vlad.tribnet.com / Issue #164 / Social life / Reading article...

On March 25, a city ambulance brought a 35-year-old homeless woman to Vladivostok’s Maternity Home No. 1. She was filthy, unkempt, and lice-ridden, and a nurse helped bathe her and got rid of the lice.

She gave birth within hours to a premature girl who weighed only 1.6 kilos. The next day the new mother fled without giving her daughter a name. The nurses called the baby Lena.

Hard times are contributing to a surge of babies being abandoned in the maternity home as parents find themselves unable to care for children. In Soviet times, mothers seldom left their babies after giving birth, said Chief Physician Vitaly Melnikov. The number rose to 36 abandoned children per 1,000 births last year. And since March 12, when the hospital reopened after renovations, seven mothers have left their newborns to the care of Maternity Home No. 1.

Two days after Lena’s birth, Melnikov held the girl, swaddled in blankets like a papoose, and lifted a corner of the covering to reveal a tiny nose and closed eyes. The staff was preparing to take the girl to Children’s Hospital No. 2. Most children as diminutive and sick as Lena will die.

“Earlier when a woman rejected her child, she would cry. It was a real tragedy for her,” said Melnikov. “But now, we don’t see a single tear. Not even a prick of conscience.”

Maternity Home No. 1 is atypical, said Tatiana Burmistrova, chief physician of Primorye. This is the hospital to which homeless and destitute mothers are taken, and thus it has a higher rate of abandonment.

“You should not draw any conclusions about a social trend here,” she said.

In the maternity ward of the krai hospital, only one infant has been abandoned this year. While parents most often reject handicapped children at Maternity Home No. 1, parents at the krai hospital took home a baby who was blind, and another who was missing an arm, Burmistrova said.

Parents abandon their children for several reasons. If youngsters are born with physical handicaps, parents who are struggling financially often feel unable to take care of them. Other children are born to the poorest people in society – alcoholics, the homeless, and drifters. Most alarming , however, is the upturn in the number of healthy children who are abandoned.

“I know for sure that in rural areas, they haven’t been paid for two years, and they can’t feed their children,” Melnikov said.

These mothers tend not to have abortions for several reasons, he said. Some are fearful of the long-term health effects. Others, like a university student who abandoned a baby in March, hope until the last minute that a boyfriend or husband will stand by them, Melnikov said. When they are disappointed, some leave the child behind.

Orphanages, already filled with children whose parents are in prison or who were abandoned because of handicaps, are ill prepared to handle an increase in infants. Mayor Victor Cherepkov cut off funding for orphanages last year, and they have been scraping by on a third of their normal budget, said Victor Kasyan, director of the City Infants Orphanage.

When a mother plans to leave a child, it is obvious from the beginning: She refuses to feed the child. If she is capable of caring for the child, staff members will try to change her mind. “Sometimes they refuse to take the kid,” Melnikov said, “but by the fifth day, they change their minds.”