“My Child is Too Small. When Will I Take Her Home?”
— Sunita’s Story, In Her Own Words
My name is Sunita. I’m married to Akash. He works as a vegetable vendor.
That’s my life. That’s our life.

And three weeks ago, everything changed. When She Came Too Early
I had a premature delivery. It was about 21 weeks when things went wrong. The doctors said my baby needed to come out. Now. Before it was time.
I didn’t understand what that meant. All I knew was: my baby was coming, and she was too small.
When they placed her on the table, I remember thinking:
“That’s not a baby. That’s not possible. That’s too tiny to be real.”
But she was real. And she weighed just 1 kilogram.
Do you know what 1 kilogram feels like?
It’s the weight of a bag of flour. My daughter weighed as much as a bag of flour.

The First Problem: She Couldn’t Eat
Even before the infection, there was something else wrong. My baby couldn’t digest milk.
Whenever we tried to feed her—breast milk, formula, anything—she would vomit.
Her tiny stomach couldn’t handle it.
The doctors said: “Her digestive system isn’t developed yet.”
“When will it develop?” I asked.
“We don’t know,” they said. “Maybe tomorrow. Maybe next week. Maybe longer.”
So my baby is hungry, but she can’t eat.
She’s starving, but food makes her sicker.
And I can do nothing but watch.

Then Came the Infection
And then they told us: “Your baby has neonatal sepsis.”
More medical words. More things I didn’t understand.
But what I understood was: my baby is sick.
Really sick.
The kind of sick where hospitals put you