Ukrainian mother says everyone helped her during difficult pregnancy

By Davit Kachkachishvili and Burc Eruygur

DONETSK/ISTANBUL (AA) - A Ukrainian mother said on Wednesday that everyone around helped her during a difficult pregnancy period, amid intense clashes between Russian and Ukrainian forces in the country’s eastern region.

"We stayed in the shelter for a long time. Neighbors helped me there. We had a hard time. My sister, who has two children, also supported me. Everyone helped each other, like a family," Tatiana Gaidachenko, a 25-year-old mother living in Lyman city in Ukraine’s eastern Donetsk region, told Anadolu.

Noting that she gave birth to her fourth child a few days ago, Gaidachenko said she was taken by volunteers to the maternity ward in the nearby city of Sloviansk, where she was treated with her baby for several days.

Gaidachenko also said she was about a month pregnant when the Russian forces began to attack the city and that she tried to survive by taking shelter in a warehouse under the apartment she lived in, to protect herself from intense bombardment.

"I was calming myself down. I was trying to give myself morale. After a difficult pregnancy in Lyman, I had to give birth to my baby at home," she said, adding that being in the middle of a heavy conflict is difficult for everyone, but even harder for a pregnant woman.

She further said Russia continues to bombard Lyman despite the front line being far from the city itself, prompting her to leave the region for the capital Kyiv now that her baby was born.

"We will stay there (Kyiv). They will give us a room. Volunteers will also help," she said, adding that her other children had previously been evacuated from the Donetsk region for safety reasons.