Baby Home gives back to moms at Addington Hospital

VOLUNTEERS and staff at the Durban North Baby Home paid a special visit to Addington Hospital last week to surprise mothers in the maternity ward with gifts for their newborn babies.

Jo Teunissen of the home said the project was inspired by an earlier visit by an Embrace group to King Edward VIII Hospital earlier this year. Having been to Addington and other government hospitals, Teunissen saw the need to give back and put a smile on the faces of mothers.

“Initially it stemmed from the visit to King Edward and I was saddened to see some of the children had no clothes to wear after being born because the mothers had nothing, so that touched my heart and made me want to give back. Often times we have excess items, be it clothing or creams or soaps which are donated to us and we then share with the other baby homes in the area. This time I wanted to directly focus on Addington Hospital and what we did was we used all the excess items donated to us by various outreaches and packed them into gift bags.

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“On Mandela Day at the home we had several initiatives and one of them was packing the gift bags by the gender of the baby and a few where the sex of the child was yet to be decided. Volunteers on the day packed 100 bags full of goodies which we distributed to moms at the hospital. So it was really to give the mothers a bit of hope,” she said.

According to Teunissen, only 40 mothers were in the maternity ward at the hospital.

“We left the rest of the gift bags to the matron of the hospital which would be distributed to mothers in neonatal care so that they wouldn’t be left out by the donations,” she said.

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