Jesse Ramdeo

Se­nior Re­porter

jesse.ramdeo@cnc3.co.tt

The par­ents of twin ba­by girls who died at the Port-of-Spain Gen­er­al Hos­pi­tal have been hav­ing an un­easy time nav­i­gat­ing the way for­ward since the tragedy.

The twin girls were among sev­er­al ba­bies who died at the PoS­GH Neona­tal In­ten­sive Care Unit (NICU) due to a sus­pect­ed bac­te­r­i­al in­fec­tion.

Dur­ing an in­ter­view with Guardian Me­dia yes­ter­day, Travis and Jodie Moli­no ex­plained that feel­ings of over­whelm­ing loss and sor­row have been con­sum­ing them since the death of their girls.

Travis, 32, said their hearts dou­bled with joy and hap­pi­ness on news that twin girls were set to fill their lives.

“We were both so thrilled, my wife and I come from large fam­i­lies and the idea of my el­dest daugh­ter hav­ing sib­lings was very ex­cit­ing for us. We had start­ed buy­ing stuff, cribs, dou­ble walk­ing stroller, we had put in new linen clos­ets and cup­boards in our room in an­tic­i­pa­tion of them com­ing home,” Travis said.

On March 18, Jodie, 31, was ad­mit­ted to the PoS­GH, where she de­liv­ered the girls.

Im­me­di­ate­ly, El­la Luc­cia and Esme Valenti­na left their fa­ther in awe, as their moth­er re­mained un­der anaes­the­sia fol­low­ing the births.

Travis stat­ed, “It was bliss, I was so ex­treme­ly hap­py and over­whelmed to see them. Yes, I was a bit scared at first be­cause they came at 28 weeks, so I am wor­ried but I’m al­so ex­cit­ed to be a fa­ther again, it is a whole bunch of emo­tions wrapped up in one.”

The spe­cial bond be­tween the twin sis­ters, how­ev­er, was sev­ered just af­ter a few short hours.

“I would have seen them first, I came back in the day and saw them about 10 o’clock, then again in the evening and then I saw my daugh­ter, El­la, who is the younger one, when she passed away. She was alive for just around 22 hours.”

El­la, who was ad­mit­ted to the NICU and placed on in­tu­ba­tion, re­quired a blood trans­fer.

As the Moli­no fam­i­ly strug­gled with the heart­break­ing loss, they still had rea­son to hold on as Esme showed signs of en­deav­our­ing.

“Log­i­cal­ly, I know she is in the NICU so she is ob­vi­ous­ly in a crit­i­cal spot and I’m go­ing to see her twice a day and I’m see­ing that she is trudg­ing along. She’s get­ting bet­ter day by day, I’m see­ing her step down on the ven­ti­la­tor, she was go­ing up on her feeds, I’m hope­ful, I’m pos­i­tive.”

De­spite prayers for a mir­a­cle, the fam­i­ly’s hearts even­tu­al­ly sank even fur­ther three weeks lat­er and af­ter one blood trans­fu­sion, when Esme died.

Travis and Jodie said de­spite as­sur­ances and a promise from Health Min­is­ter Ter­rence Deyals­ingh in Par­lia­ment that fam­i­lies would get the med­ical records for their ba­bies by Wednes­day, they are yet to re­ceive any doc­u­ments.

Ac­cord­ing to a le­gal cor­re­spon­dence from Free­dom Law Cham­bers, the firm rep­re­sent­ing the fam­i­lies, the hos­pi­tal’s fail­ure to pro­vide the records to the fam­i­lies as in­di­cat­ed was an in­dict­ment on the in­sti­tu­tion.

“It is dif­fi­cult to un­der­stand why the NWRHA con­tin­ues to hide our clients’ med­ical notes and records and why it con­tin­ues to en­gage in this dan­ger­ous and hurt­ful pub­lic re­la­tions game, where­by it says one thing and does the com­plete op­po­site. It is dif­fi­cult to un­der­stand the sense of vi­o­la­tion and hurt and pain that our clients feel in light of the fact that the MoH gave a per­son­al com­mit­ment re­gard­ing the re­lease of their med­ical records which was breached.”

Travis said while he is com­mit­ted to now en­sur­ing the well-be­ing of his wife and fam­i­ly af­ter the or­deal, it has not been easy.

“I haven’t stopped and processed things. Yes, I’m keep­ing my­self busy, be­ing there for my fam­i­ly. I’d be ly­ing if I said there was a game plan here. Dev­as­tat­ing is the on­ly word I can use to de­scribe this.”

Both Travis and Jodie en­cour­aged oth­er fam­i­lies grap­pling with sim­i­lar sit­u­a­tions to keep in prayer and find so­lace and sup­port from those around them.