Often, we take our baby’s cry and that loud wailing for granted. Raj Kumari’s baby’s cry was weak, to the extent that it was faintly heard during his birth. Doctors saw his weak cry as a sign of despair.

Raj Kumari Devi and her husband, Manoj Kumar, migrated to Bangalore for work. He was working in a club as part of the billing department and earning Rs 25,000 a month. To sustain themselves in a big city like Bengaluru, they were struggling to make ends meet as Manoj was the sole breadwinner of the family.

Raj Kumari was delighted to know she was pregnant with twins. Two little ones were just enough to fill the house with joy and laughter. She delivered the twin boys prematurely at 32 weeks.

Both babies suffered from issues that are common in preemies. They had respiratory distress, which gave them gruntled breathing; they suspected sepsis combined with neonatal

Hyperbilirubinemia. Neonatal hyperbilirubinemia is a condition where newborns have too much bilirubin in their blood. In simple terms, what is referred to as “jaundice” . About 80% of preemie babies suffer from this condition. Twin 1 weighed 1.58 kg, and twin 2 weighed 1.48 kg. The twins had to stay for at least 15 days in the NICU.

Manoj, being the sole breadwinner, was worried about how to manage the expenses of treatment for his two precious little lives. The Neonates Foundation came to him to support his babies’ treatment financially. The team of neonatologists and nurses nursed the babies in a temperature-neutral environment, eliminated the sepsis infection, and gave them phototherapy to treat jaundice. Today, when he sees his two little lives, about three months old, laughing and giggling or even crying, he is ever grateful to have had a support system around him like the Neonates Foundation of India and the doctors and nurses who made sure his little lives have a wonderful future ahead of them in this big city.