Babies, Babies, Everywhere!

Dear Ones,
Well, we just finished our obstetrics/gynecology rotation at Soroka Medical Center. They deliver on average over 12,000 babies every year. That's a whole lot of babies. It was a good experience. I hadn't really been looking forward to the rotation but it was really well organized and I feel like I learned a lot.
There were challenges though. Because of the overwhelming number of babies being born, there's not a lot of time to stop and enjoy the miracle of a birth. The delivery room felt more like an assembly line sometimes, than a place of joy. I found myself wanting to say, "Stop, this is a miracle and we need to stop and be amazed here!"
I also found the language barrier especially difficult during this rotation. They don't have private rooms here like the places I've experienced in the States. They have a labor room where women go until they're ready for an epidural and then they're moved to the delivery room which is basically cubicles separated by curtains. It kind of seemed like how my Mom described things when she gave birth (don't ask me how long ago that was!). One night while on call in the Labor and Delivery room, I stood in the common area and listened. From three curtains I could hear Bedouin women crying out in Arabic for Allah; in another curtain I could hear an ultra-religious Jewish woman praying in Hebrew; from yet another curtain, there was a modern Israeli snoring as the epidural took effect and allowed her to rest. It was definitely a range of experiences.
We also had some time in the gynecology and infertility department. Here we had experiences such as listening to a doctor explain to an Ethiopian couple that the husband was sterile and unfortunately the sperm banks in Israel have no black donors. In the gynecology ward there were women learning about their diagnosis of cancer, infertility, or fetal demise. I found myself wanting to somehow sit with these patients and communicate in a more in depth way than my limited Hebrew allows. It was a definitely a challenge.
I came away from the rotation feeling like I learned a lot and sometimes still shuddering at the thought of, "You want to get what out of where?!?" I still find myself getting teary eyed when a baby takes their first breath, or at the sadness of a fetal demise, or at a difficult diagnosis, and I have a whole lot of respect and appreciation for those women who were willing to let us students take part in their lives in however a small way.
Now we're on to neurology. This is one of my weakest subjects. Hopefully I'll be able to learn everything I need to know in the time allotted.