“(So) because I went,” Pavlichenko says, choking on tears as his hour-old baby sleeps in the crib next to his hospital bed in the Polish capital, Warsaw.
“I didn’t want to leave. I had to.”
On February 24, when the Russian offensive began, Pavlyuchenko, then eight months pregnant, was woken up at 6 a.m., sounding air raid sirens through her hometown of Ivano-Frankivsk, a city in western Ukraine. On the way were the first Russian missiles.
Pavluchenko recalls the frantic push to escape over the next 72 hours. Her husband, medically unfit to serve in the army of Ukraine, was already in Poland.
She was desperate to be with her parents, grandparents and extended family.
But they all insisted, “Go to Poland.”
So, reluctantly, he begins to plan his dangerous escape from Ukraine.
“The missiles are flying. Where they might hit next, no one knows,” she recalls.
With this in mind, Pavlyuchenko rushed to pack. Once her bus reached the border, all she could think of for her unborn child was to fit it into a bag, allowing her to cross the border on foot.
“I was afraid of premature labor,” she says, as she remembers entering Poland.
The Polish customs officers, seeing him, gave the same fright. He quickly called an ambulance.
She was taken to a nearby hospital and eventually to Inflanka Specialist Hospital in Warsaw, where psychiatrist Magda Dutch is treating Ukrainian women.
“It’s unimaginable,” says Dutch. “They’re often on the run. They’re talking about shelling and bombardment, almost hours, sometimes days, that they spend in a bunker. They’re talking about running and bordering. And on the battlefield How difficult it was to go out. For someone who hasn’t seen the war, I don’t think it’s possible to imagine such pain and such tension.”
According to Poland’s health ministry, at least 197 Ukrainian babies have been born in Polish hospitals since the war began. When she fled, Pavlyuchenko had no idea that so many other Ukrainian women were in a similar situation.
For him, she felt all alone.
a ‘second war’
In another section of the hospital sits Tatiana Mikhailuk, 58, one of Dutch’s patients.
From his hospital bed, Mikhailuk tells the painful story of his escape from a city outside the Ukrainian capital, Kyiv. As soon as a missile fired from above, Mikhailuk ran away from home with his granddaughter in his arms.
The blasts had already blown up all the windows of his apartment building. As she and her husband left Bukad, an hour north of Kyiv with their grandchildren, something exploded on the left side of the road.
“We were crying and praying the whole time,” says Mikhailuk.
He made it on time.
Two days later, Russian missiles would destroy the bridges in their suburb.
Mikhailuk narrowly survived the attack on the house. But once he crossed the Polish border, he started bleeding.
Doctors at Inflaca Specialist Hospital diagnosed her with cervical cancer and performed emergency surgery.
“It’s like a second war for me,” says Mikhailuk. “They (the hospital) did everything possible to save me. I am very grateful to all the people of Poland. I will never forget their kindness and what they are doing for Ukrainians.
“I am grateful to Dr. Khristyna,” she adds, another Ukrainian refugee sitting in the corner of the room as we talk to her.
Christina doesn’t understand what title we should use to describe her.
At home in Lviv, Ukraine, she is a licensed gynecologist. But in Poland, his official title is “Secretary”.
“I’m helping,” said Christina, who asked CNN not to reveal her last name. is telling.
On February 24, Christina’s husband sent her a text message, saying, “Pack your things and go. The war has begun.”
Like many other Ukrainian women in the hospital, she ran with her young son.
When she arrived in Warsaw, a Polish woman took her in, becoming her host in a foreign city. His host moved his son to a new kindergarten where he began his adjustment to living in Poland.
Christina says she collapsed, consumed with grief and bewilderment.
She realized that sitting in an unfamiliar home would be bad for her mental health, so she considered volunteering at the train station, where she could cook for incoming refugees.
“When I pulled myself together, I remembered that I was a doctor. So, I have come here (at the hospital) to use this opportunity to help women,” she said.
“Women are lost. Women are tense. They are crying,” says Khristna, explaining how many Ukrainian women come.
“When I approach them and start talking in Ukrainian, it calms them down. I tell them there’s help here. And they calm down a bit. If they don’t understand something, they’re you. can turn.”
mixed feelings
Inflanka Hospital, specializing in obstetrics and gynecology, has opened its doors to all Ukrainian women. Eighty patients have been treated and 11 Ukrainian babies have been born since the start of the war.
The hospital says the refugees do not pay for any medical services. After leaving, postpartum care is also free, which is covered by clinics in Poland. The hospital tells CNN that all patients maintain contact after they leave the hospital and that if women struggle with accommodation, the Warsaw Family Support Center, a local welfare organization, provides accommodation.
Khristna is grateful for Warsaw’s generosity, but is angered by Russian President Vladimir Putin’s attacks on her country’s women and children.
“He intentionally and deliberately bombards children who are not to blame for anything. Children are innocent. But he’s doing it anyway and doing it consciously.”
The help that Christina and all the doctors at Infanca Hospital receive is the arrival of the youngest survivor of the war like Adelina.
He says that these new lives offer a ray of hope for the future.
But it’s more complicated for Pavlyuchenko, who struggles with all the feelings of new motherhood and the realities of life as a refugee.
They say that it is difficult to be happy giving birth to a child abroad.
He hopes that one day he will show beautiful and peaceful Ukraine, remembering his daughter.
But she is unsure where Adelina will grow up, if she knows her extended family, or even what primary language she speaks.
One thing is for sure: Adelina will know the whole journey of how and where she came to be in the world.
“We will tell him everything as it was. He must know the truth.”
Anna Odzenyak and Ksenia Medvedeva contributed reporting.