What a Purim coincidence taught me about midwifery
“I have goosebumps.” Hanna’s* eyes filled with tears as I told her my Hebrew name. “I can’t believe it, wow. I have such emunah.”**
Hanna and her husband Erez* were about to welcome their first child, a daughter, by caesarean section, and I was the midwife assigned to them that morning. A little green block on a roster labelled “ELCS”, my role that week was to prepare women for, be with them through, and help recover them from ‘elective’ or planned caesarean births. As I collected Hanna and Erez from the Labour Ward reception, I saw a mother bouncing with nerves and excitement; a quiet and outwardly calm father, holding space for his wife. “Is this really happening?” Hanna grinned, “it doesn’t seem real!”
Today was an ‘electives day’
Every woman, person, couple, birth partner who walks those well-trod Labour Ward corridors does so with at least some trepidation - birth is exciting, powerful, unpredictable, beautiful, it can also be frightening, and at the very worst of times, tragic. But today was an ‘electives day’. It was to be calm, orderly and controlled. “Cases” (or births, I should say) were to be performed by the most senior obstetricians, run like clockwork by methodical scrub nurses, and overseen by unflappable consultant anaesthetists. In the middle of it, the midwife. Me. Sometimes I wondered about my place under the harsh lights of the operating theatre, the place of the midwife generally. All births are equally important, no matter which route the baby takes into the world. And “midwife” means to be “with woman”, after all - but in a surgical birth, what role is there for us, the experts in physiology?
Of course there are many practical responsibilities for a midwife caring for a woman or birthing person having a caesarean. Checking equipment, preparing the woman for surgery, monitoring fetal wellbeing, facilitating team safety checks, receiving the baby and carrying out his or her first checks, calling for help in an emergency, potentially helping to resuscitate a baby who is born needing help to transition, checking the placenta, taking samples for cord blood gases, bringing the baby to the parents for their first moments as a family, supporting physiology with skin-to-skin and breastfeeding, cleaning up after yourself, and working with recovery nurses to monitor the woman post-surgery, all while writing accurate, time-stamped notes… repeat for three births in one day and, well, it’s a lot. I strived to ensure that every woman had a safe and positive birth experience, and I knew in my head that I was doing a valuable job - but I didn’t always remember in my heart that this too was the soul work of midwifery. It’s easy to feel it in the intimacy of a softly-lit Birth Centre room, or in the laid-back familiarity of an antenatal appointment. In the cool efficiency of an operating theatre? Less so. Until I met Hanna.
An unexpected connection
Every secular(ish) Jew knows the game of gently trying to figure out if the other one is also a member of the Tribe. There’s a vibe. Then a glance at the name, maybe a reference to where they grew up, “are you…?” and mutual knowing smiles. With Hanna there was no beating around the bush. She spotted my tiny Magen David (Star of David) pendant and exclaimed, “thank you for wearing that!” Hanna went on to share that she and Erez had been feeling nervous about receiving hospital care after reading about surging antisemitism among NHS healthcare staff. They were generally feeling traumatised and raw after 7th October, as we all did - and still do - and were worried. That they should have a Jewish midwife today had to be beshert (destiny).
Purim and the power of hidden miracles
As I carried out my usual pre-caesarean checks - taking observations, listening in to the fetal heart, double-checking the information we had on file about medical history and allergies - Hanna and Erez chatted about the resonance of the date to them. It was Purim after all, the joyous Jewish holiday that commemorates one of the numerous times in our history that we survived attempted annihilation. They planned to name their baby after Queen Esther, the hero of the Purim story who put her life on the line to save her people. Married off to the Persian King Ahaseurus after he exiled his first wife, Queen Vashti, for refusing to parade naked at a party(!), Esther’s real name was Hadassah, and nobody in the court knew she was Jewish. Her cousin Mordecai who had arranged for Esther to meet the King also uncovered a plot by the evil government minister Haman (this is the part of the story where we boo loudly) to kill all the Jews in the empire. King Ahaseurus until then had been no fan of the Jews, and Esther took a huge gamble when she showed her true identity to her new husband, asking him to prevent the massacre.
The full story of Purim, outlined in the Megillah (the Book of Esther) does not mention any intervention from God, unlike - for example - the story of Moses leading the Israelites out of Egypt with considerable divine assistance. On Purim, God is in the background as the drama unfolds - you feel their presence in the way that events line up, that against all odds things just work out, fortunately for the Jews. A series of coincidences maybe - or the hand of the divine? We’ll never know, I suppose. But when I shared with Hanna and Erez that my Hebrew name happens to be Hadassah, and that my husband’s middle name is - you guessed it, Mordecai - that moment felt like our own little nudge from God. Just there, a glimmer in your peripheral vision, gone in a moment. A quiet assurance that as bleak as things might seem, they’re probably going to be okay.
A moment that changed everything
After a few hours with Hanna, Erez and their beautiful, healthy baby girl, it was time to say goodbye. As I turned to leave the bed space in the postnatal ward, Hanna said to me words I’ll carry with me for the rest of my career: “Thank you, Jess. I’ll never forget you. You handed my baby to me.”
And there it was. My practice as a midwife, my embodied understanding of the centrality of our role in supporting all birth - transformed in a morning. All through a series of coincidences. Or maybe something more.
*Names and date changed for anonymity
**Emunah is often translated into English as “faith”, but it is not a passive state - rather it conveys conviction and active trust
