When the land started shaking on April 25, Rupakheti was on the third floor of her rented apartment at Shovabhagwati with her husband. Afraid that she might hurt her unborn baby, she remained where she was rather than run for safety. But the 7.8 magnitude shock was accompanied by numerous aftershocks and she did run for safety on a few occasions which she fears might have caused early delivery.

Binita Adhikari gave birth to twin babies almost exactly a month prior to the expected date. The twenty-five-year-old mother, who had come out of the operation theater at the Paropakar Maternity Hospital on Friday morning, said she had been expecting a normal delivery. “I knew that I had twins but during my last visit to hospital, the doctor told me I would have a normal delivery,” Adhikari said. “Without a proper shelter and constant aftershocks, I had started worrying about delivering twins and keeping them safe at such a chaotic situation,” said Adhikari who is living in a tent as her rented house at Kandaghari has been severely damaged.

However, Bishowrupa Prajapati of Thimi was not as lucky as Rupakheti and Adhikari. Prajapati lost her baby in the 26th week of her pregnancy. “She was fine until a week ago. Then she said she could not feel the baby moving and we rushed her to the hospital but could not save the baby,” said Prajapati’s mother Krishna Devi. “The earthquake has rattled her so much that she had stopped eating properly and she had to run around in the early days of the quake to find a safe place.”

Gynecologists say cases of miscarriages, premature babies and Intrauterine Fetal Demise (IUFD) have gone up post earthquake. The IUFD is a medical term which means death of fetus after 20 weeks of pregnancy. “We are attending high number of such cases after the earthquake,” said Jamuna Kiran Poudel, a senior gynecologist at Bhaktapur Hospital.

According to Poudel, though the quakes do not cause any harm, but constant running around, stress level and poor nutrition and hygiene are the reasons behind these problems.  “Pregnant mothers in their first trimester and the last trimester are more at risk during these situations,” Poudel said.

Bibhushan Neupane, a gynecologist at Paropakar Maternity Hospital, said there has been a significant rise in the number of such cases in the hospital. “We attended up to 15 such cases in a day after the quake but the number of such cases is slowly going down of late,” Neupane said.

Similar trends were found in Chile after the country was rattled by 7.8 magnitude earthquake in 2005. A research carried out by Florencia Torche, a sociologist at New York University, had found that expectant mothers who were exposed to the earthquake in Chile were more likely to give birth prematurely than were pregnant women in other unaffected regions.

The findings showed a detrimental effect of being in-utero during a major earthquake. Infants exposed to earthquake during their first trimester of gestation had much higher chances of being born premature – 8 percent of those born during the earthquake, compared with about 5 percent of those born before and after in the affected region.

Doctors said the expecting mothers need a lot of rest and mental peace in post quake period. “I have found expecting mothers to be more stressed and that triggers the natural delivery process,” Neupane said. He also stressed that giving birth is the first hurdle but keeping both the baby and the mother safe during these hard times is another challenge. “Both the mother and the newborn need a lot of care, nutritious food and proper hygiene,” he added.