Team News Riveting
Amid the sounds of air raid sirens, Mariia Shostak, a 25-year-old woman living in the Ukrainian capital Kyiv, became the first woman to give birth in a bunker.
The cold basement with a corridor and small rooms on either side, is the cradles for newborns in the Kyiv hospital. The space has been in use was wardrobe for the hospital staff That has been the place where Mariia Shostak met her son for the first time.
“I had a complicated pregnancy, and I went to the maternity hospital early so that the child and I would be under medical supervision,” she describes the harrowing conditions she endured. The baby was born in Kyiv on February 25, or just “the second day” of Russia’s all-out war.
The news about Russia’s further invasion into Ukraine found Shostak in the hospital ward at 6 a.m. a day earlier. The doctor tried to remain calm, joking: “Don’t be afraid. Women gave birth even in besieged Leningrad.”
Shostak was having light contractions when the siren went off. The nurses helped her get on a wheelchair and come down to the hospital bomb shelter.
It was very crowded inside. In addition to all the patients and staff, residents of neighboring homes had come there to hide from Russian missiles. After a few hours, she returned to the ward but was told to be ready to hide any moment again.
She didn’t sleep that night as her contractions became more and more intense, and she was losing her nerve from constantly scrolling through newsfeeds on her phone.
In the morning, Shostak had to go to the shelter again. Soon afterwards the doctor examined her and said she would be delivering a baby right there. She called her husband, asked him to buy some medicine and groceries on the way to the hospital, but he couldn’t get there in time as he was stuck in traffic.
There was another air raid alert when her husband showed up at the hospital’s bunker. He came together with the nurse who held their son, and Shostak finally got a chance to meet him properly.
