After a night spent shaking in fear as the roof rattled from explosions, and a long walk along a crowded road, Diana Mahmoud arrived at the hospital where she gave birth to her son, Yaman.
Miscarriages are three times more likely than before the war, according to a February report by the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine and the Johns Hopkins Center for Humanitarian Health.
The destruction of Gaza’s healthcare system meant that Mahmoud received no antenatal care during her pregnancy and was discharged by the overburdened hospital immediately after Yaman’s birth.
Save the Children says 50,000 babies have been born in Gaza over the past nine months, and repeated displacements mean some women are inducing labour themselves because they fear giving birth while on the move.
The constant trauma took its toll on Yasmeen Khuwaiter, who found out about her pregnancy two weeks before the war, and gave birth to triplets in April, two months before her due date.
The birth was difficult – Khuwaiter suffered bleeding during the caesarean section, for which she was given some of the very limited stocks of anaesthetic, and one of her daughters spent several days in intensive care.
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