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Newborn girl clings to life after student mother dumps her in hospital toilet rubbish bin
Last updated at 3:49 PM on 11th May 2011
A newborn girl is in a critical condition today after her mother gave birth in a hospital toilet and dumped the baby in a rubbish bin.
Dawa Lama, 23, arrived at a hospital on Tuesday and started the pre-birth check-in process, before dumping her newborn in a toilet near the emergency room entrance.
The baby was found after staff noticed blood inside a bathroom at Elmhurst Hospital Centre in Queens, New York, and the mother had left the hospital, police said.
Taken into custody: Dawa Lama, 23, arrived at a hospital and started the pre-birth check-in process, before giving birth and dumping her newborn in a toilet
Beauty school student Lama left her critical baby before being found by police while sleeping at her home just three hours later and taken into custody.
Her newborn girl has since been moved to North Shore-Long Island Jewish Hospital (NS-LIJ) and is still in a critical condition, an NS-LIJ spokesman told MailOnline today.
‘She never told me (about the pregnancy). I didn't know,’ her mother Seri Sherpa said.
‘She said, “I'm getting fat”,' Ms Sherpa told the New York Daily News. 'I said: “Tell me the truth. Do we have to go to the hospital?”. She said: “No, everything's all right”.’
It’s not yet clear what charges she may face, as New York State law allows mothers to leave a baby within five days of its birth at any city hospital with no questions asked.
Hospitals are considered ‘safe havens’, therefore absolving mothers who abandon their children from criminal abandonment charges.
Ms Sherpa moved to New York with her daughter from Nepal four years ago and said the baby is alive and she was going to try to see it at Elmhurst last night.
Scene: Lama left her baby girl shortly after giving birth in the toilets of Elmhurst Hospital Center in Queens, New York, and was found by police hours later
Lama's boyfriend, Bishnu Gurung, 28, a restaurant worker, also said he did not know she was pregnant but vowed to take care of the baby.
‘I didn't know she was carrying a baby,’ he told the New York Daily News. ‘I always asked her: “Your belly is growing. Is there something I should know?”
‘If that's my baby, I'm going to take care of it.’
A 14-year-old girl from Brooklyn, New York, was investigated in February after she hid her pregnancy from her mother and a dead newborn was found in her bedroom.
A doctor realised she had recently given birth after she walked into hospital with heavy bleeding, and the dead baby boy was later found in a plastic bag behind her bed.