It’s 6pm and the ominous sound of the siren rises over Mikolaiv. Very calm, with their hands resting on their swollen bellies, the women slowly descend the two floors that lead to the basement of a maternity hospital in this Ukrainian city under Russian fire.
In silence, they settle into their beds, arranged in a room with a dirt floor. They arrived at the maternity unit only two or three days ago, but they are already used to it. Seven women are about to give birth in a city suddenly gripped by war.
Among them is Natalia Reznikova, 30, who is expecting her third child, another boy. “I’m not scared. I just pray I don’t have to give birth in the basement,” she explains, before heading downstairs to the shelter.
In another room, three mothers settled in with their newborn babies. Among them, Natalia and little Maria, their first child, born less than 24 hours ago.
Before the alert, the young mother, exhausted but radiant in her blue robe, returned to her room, supported by her partner Oleksander.
“We are happy parents,” smiles the young couple. Natalia says she was lucky: she didn’t have to give birth in the delivery room in the basement.
Alina Bondarenko, a young woman who is already having contractions, is with her partner in this room, which the doctors have tried to make as cozy as possible. In addition to two beds and a sofa, the environment has a calming aquarium.
“In times of peace, this place was used by plumbers or technicians. Four or five days ago we had two women who gave birth simultaneously in this room”, says the head doctor of the maternity, Andri Hribanov, who even remembers the weights of newborns, 5.18 kg and 5.4 kg.
The spectrum of Mariupol
During the alerts and bombings, if there is no time to take the women to the basement, the delivery takes place in the corridor of the obstetrics department, “between two walls because it is a little safer”, explains Hribanov.
The operating room, for complicated deliveries or cesarean sections, is located on the fourth floor of the building, “but it is very dangerous, because we need light, but we have become a target”, he adds, and is pleased that of the 49 deliveries since the beginning of the war , there were only three cesarean sections.
Almost half of the 49 women have had to give birth in the basement since February 24. Indeed, Mikolaiv is the scene of violent clashes as Russian forces want this city to fall before proceeding to the great port of Odessa, 130 km further west on the Black Sea coast.
“The Department of Health advised us to put a big red cross on the roof of the maternity hospital, but we have seen everything that happens, no convention is respected,” says Hribanov.
Several hospitals were hit by Russian bombing. In the besieged city of Mariupol, a maternity hospital was bombed a week ago.
“Pretty Woman”
The hallway of the maternity basement, lined with pictures of babies, also serves as a shelter for residents of the neighborhood, the elderly, women, children and even a dog.
When the alert goes off an hour later, everyone goes back upstairs, including Alina, the young patient who, the doctors hope, will be able to avoid the basement.
At 20:00, a new siren sounds and you have to go back down to the basement.
But doctors have decided that Alina, who is already in labor, will stay upstairs. Despite the warnings, the night seems calm.
In the second-floor delivery room, her husband can be heard singing to her between contractions. The young woman is silent, and the doctor, a kind-faced man, plays music.
Mylene Farmer. Sting. And “Pretty Woman” when the baby, little Snijana, is born.
