By RHONDOR DOWLAT Thursday, November 22 2007

click on pic to zoom in

THIS IS MY SON: Baby Jeremiah Obadiah Henry, with eyes wide open, in the safe hands of his parents Sheldon Henry and Nekeisha Noel yesterday outside t...

THE mother of baby Jeremiah Obadiah Henry who was stolen from the Post Natal Unit of the Mount Hope Women’s Hospital last Friday, yesterday vowed to tell her son of the unfortunate details surrounding his abduction, when he is old enough to understand.

Hugging her baby tightly, Nekeisha Noel, 22, of Santa Cruz Old Road, in an interview with Newsday said the experience she endured was something she would never like to relive.

Noel described it as a living nightmare and thanked God at every breathing moment of the day for reuniting her with her son. “I will never go back on God for saving my child and of course keeping him safe and healthy while he was in the hands of his kidnapper. God was with me right through this emotional and physical torment and just like the poem Footsteps, he carried me on his shoulders and definitely had my child in his hands,” Noel said.

Shortly before midnight on Tuesday, Noel, returned home with baby Jeremiah in her arms, to be welcomed by scores of anxious relatives. There were loud cheers, screams of delight, applause and teary eyes as Noel walked into her house accompanied by her husband Sheldon Henry.

“It was truly a joyous time — Christmas came early for us this year. Everybody reached for baby Jeremiah, even my first son Renaldo, aged four. He was anxiously awaiting to hold the new member of his family...his new baby brother. The joy in his face was so amazing,” Noel said.

Noel said that after she was handed the child by the police on Tuesday at the Paediatric Emergency Department of the Eric Williams Medical Sciences Complex, she had to return the child to the medical facility so the doctors could run several tests on him. A “clean bill of health” was declared and the baby was released to his parents.

When asked if she had any problems in bonding with her baby, keeping in mind that he was taken away from her just ten hours after birth, Noel replied, “No, not at all. When I tried to breast-feed him, he latched on to the breast easily and has since been nursing frequently just like he ought to be. He has been sleeping comfortably in his crib all night, no trouble at all. He is surely a blessed baby.”

When asked how she came about naming the baby even while he was still missing and why the names chosen, Noel said, “It was divine. I know God had put it in my heart, mind and soul that I was going to get him back. One day after praying I just opened my Bible, closed it and opened it again and it opened on the Book of Jeremiah, so that is how he got his first name and I did the same for his second name, Obadiah. My baby is chosen and I believe he is here for a purpose and so was Jeremiah and Obadiah, back in the Bible days.”

On Tuesday at about 10 am police acted on a tip they received via the police hotline 555 and went to a house at Mount D’or Road in Champs Fleurs where they found the baby. A 24-year-old man of African descent and a 21-year-old woman of East Indian descent were arrested.

The woman will appear before a Tunapuna magistrate today to answer a charge of child stealing.