An American couple is asking for a rapid rescue for the sake of their two premature babies’ health.
Alex Spektor, 46, and Irma Nuñez, 48, from Georgia, are doing everything they can to keep their newborn babies, Lenny and Moishe Spektor, safe.
The couple whose twins were born prematurely in Kyiv on Friday through a Ukrainian surrogate, Katya, are desperately seeking help and a way to rescue them as Ukraine continues to be invaded by Russia.
Spektor and his partner, Nuñez, have been glued to their devices, waking at 5 am each day to immerse themselves in the latest news from Ukraine and digest the stream of messages flooding their phones from 5,000 miles away.
In Kyiv, their surrogate was carrying twins for the couple, and she and the babies had endured weeks of terrifying health complications. There were seven more weeks until the due date, but Russian forces started to bear down on the capital city.
The twin boys were born at 32 and a half weeks, two months early, through a surrogate at Adonis maternity hospital in Kyiv, after a “complicated” pregnancy.
Due to their small size, the babies who weigh around 1.8 kilos each are now facing terrifying health complications including having trouble breathing as war rages right outside the hospital walls.
As “staff and supplies dwindle” at the “unstable and dangerous” hospital, the parents are desperate to transfer the six-day-old babies to a safer area. The parents are looking for a hospital with an underground bomb shelter. They are also searching for a way to get their children and Katya out of Ukraine when it is safe to do so.
Spektor recalled: “They came into the world two months early, at the end of a complicated pregnancy and the beginning of a war. I get a video call from this beautiful young woman, who appears a little bit drunk, and I’m like, “I’m sorry, who are you?” And she says, “You have two beautiful sons.”
Born premature and with full heads of hair, twins Lenny and Moishe brought new life during wartime. Spektor told The Washington Post: “It feels like a schizophrenic experience,” Nuñez agreed to say: “This has been the longest weeks of our lives.”
Nuñez and Spektor now face the same challenge as a number of other families who are trying to bring home adopted children and babies born to Ukrainian surrogates as embassies shutter, military vehicles clog the roadways, ambulances are diverted to the war effort, and Russia launches missiles and airstrikes.
As preemies, Lenny and Moishe require intensive care and need a special medical transport. Doctors in Kyiv told the parents the babies need to stay in the hospital for at least another four days before they can be transferred to another regional clinic farther from the most intense fighting.
The page states that the parents are heading for Warsaw, Poland, where they plan to coordinate medical transport for their boys out of Kyiv and Ukraine. They also hope to rescue Katya and her six-year-old son and possibly two other newborns.
He already detailed the challenges he faced in finding special milk for premature babies amid the crisis. He said: “I talked to this pharmacy in the morning. By afternoon, when one of our contacts got there, it was already shelled and it was closed.”
Spektor has even called on President Joe Biden for help. He said: “Just get our babies out. If that’s not possible, at least to live somewhere westward in Ukraine, where they would be safe.”
The twins cannot be moved without medical support. They still need some help with breathing and monitors, medicines, and equipment in case of distress while on the move.
During the pregnancy, Katya began to develop a condition where her body “attacked” the babies due to RH-incompatibility. Then, when she went into labor early, she had to spend three hours in an ambulance due to traffic from military vehicles.
Despite the battle the tiny babies had to face, Spektor feels hopeful that his sons will make it home. He concluded: “We have these two lives born, and their own journey into this world was so difficult, and all of a sudden to have them born in a war zone among all this devastation feels incredibly hopeful.”
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