Last summer, midwife Efrat Dolinsky gave birth to her son, Carmi, at the same place where she regularly helps deliver other women’s babies: the Rady Mother and Child Center at Hadassah Hospital Mount Scopus.

“All my babies were born at Hadassah,” said the 33-year-old mother of four. Carmi, however, was the first born after she became a midwife. “I arrived as the night shift was ending. My supervisor, midwife Aviah Yagel, was about to go off duty, but she stayed to deliver me. Suddenly, I was getting what I try to give: care, attention and bonding, serenity and reassurance, respect and support for my labor and birth.”

“I knew how important all this was—but I knew it a hundredfold more intensely after being at the receiving end,” she said, adding that Carmi’s birth “was easy and joyous.”

He was one of some 700 infants born each month at Mount Scopus in one of the Rady Center’s 10 luxurious birthing suites. Seven hundred, that is, in normal times. Since October 7, that number has fluctuated wildly, sometimes swelling with evacuees to the area, sometimes shrinking as expectant mothers, reluctant to travel far, sought more local hospitals. The staff has also helped the wives of soldiers in the Israel Defense Forces through their birthing experiences, many of whom needed additional support.

“Since the war against Hamas began, there’ve been more than a few women who have delivered their babies here while their husbands are fighting in Gaza,” said Elisheva Levin, head midwife and labor and delivery nurse at the Rady Center. In some cases, she said, “the new fathers managed to reach the delivery room directly from the front.”

The Rady Center opened in December 2018, replacing Mount Scopus’s old maternity ward. “Our staff is already double what it was in the old facility,” said Levin, “and we’re still recruiting.”

The facility and the care it gives draw both first-time and veteran mothers. “We help every woman give birth safely in the way she wants, whether that is natural childbirth, an epidural or anything in between,” said Dolinsky, one of the 60 midwives at the center who, as in all Israeli hospitals, take the primary role in delivering babies.

As the first major upgrade of Mount Scopus’s labor and delivery department in almost 50 years, the Rady Center “transformed the maternity facilities from guesthouse to Hilton,” said Dr. Hagai Amsalem, the hospital’s head of labor and delivery. Among the major changes are the replacement of the old facility’s seven small labor and delivery rooms with the 10 suites, each with its own patio as well as equipment such as oversized physio balls to help natural and comfortable birthing.

For women who arrive in advanced labor, direct street access for drive-up arrivals has proven invaluable. “It was my seventh birth, and I thought I had time,” said an ultra-Orthodox woman who lives on the outskirts of Jerusalem and asked that her name not be used. Her youngest was nearly born in the Rady Center’s parking lot. “My son’s shoulder was stuck, so there was time for staff to hurry me into the building, put screens around me in reception and birth him there.”

“Every woman is different, every birth is different,” said Levin. “With the birth experience influencing a woman’s long-term health and well-being, it’s an important part of our job to read each mother, to understand her needs and fears.”

Sometimes, she said, those needs and fears affect not only the mothers, but the fathers as well.

One young father, recalled midwife Merav Bruchim, served in an IDF unit that identifies victims of Hamas violence or soldiers who have been killed in Gaza. He initially had difficulty going to his wife when she was in early labor. “He kept washing his hands,” said Bruchim, whose own husband served in a reserve unit several months ago.  “When we saw this, we offered him a shower. He was calmer afterward,” and he was able to give his wife the support she needed.

The midwives gather information about each pregnant woman’s medical, birth and personal history—if this is her first pregnancy or her 10th; whether she is Jewish, Muslim or Christian; from a religious or secular background. “We ascertain the type of birth she hopes for,” said Levin, “or carefully read the file of those who’ve met with our midwives ahead of time to plan their birth.”

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Naama Madmon gave birth to her daughter, Hadar, at the Rady Center last summer. Her first child was born in a hospital close to where she and her husband live, near Ashdod, and “it was less than optimal,” she said. “I’d heard good things about Hadassah Mount Scopus.”

Just as with her first child, she again had gestational diabetes, and her pregnancy was considered high risk. “I was carefully monitored throughout and instructed to come in before labor was established,” she said. “I had complete confidence that I was in good hands, from the doctor who admitted me, to the anesthesiologist who gave me the epidural, to my midwife, who understood I needed my dignity. Before examining me, she emptied the room. At my previous birth, a cleaner had walked in during an internal exam…. I remember lying there, thinking, ‘Couldn’t she wait?’ ”

In straightforward births like Madmon’s, mother and baby are usually discharged within 48 hours. If there are complications, they may stay longer, sometimes in the Rady Center’s high-risk or neonatal intensive care units.

For some women, psychological complications arise before birth preparations. There are those who experience pregnancy and childbirth as a traumatic loss of control and struggle to cope with physiological changes, vaginal exams and fear of pain. Others have had negative birth experiences in the past or are survivors of physical, emotional or sexual abuse. These women find help in the Rady Center’s Corrective Birth Experience Clinic, opened in 2020 and created and headed by obstetrician and gynecologist Dr. Lorinne Levitt.

Sarah, who asked that her full name not be used, is one of some 200 women so far who have sought help from Dr. Levitt’s clinic. At age 8, she said, her adoptive father raped her; the assaults continued until they were discovered and stopped by her adoptive mother. Nevertheless, she said, both parents later insisted that she had imagined the rapes or, if she had been sexually abused, it had happened in a foster home.

At 18, Sarah cut ties with them. In time, she married, but childhood memories grew overwhelming when she became pregnant.

“The clinic helped me talk it out,” she said, “and build a birth plan that addressed my needs and was safe for my baby. There were no vaginal exams. I pushed when I felt I needed to. They put the monitor in front of me so I could see my baby’s heartbeat the whole time. It calmed me, and I trusted them. I can’t put into words how important this was.”

For traumatized women like Sarah, cognitive behavioral therapy, physical grounding techniques and other therapies are used “to help moms-to-be confront their fears and develop a workable birth plan,” Dr. Levitt explained.

For all Rady Center births, straightforward or complicated, the delivery room monitors are connected to departmental computer monitors, which allow Dr. Amsalem, the labor and delivery head, and his team to unobtrusively follow every birth. “We have full control, but try to limit intervention,” he said. “We approach pregnancy and childbirth not as medical conditions but as normal events that the body knows how to handle.”

Even so, the Rady Center always has a senior physician on duty in case of complications. But, more often, he or she sees the laboring woman only on admission. After that, the midwives take over labor and delivery.

Like all Israeli midwives, every Rady Center midwife has completed a four-year Bachelor of Science in Nursing and worked as a nurse before a one-year midwifery specialization. Head midwife Levin decided 20 years ago—after giving birth to her eighth child—to realize her dream of becoming a midwife. “I’m endlessly excited about the process of birth,” said the Chicago native who made aliyah when she was 18. “I’ve helped deliver almost all my 19 grandchildren.”

Dolinsky, the midwife who gave birth last summer at the center, spent nine years as a maternity and high-risk pregnancy nurse before qualifying as a midwife 18 months ago. “It’s not for the faint-hearted,” she said. “It’s intensive, and the responsibility is huge, but that’s totally outweighed by the satisfaction and sheer joy. I feel privileged to be with women at this life-changing moment.” 

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Wendy Elliman is a British-born science writer who has lived in Israel for more than five decades.