Mom deserts day-old baby

Cops arrest woman, take her back to hospital in handcuffs

A MOTHER who abandoned her critically ill newborn baby at Dora Nginza Hospital was brought back to the hospital yesterday in handcuffs.

Sisanda Deliwe, 33, of Kwazakhele left her baby, whom she has not yet named, at the hospital when he was just one day old.

She said yesterday she had given birth to the little boy on Saturday, four weeks early.

“They took him away from me after I had him. I went to see him on Sunday,” Deliwe said.

Later on Sunday, she left the hospital without being discharged and not saying a word to anyone.

“I didn’t feel ready to be a mom,” she said.

Social worker Pamela Rubushe said Deliwe had two other children who had been placed in the care of their grandmother in Peddie. Deliwe did not dispute this. She admitted that she had left her sick baby at the hospital and had gone to see her boyfriend.

She and the boyfriend are still discussing whether or not he is the father of the child as she also has another boyfriend, who claims the child is not his.

The baby, who is on a ventilator, has nothing when it comes to material goods – no clothes, no nappies and no toiletries.

In the busy neonatal intensive care unit (NICU) unit yesterday, mothers fussed over their babies as Deliwe, forced to be there as a result of police action, sat watching from a bench nearby.

“Nobody told me that he needed a name,” Deliwe said.

-Estelle Ellis