Abandoned newborn looks for a family

“We all took turns mothering Shivani and one of the night duty nurses even breast-fed her. But we are a hospital. How can we keep her?” said head nurse Ravi Goel.

The General Hospital has no children’s ward so Shivani was kept in the maternity ward, though a bout of neo-natal jaundice sent her off to a nearby paediatrics clinic for two days.

Named Shivani because she arrived at the Hospital on a Monday (a daydedicated to Lord Shiva), the little girl became quite the apple of every nurse’s eye. “She weighed about 2.5 kilos at birth and since she’s quite lively and active, we really enjoyed playing with her,” said Bimla Kumar, one of the staff nurses. Another nurse, Kaushalya, holds up the special baby soap, talc and milk powder they bought for Shivani, and the doll’s clothes she wore, all of which are being sent to the orphanage.

But ask if any of them would like to take the abandoned baby home and they hesitate. “We already have our families,” says one, while another nurse added: “Fewer people come forward to take a girl child home.”

Of course, there is no trace of who left the baby to die. “It’s either an unwed mother, or a family who didn’t want another girl child,” presumes Anil Malik, Deputy Commissioner, Fatehabad.

Female literacy in Fatehabad is barely 35 per cent, and Malik says that the bias against girls runs quite strong in the villages. However, after a local newspaper carried an item on Shivani’s miraculous journey from canal to hospital, “several childless couples have come to me with enquiries for adoption, but we have to follow the procedure laid down by the Hindu Adoption Maintenance Act,” says Malik, who has issued a directive to send the baby off to the orphanage.