On the night of November 6, 2018, at Maternity Hospital No. 4 in Kaliningrad, Zamira Akhmedova, who was six months pregnant, gave birth to a boy measuring 32 centimeters and weighing 714 grams. It was her first and long-awaited child.
Right after the delivery, she managed to see her son. She was then put under anesthesia so the placenta could be removed; according to the article, complications arose because of the mother’s health condition.
In the morning, the acting head physician of the maternity hospital, Yelena Belaya, came to Akhmedova’s room and suggested that she go see the baby. The boy was lying in an incubator in the intensive care unit, where premature infants are nursed. With him was neonatologist and resuscitation specialist Elina Sushkevich, who had been called in from the Regional Perinatal Center.
As recounted in the text, Belaya told the mother that the child would most likely not survive until the next day and that, at that moment, his life was being sustained only by the machines connected to him.
According to Zamira Akhmedova, she fell to her knees and begged the doctors not to switch off the machines.
About an hour later, she was told that the doctors had been unable to save the baby.