He cried loudly. He could have been heard from across the halls.His shrieks were echoed by the other inhabitants of the basinets and incubators.
Seeing how tiny he was, it was easy to surmise that he’s a newborn. He looks like he’s still months away from standing up. Other than his cries, he utters no words. Only hours of silence separate his pained episodes of sorrowful agony. With the way his wailing resonated and bounced off the walls of the well-lit room, it almost seemed like he was asking for help.
You see, the boy has been in the Neonatal Intensive Care Unit since November of last year. He has been here since the day he was born.
One look at his thick medical record folder shows the constellation of symptoms and medical issues that the baby has.
One look at him would break your heart.
He has microcephaly. He also has a mass that fungates from the bridge of his nose. On the back of his head, a pig-tail like structure juts out. His mouth, lips and palate is deformed with all sorts of clefts, exposing the inner structures of his face.
And yes, his parents have already abandoned him.
His mother took misoprostol (Cytotec) in an effort to have him aborted, but instead of expelling her from her body, she dealt the child unspeakable congenital defects that makes the life of the child now worse than death.
Now he’s still on that basinet.
No visitors.
No one will ever claim him.
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I guess I won’t be seeing him. We’re not going to visit NICU soon. We’ll be at PICU instead. Anyway, I just hope his agony will end soon. We once had a brain dead baby at NICU. The parents were fighting: Should we just pull the plug or let him suffer? It was heart-wrenching when we had to tell the parents that their child finally died without them having to reach a conclusion.
I once delivered a baby at Fabella Hospital when I was in second year college. By the time I caught him, I knew he was dead. He wasn’t crying. In fact, he didn’t even look like a baby. He was as big as my palm, only a few months old. The mother also took Cytotec. If they don’t want to get pregnant, they should have tried condoms instead. Grr.
Ang sad naman. -_- So andun lang sya hanggang…
What a sad story.
Too bad we can’t have a rational debate about abortion in this country. I guess you can’t expect a government that’s afraid of contraceptives to even consider legalizing abortion.
Hot dang. What happens to him now?
Now I know what you’re talking about in that comment you left.
A highschool classmate of mine planned to have her baby aborted and we saw this capsule (baka cytotec yun.. not sure) in the chalk box. Our filipino teacher asked who owns it and she told us na pampalaglag yun. The teacher gave the capsule to the most chickboy in the class. When the teacher left, my female classmate went up to him saying “Akin na yan dahil akin yan”.
Her purpose of having the baby aborted was a failure. The baby had hydrocephalus and the father of the baby was so disappointed that he never went back… not until the baby died 9 months after =(
he’s too young not to feel being loved after all.