Durban - MORE than 100 babies were born around KwaZulu-Natal on Christmas Day.
Life Westville Hospital welcomed six babies, five boys and a girl, who were all born before noon, according to staff at the hospital.
Janeen Moodley, 36, of Shallcross said she was “overjoyed” with her Christmas gift which she did not expect to arrive on Christmas Day. Moodley gave birth to a baby boy, Ayush, via Caesarean section. He is her first child.
Moodley, who works as a finance assistant, said the pregnancy was difficult but everything went well in the end and she gave birth to her healthy 3.5kg baby at 8.06am. Her first concern after the birth was whether he was in good health. She mused that he was “quite a screamer” and she expected to have many sleepless nights.
Her husband Ashwin Sookrajh said he was ecstatic.
“Thank God everything worked out,” he said.
He said it had been an emotional time and he had to hold back tears when Ayush came into the world.
A beaming Sookrajh said young Ayush would be a Liverpool Football Club supporter in future.
Janelle Moodley, 32, of Reservoir Hills, said her son Calum was born at 9am. “He was supposed to come on January 4. He was two weeks early,” she said. She described her son as a Christmas gift after trying for five years to have a child. He was born via Caesarean section. Moodley said she planned to leave hospital tomorrow and the couple would have a family gathering where her father-in-law would cook a meal.
KwaZulu-Natal Department of Health said there were 95 babies born, 50 girls and 45 boys by 6pm last night.
The first babies were born at midnight at Queen Nandi Memorial Hospital in eMpangeni, and at Mahatma Gandhi Memorial Hospital in Phoenix according to the department.
The youngest of the mothers was a 14-year-old who delivered her baby at Vryheid Hospital.
The father is an 18-year-old. Health MEC Nomagugu Simelane-Zulu said it was statutory rape and a form of gender-based violence to impregnate a child under the age of 16.
“The likelihood is that the 14-year-old mother could have been impregnated at the age of 13,” Simelane-Zulu said. Other new mothers included a 16-year-old and an 18-year-old.
“We believe pregnancies such as these are a form of gender-based violence. We are going to start implementing the law,” Simelane-Zulu said.
She said Premier Sihle Zikalala issued an instruction to implement programmes to deal with teen pregnancy.