Triple delight: Kerala nurse gives birth to baby boy on home soil after repatriation on Mother's Day

It turned out to be a triple delight for a pregnant Kerala nurse as she returned home from Maldives on board an Indian Navy vessel along with over 600 others and within hours gave birth to a baby boy here on Sunday -- Mother's Day. Sonia Jacob, working in a hospital in Maldives, delivered the baby boy through cesarean section (surgery) at 5.40 pm at a private hospital, Ernakulam District officials said.

The woman, hailing from Eraviperoor village in Pathanamthitta district, complained of uneasiness soon after her safe embarkation from "INS Jalashwa" ship that berthed at the Cochin Port at 9.30 am. She was immediately admitted to a government hospital for women and children at Mattancherry and later shifted to the private hospital at Kalamassery.

Ernakulam District Collector S Suhas congratulated both Sonia and her husband Shijo, a nurse working in the state, on being blessed with the baby on Mothers' Day. The couple had been married for six years and this is their first child.

The ship was the first to return from overseas as part of the Centre's Vande Bharat Mission to repatriate Indian citizens stranded in foreign countries due to the coronavirus lockdown and carried 698 people evacuated from Maldives. Of them, nineteen were pregnant women and 14 children.