In Kyiv, a woman gave birth to a son in a shelter during an attack

A baby boy was born at Kyiv City Maternity Hospital No. 2 during the Russian attack on September 24. His mother, Alona, went into labor in a regular hospital room, but due to the explosions, the medical staff urgently moved her to a makeshift shelter. That is where she gave birth.

 

This was Alona’s first childbirth. At first, everything was going smoothly in a regular delivery room at the maternity hospital. But during a drone attack on Kyiv, an air raid alert was declared in the capital. At first, she was moved to the hallway, where she could take cover behind two walls. But when the explosions grew louder, the medical staff decided not to take any chances and rushed her to an underground shelter.

 

Alona was already in the stage where contractions had begun. So they practically had to lead her by the arms to the shelter. “I was halfway through labor. With the contractions, they led me by the arms to the shelter. The shelter has a room specifically equipped for childbirth, and that’s where it all ended,” the woman said.

 

The underground facility has a specially equipped birthing area. That’s where Alona gave birth to her first child. During the explosions, she barely thought about the danger. She says all her thoughts were focused on the baby. “When you’re giving birth—whether it’s war or a flood—you don’t care. You only start to realize everything later,” Alona shared.

According to her, the true realization of what was happening around her didn’t come until the next morning. That’s when she picked up her phone and read the news about the aftermath of the nighttime attack. “When I picked up my phone in the morning and read the news, that’s when I realized what had happened. Tears welled up in my eyes from what I’d been through,” the new mother recalls.

 

Maternity Hospital No. 2 itself was also damaged by the Russian attack. The shock wave was so powerful that it shattered the windows in the rooms. At the hospital, they showed the bed where Alona had been lying before the alarm went off. It was near the window, and after the explosions, it was covered in shards of glass. Glass also shattered near the changing table. It wasn’t just the maternity hospital that was affected by the blast wave. The neighboring medical center was also damaged. Windows were blown out in nearby high-rise buildings.

 

Despite everything, the mother and her son are doing well. The parents haven’t decided on a name for the boy yet. They say that after such a birth, he is special to them. At the maternity hospital itself, the baby is already being called a sort of good-luck charm. He was born on one of the most difficult nights for the capital, but his arrival brought a ray of hope to the medical staff and his family in the midst of the attack. 

As a reminder, Russia launched a missile attack on Kyiv on the night of September 24, leaving two dead and eight injured.

Earlier in Sumy, water supply was restricted following an airstrike due to power outages.

We should add that drones attacked the temporarily occupied Donetsk and Luhansk regions overnight.

As a reminder, Russia struck Kharkiv on the night of September 23, resulting in one fatality.

On the morning of September 23, an air raid alert was declared in Kyiv and several regions due to the threat of UAVs.