Word from the North

So this is where the new borns are put in the hospital. Leslie is working to try and discourage this practice and instate the Skin-to-Skin method.

This is Leslie showing me the natural birth room of the hospital where she works.

So its been a long time since I have written and so much as happened. When I left you I was in the north of Israel roaming around the countryside during this absolutely gorgeous time of year. After leaving Leslie's kibbutz and the hospital setting of midwifery, I went even further up North to stay with Gomer whose village rests literally on the Lebanese border. In this rural area I was able to spend time with home birth midwives and visit agricultural socialistic style communities that lived in tents. Although the women planned to do as the expectant mother wished and deliver in their home, Gomer and Lei had to explain to her that lack of running water and electricity wasn't the most ideal situation for new born babies but she could give it a shot.

This is Gomer on the left who is backing up Lei in a small community in the north just east of Haifa.

I am not sure if you can see but there is tea in every picture. If I was to revise Greg Mortensen's book for here I would call it endless cups of tea.

From the north I went down to a conference in Jerusalem where COHI women were attending a seminar training on dealing with trauma. Luckily it was in English and I actually learned a lot and connected a lot of dots about what I thought I believed in. The training was based off of a book by guru Peter Levine called "Waking the Tiger: Healing the Trauma" and I think people could use this philosophy for dealing with the everyday situations that are more difficult to face .

This is Barbara looking over a past ultrasound from one of her patients

For this past week I have been back and forth between Jerusalem and Telaviv taking photos for the Vagina Monologues and staying in an amazing town called Ramla with an American born midwife, Ilana. It is the only place so far in Israel where coexistence occurs peacefully. It is probably one of the most culturally diverse places I have ever been and is not a stop on the tourist map of Israel. Muslims, Christians, Jews, Jews for Jesus, from America, Morocco, Peru, Ethiopia, Yemen, and Sudan. So many different styles of clothing and food and spices and I had an amazing cultural tour from someone who lived there. It is a very complex city and had a purposefully hidden under layer. Beneath all of the new style building and the mall/bus station are dilapidated stone buildings of the time of the Turks. Walking through the old alley ways you could feel the life that used to flow through it. It is a shame that the government didn't feel this was a part of history to preserve. So now it is covered with parking lots and garbage.

This is Ilana listening for the fetal heart beat.

Here Ilana is doing a blood test on the new born to test for potential disabilities.
This is one of the few jewish Orthodox communities I went to where I was given permission to take photos during the visit.

Ilana the midwife I have been staying with is one of the busiest home birth midwives in the country conducting 6-8 births a month. She sees a lot of Orthodox Jews and during this time I was able to visit a lot of Orthodox neighborhoods though I was not able to take that many photos of the pregnant women. I learned a lot about the Orthodox families and the Jewish religion in general. I have so much more to write but I need to catch up on some sleep. I went to a party in Ramalla last night and woke up at the crack of dawn to cross the border in time to grab my stuff and meet Barbara by 9. Enjoy the photos and I will write more soon.