Dressed in layers of personal protective equipment, Hadassah Medical Organization nurse midwife Gila Zarbiv delivers the babies of mothers infected with the coronavirus. “There’s a lot of isolation; there’s a lot of loneliness,” says Zarbiv, who is originally from Pittsburgh, Penn. “How do we stay together while being so far apart?”
Despite the emotional strain, Zarbiv relates, the women show incomprehensible resolve and a quiet dignity. “Women are magical,” she says. “That’s really the bottom line.”
A mother of four young children herself, Zarbiv explains that family life has changed drastically. She and her husband, an oncologist, are rarely home at the same time, as they arrange work schedules to take turns caring for their children. When they each return home, she says, “We scrub ourselves till we’re raw, and then we hug them.”
Read Zarbiv’s full story in the Pittsburgh Jewish Chronicle.
