“I ask­ing ques­tions, right through.”

This is the mind­set of a soon-to-be moth­er who is sched­uled to de­liv­er her ba­by at the Port-of-Spain Gen­er­al Hos­pi­tal (PoS­GH) in a mat­ter of months.

Her think­ing comes af­ter sev­en ba­bies died at the Neona­tal In­ten­sive Care Unit of the Port-of-Spain Hos­pi­tal. The ba­bies died be­tween April 4-7 from sep­sis af­ter three in­fec­tions spread at the ward. Yes­ter­day, news spread there could be as many as 11 cas­es af­ter more par­ents stepped for­ward to say their ba­bies died af­ter con­tract­ing in­fec­tions at the same ward.

Yes­ter­day, Guardian Me­dia spoke with ex­pec­tant par­ents whose ba­bies are set to be de­liv­ered at the PoS­GH.

One woman, who spoke out­side the hos­pi­tal af­ter she vis­it­ed the clin­ic for a check-up, said she would be watch­ful.

Al­ready a moth­er of one, the woman, who on­ly want­ed to be iden­ti­fied as Kay, said she has no choice but to have her ba­by at the hos­pi­tal since she can­not af­ford to pay for a pri­vate hos­pi­tal. But she said she would be leav­ing no stone un­turned when it comes to the de­liv­ery and care of her ba­by.

“I can’t af­ford to lose my child af­ter nine months and take that easy you know, I don’t know how to feel, that re­al hard girl,” the ex­pec­tant moth­er said.

She sup­port­ed the de­ci­sion of the par­ents of the ba­bies who died to sue, but be­lieves they are tak­ing le­gal ac­tion to get an­swers. Kay said it is not about com­pen­sa­tion, since all par­ents re­al­ly want is for their ba­bies to be alive and well.

“They want to get to the bot­tom of things, them just get­ting an an­swer with the hos­pi­tal telling them it is a bac­te­r­i­al out­break, they don’t know how truth­ful it is. At the end of the day it’s their child you know,” she ex­plained.

Yes­ter­day, Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley said he was “par­tic­u­lar­ly sad” be­cause of the sit­u­a­tion and as­sured that the Gov­ern­ment will do every­thing to find out what led to their deaths.

But even with Gov­ern­ment’s ac­count­abil­i­ty, the moth­er de­scribed the mood in­side the clin­ic she at­tend­ed as som­bre and a room filled with wor­ried faces.

“Every­body just silent and watch­ing around, they pay­ing at­ten­tion,” Kay said.

An­oth­er moth­er, who is al­so ex­pect­ing her sec­ond child and did not want to be iden­ti­fied, said it’s scary know­ing she has to de­liv­er her ba­by in the same place the ba­bies died.

“What I go do again, it is what it is,” she said de­spon­dent­ly.

She too said she’d have her guard up when it’s time to de­liv­er her ba­by, who her son hopes is a ba­by girl.

And a man whose com­pan­ion just de­liv­ered his sec­ond child at PoS­GH said he’s pray­ing for his child’s safe­ty and all the oth­er new par­ents.

“She’s alive and well, healthy...It’s fright­en­ing, I just hope for the best for my child,” he said.

The new fa­ther and two ex­pec­tant moth­ers sent their con­do­lences to the af­fect­ed fam­i­lies.

“Oh my God, I have no words, you know what it is to car­ry a ba­by for nine months and then no ba­by to car­ry home,” an­oth­er moth­er said.