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A miracle amid the destruction
08/05/2008 21:41 - (SA)
Ed Cropley
Bogalay - Than Win lost seven of her 10 children to Cyclone Nargis. On Wednesday, the 41-year-old gave birth to her 11th child amid the death and destruction in Myanmar's Irrawaddy delta.
"After what happened, this is a beautiful present," she said, lying on a wooden table in one of the few houses left standing by the wall of water swept up by Saturday's storm.
"I'm so happy he survived," she told Reuters, breast-feeding the hour-old infant.
The boy's name is Chit Oo Mg, or "First Love" in English, and neighbours agreed the official time of his birth - 20:46 - was highly auspicious.
With at least 10 000 dead in this town in the heart of the Myanmar's Irrawaddy delta, he is indeed one of the lucky ones.
Having survived the storm surge by clinging for two hours to a tree beside her house, Than Win went into labour at dusk, just as the first medical team arrived in the town, 90km southwest of Yangon.
Five members of the team rushed her into a makeshift clinic in the concrete house and attached her to an intravenous drip.
An hour later, by the half-light of a kerosene generator chugging away in the corner, Chit Oo Mg was born.
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