“Finding my baby was like finding a drop of water in a desert.” – Cedar News

After more than two months of separation, and for the first time since giving birth, Nour Al-Banna, a thirty-year-old Palestinian mother, was reunited with her two infant daughters, Lynn and Lian.

“I began to cry from joy and happiness. I could not believe that they were still alive. I had completely lost hope.” With these words, Nour began her talk about the journey to find the two Khadijas, after their evacuation from Al-Shifa Hospital in the Gaza Strip.

Nour did not think that a day would ever come when she would see her two infants. She told me in a phone call, while shedding tears, “I have not known anything about them since the war began. I have lost hope that they are alive. It is a miracle.”

Nour was pregnant with three fetuses before the war began, and due to some health complications, she was forced to undergo a cesarean section at Al-Shifa Hospital in the northern Gaza Strip on the 19th of last September. She was then in the seventh month of pregnancy. She gave birth to three children, two girls and a boy, and then returned to her home in Deir al-Balah in the central region of the Gaza Strip.

Four days later, the boy died, and the two girls, Lynn and Lian, remained in the incubators on ventilators, in the neonatal ward of the Al-Shifa Complex. Since then, their mother has never seen them.

Nour says, “After giving birth, I became extremely frustrated and sad after the death of my child and was unable to visit my two daughters. Then the war broke out… I could not go to see them. Then the Israeli forces began entering Al-Shifa Hospital and news spread about the death of a number of premature infants.”

Due to the chaos of war and the frequent disruption of communications in Gaza, Nour was unable to find out the fate of the two infants, but reports spread that premature infants at Al-Shifa Hospital were being removed from incubators due to power outages and running out of fuel.

On November 19, 31 premature babies in Al Shifa Complex were evacuated to the Emirates Crescent Hospital in Tal Al Sultan in the city of Rafah in the southern Gaza Strip. A day later, 28, including Lin and Lian, were transferred to Egypt for treatment.

The Palestinian Ministry of Health in Gaza had published on its Facebook account a list of the names of the 31 premature infants – who were evacuated from Al-Shifa Hospital – asking their families to go to the Emirati Al-Hilal Hospital to identify their children.

“They were crying from hunger and were very emaciated.”

Nour learned that her two infants were still alive, after her sister-in-law – who works as a doctor – told her about it, and she saw that the list published by the Ministry included two newborns bearing her name. The young mother says: “My sister-in-law told me that the names of the two babies are on the Ministry of Health’s list, and they are actually number 1 and 30 on the list. That’s when I started crying for joy, as this means they are alive.”

Nour quickly went to Al Hilal Emirates Hospital and found her two baby girls. She says she was able to identify them through “a ribbon bearing her name on their wrists.” Nour describes the first sight of her two infants, saying: “They were crying from hunger and were very emaciated. The doctors told me that they recovered in a difficult condition, and no one knows how the doctors managed to preserve their lives.”

The parents who arrived in Rafah were asked to sign a consent form for their children to travel to Egypt to receive treatment. Dr. Mohamed Salama, head of the neonatal department at the Emirates Crescent Hospital in Rafah, told the BBC that children whose parents did not attend, traveled accompanied by nurses.

Nour traveled with her two infants to Egypt, where the Egyptian health authorities transferred her to the Administrative Capital Hospital in Cairo, while a number of other infants were transferred to Al-Arish Hospital, either accompanied by their mothers or Palestinian nursing teams.

Dr. Salama told the BBC that only 12 parents were able to reach the hospital in Rafah to identify their premature children, noting that others did not come “either because they are stuck or because they were killed or injured in the northern Gaza Strip.”

“I want my child to stay in front of my eyes.”

Dr. Salama said that two parents of infants refused to transfer their children from Gaza to Egypt, including Warda and Ali Isbita, who preferred for their infant, Anas, to remain in the Emirates Crescent Hospital in Rafah to receive treatment.

Warda, a mother of seven other children, says: “I refused to send my child for treatment in Egypt because I could not believe that I had found him in the first place, and the doctors in Egypt would not give him the care that I would give him, or the care that the doctors would give him here.” I want my child to stay here in front of my eyes. I worked so hard to reach him.”

“My soul came back to find him.”

Ali, Anas’s father, said that his wife was unable to leave their seven children to accompany the infant to Egypt.

“Our other children need her, and as a father I do not want my child to be away from me again. It is a miracle. Finding him was like finding a drop of water in a barren desert, and it was as if my soul had returned to me by finding him.”

Ali, a science teacher at a school affiliated with the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees (UNRWA), says he did not expect to be reunited with his infant after more than 45 days of separation.

“I expected to find his body and go to bury him. I had lost hope.”

The child Anas’s parents were displaced from the northern Gaza Strip several times and are now residing in an UNRWA school in the city of Khan Yunis, south of the Strip, since October 13. Due to repeated displacement, they were unable to communicate with the doctors at Al-Shifa Hospital to find out anything new about their infant’s condition.

Warda says: “I learned about the news of the premature evacuation through the neighbors. I did not know that my child was alive. I was just looking for him.” She added that they tried to find Anas by searching for him in all the hospitals in the south, until doctors at Nasser Hospital in Khan Yunis told them that the premature infants had been transferred to the Emirates Crescent Hospital in Rafah.

Warda says: “The feeling was overwhelming when I learned that he was alive. I had lost hope and entrusted it to God.”

“I stuck my hand through the nursery and touched him for the first time.”

Warda entered the hospital with her husband, Ali, to search for Anas. Ali told the BBC: “My eyes were following the doctor’s finger as he passed the names on the list until I saw the name ‘Ibn Warda Asbita.’ I could not believe he was alive.”

The couple entered the nursery to see their baby. Warda said: “I searched for him a lot among the children, then I found him.” He had grown a little in size and his features were a little different from what he was at birth. I thanked God very much, as my son is still alive.”

These were the first moments of meeting between Warda and her baby. She says she touched it for the first time since she put it on. “I put my hand through the nursery and touched him for the first time, and then the doctors allowed me to hold him, hug him and kiss him.”

Anas, who was number 27 on the list of premature babies evacuated from Al-Shifa Hospital, suffers from a low level of hemoglobin in the blood and a stomach bacteria due to malnutrition.

But his mother says that he has now been discharged from the hospital and has returned to the embrace of his family at their place of displacement in Alonora School.

Warda adds, “He is among us now, and among his seven sisters.” We cannot describe our happiness at his return to our arms.”

Responsibility for the news: The Cedar News website is not responsible for this news, in form or content, and it only expresses the point of view of its source or writer.