The day before Russia invaded Ukraine, Olesya Ostafieva celebrated one of the happiest moments of her life.
Her Kyiv apartment was filled with balloons and gifts as her friends threw her a baby shower, excitedly anticipating the arrival of the 38-year-old's first daughter.
Within hours, Russian forces began their attack and the heavily pregnant Olesya was forced into a bomb shelter.
"It was horrible because it was very cold, a lot of people with children, all of them crying," she said.
"I was afraid myself, about my family.
"A lot of emotions in the little room."
Worried she would not be able to deliver her baby safely in Kyiv — and with her due date fast approaching — Olesya planned her escape.
After several days in the shelter, she joined millions of other Ukrainians fleeing to Poland.
Traffic jams meant a journey that would normally take one day instead took four, including a 30-hour wait at the border.
Olesya was unsure of what to do next, so a friend in New York urged her to come and stay.
She took the friend's advice and travelled to United States using a visa that was still valid from a previous trip.
Now, after a harrowing journey, Olesya is preparing to give birth in safety, thousands of kilometres from home.
But she cannot shake her fear for friends and family back home, especially those worried about their own unborn children.
"I'm lucky now because I'm safe," she told the ABC.
"And I don't need to stay in bomb shelter like in the first days of the war.
"But a lot of women in Ukraine stayed and they don't know about their future, the future of their [children]."
Mothers fear losing their newborns in Ukraine
Footage of a pregnant woman being stretchered out of a bombed maternity hospital in the besieged city of Mariupol highlighted the dangers faced by expectant mothers in Ukraine.
In what has already become one of the defining images of the war, the woman stroked her bloodied lower abdomen as rescuers rushed her through the rubble.
Despite the efforts of doctors, both the woman and her baby later died.
Sergei Baksheev, a maternity doctor in Kyiv, said women have to be moved underground, into hospital basements, every time an air raid siren sounds.
Even when they can leave the cramped basements, which are cluttered with hospital beds and equipment, many are reluctant to.
"Everyone is afraid to go home because they don't know what tomorrow will be like and whether they can meet their newborn child's basic needs," he told the ABC through a friend who translated his comments into English.
"Due to stress, many [women] do not have their milk, and the supply of baby food and diapers in stores is not stable."
Dr Baksheev said the anxiety felt by many of his patients was unbearable.
He urged world leaders to imagine their own children suffering in the same circumstances when considering what support to offer Ukraine.
"If people who drop rockets on maternity hospitals could see and understand how difficult it is sometimes to bring new life into this world, perhaps they would not do this to us."
'I want to live in my country'
Olesya's baby is due any day now.
She already has a name in mind: Kyra, which, Olesya said, means "strong woman".
However, while she is grateful for the support she has received in the US, Olesya wants her daughter to grow up in her home country.
"Her room is waiting for her, her grandmother and grandfather are waiting for her, because [she] will be their first grandchild," she said.
"I don't want to be a refugee.
"I am very thankful for the American hospital, [whose staff were] so good for me and a lot of great people here.
"But I want to live in my country. I want to return to my country."
Olesya has already booked tickets to Poland next month and hopes to travel from there back to Kyiv.
For that to happen, she believes other countries need to provide Ukraine with more help in its fight against Russia.
"All my friends who leave from Ukraine, every day we speak about what time we can return," she said.
