While most are spending the holiest day of the year in shul, midwives, labor coaches, and ObGyns, are usually in the hospital, helping deliver the many babies who arrive on the tenth of Tishrei. Rather than feel detached, they’ve find that being involved in the miracle of birth can connect them to their Creator as nothing else can.
Late on Yom Kippur afternoon Batsheva Freedman* began to feel mild sporadic contractions. When they were three minutes apart (though still fairly mild) she sent one of her children to shul to ask her husband if she should break her fast.
“The next thing I knew my husband burst in the door together with two Hatzolah guys” Batsheva relates. “ ‘Mrs. Freedman we’re taking you to the hospital immediately ’ ” they said.
“ ‘But I’m not having strong contractions! All I wanted to know was whether I should break my fast’ I replied.
“ ‘Mrs. Freedman will you please just sit down? Hatzolah does not enjoy delivering babies!’
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