Gonaives, Haiti ? There was no baby shower for Guirlene Mondestin — no swaddling clothes, no cradle, no toys.

The hospital where her infant was to be born is still covered in mud nearly a month after Tropical Storm Jeanne devastated the island, so instead the baby was delivered at a Uruguayan military clinic set up to deal with post-disaster medical emergencies.

At the clinic, 27-year-old Mondestin lay on a bare mattress, her baby boy wrapped in towels at her side. She stared at the ceiling as flies danced around her face.

“Now I’m feeling sad,” she sighed, wondering about the future of her second child in this tragedy-trapped nation of 8 million. “Where I live, there are a lot of dead people and animals. There’s a bad smell and lots of bugs. It’s a bad environment for a baby.”

Like many newborns in the city, Mondestin’s baby, Omar Jose Leonel, now lives with hunger and the stench of rotting corpses that litter the landscape. Experts say the outlook is grave for Gonaives’ young.

“Even before this crisis, the situation of children in Haiti was at a critical level,” Carol Bellamy, director general of the U.N. Children’s Fund, said on a recent visit.

According to UNICEF, Haiti’s child mortality rate is the worst in the Western Hemisphere — with eight in 100 not living beyond 5 years old — and the sixth worst in the world after Sierra Leone, Niger, Angola, Afghanistan and Somalia.

The situation has been compounded by the flood woes.

To Mondestin, this is all part of a terrible curse on Haiti. “I just pray for mercy — for me and my children, Gonaives and Haiti,” she whispered.

Her biggest worry is whether her child can survive.

Within two days of birth, he was covered in red spots, his lips were powdery and he was throwing up his mother’s milk.

Uruguayan nurses said he would live, but Dr. Laura Silveira said the spots were a staphylococcus infection affecting many infants in Gonaives, brought on by exposure to contaminated mud and water. Staph can lead to fatal meningitis.

If he recovers from the infection, the next worry is food. Mondestin said she didn’t have the money to buy any.

Like most people here, Mondestin lost her money, possessions and her means of income when Tropical Storm Jeanne sent walls of water and debris-filled mudslides hurtling down on this city of 250,000.