated births department, said that the babies had initially been in the intensive care ward but were brought to a safer location after they were able to breathe independently. The nurses placed them in improvised warm cradles. “They have mothers but since they cannot eat independently, they must stay under our constant care. Their mothers stay with their families in the city,” Komava said.

The parents had not even had the time to name one of the babies. The nurses call her Solomia between themselves.

The intensive care department for the newborn is still on the fourth floor of the hospital, despite the constant bombing of the city. The equipment for keeping the babies alive cannot be relocated to the cellar.

Women expecting birth were also lying on the above-ground first floor of the hospital.

Veronika, 38, was expected to give birth to her boy two days ago but there is no sign of the birth so far. “It could easily be due to all that stress we are having in the city,” she said. “It seems that the child does not want to enter this world.”

Veronika, who lives in central Kharkiv, said that she had yet no idea whether their family would escape from the city after the birth. “The most important thing now is to give birth to a healthy child; that is all I am concentrating on,” Veronika said. “We do not want to leave the city, I love it very much. I would like to stay.”

Due to complications with her pregnancy, Veronika did not risk with leaving the city in the beginning of the war when the Russian army opened fire at Kharkiv on the first day. “We just could not take the risk of traveling anywhere,” she said.

Thirteen-year-old daughter is waiting for Veronika at home while her husband is also defending Ukraine. “It was really scary when the aircraft began to fly overhead. Scary especially because of the children, everybody was under terrible stress,” she described the days in her central Kharkiv apartment before reaching the maternity hospital. “We were reading books and hugging each other.”

“They [the Russian army and air force] are simply smashing the city. This is violence. Let the Russians come and see what is going on here,” she added.

Since the beginning of the war until yesterday, four children injured in Russian bomb strikes had been brought to the Kharkiv regional hospital. Two of them required surgery.

The most seriously injured was Maxim, 17. He had been driving in a car with his mother, father and five-year-old sister. “Our car was hit by a Grad rocket,” said the boy’s mother Svetlana Belko (43). “Maxim saved his sister by shielding her with his body. He received a splinter wound in the lung and lost a lot of blood. Fortunately our doctors managed to save his life.”

Yesterday was relatively peaceful in Kharkiv. Heavy weapons fire struck mainly Saltovka, the largest residential area of Kharkiv, which is already the worst-hit district of the city. The correspondents of Postimees could not reach it due to bombardment. Saltovka was also the place where Maxim received his injuries.

“The enemy keeps attacking civilian targets every day,” said Alyona Stryzhak, head of the Kharkiv patrol police force.

According to the Kharkiv regional authorities, at least 170 civilians have been killed in the city since the beginning of the war.

The Saltovka district of Kharkiv, which used to be the home of some 200,000 people, lies immediately behind the frontline and the Russian forces attempting to break through are therefore attacking it with direct fire. The Russian army is currently 7–10 kilometers away from Saltovka, according to the Kharkiv police. Kharkiv itself with its 1.4 million residents is 40–50 kilometers away from the border with Russia.