United Hatzalah volunteer EMT, and Director of the organization’s women’s unit, Gitty Beer was cooking soup for dinner when she was alerted to a woman in labor in her community in Jerusalem. Gitty almost forgot to turn off the stove under the bubbling soup as she dashed out of the door and sped to the address. She arrived in under 3 minutes.

A crowd of excited children, from tot to teen, stood outside the apartment. The children told Gitty that their mother would be giving birth to their fourteenth sibling. As Gitty ran in she saw the father in the house with his wife, extremely stressed out. It was clear that the birth was imminent. Gitty whipped out her birth kit as she prepared the woman for a home delivery. Two more United Hatzalah volunteers arrived, a paramedic with his EMT wife. The two female medics focused on the laboring woman while the paramedic stood nearby, providing the woman with privacy while right on hand in case ALS intervention was required.

The baby’s head emerged, rapidly followed by its wiggling, smooth little body. A healthy baby girl. Gitty performed an APGAR assessment, dried the baby and clipped the umbilical cord. The mother gently took her new daughter and began to nurse her tenderly. It was heartwarming to see how excited and delighted she was, despite having given birth thirteen times before. Now that the danger was over, the father relaxed as well and held his daughter caringly as the medics tended to his wife.

 

The woman was eager to show the newborn to her other children, and Gitty helped the woman change into a comfortable robe. She cleaned away signs of the birth and the father called in the waiting siblings. An ambulance arrived and the woman and infant were transported to the maternity ward for postnatal care.

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