MAY 26 • 2022 | 11

I 

have a friend who just 
gave birth in Jerusalem. 
Her baby girl was 
struggling to latch, and 
awash in a flood of 
hormones and debilitating 
exhaustion, 
the two of 
them spent 
a long two 
hours sobbing 
together in the 
nursing room 
at Hadassah 
Hospital. 
My friend is Israeli. She 
wears a Star of David. 
There was another mother 
in the room — a Palestinian 
woman from East Jerusalem 
… she wore a purple hijab, 
and her bloodshot, hooded 
eyes were somehow rimmed 
with perfectly applied kohl. 
My friend sat there 
weeping while her newborn 
baby girl shrieked at her 
breast. It wasn’t my friend’s 
first baby — and she had 
never struggled like this… 
but all babies are different, 
and just as we have our own 
personalities, so do they. 
“This baby is acting like 
kind of a jerk,” my friend 
told me. 
The other mother tried to 
help. “Lift her on a pillow… 
express a little on her lip…. 
Let her smell it, let her taste 
it.” 
Finally, the baby latched 
on one side. 

“Maybe I should express 
the rest of the milk on the 
other side,” my friend said. “I 
can save it in a syringe.” 
(These were early days 
after birth when there was 
only colostrum.) 
“Here, you keep nursing, 
and I’ll do it for you,” the 
other mother said. “Is that 
ok?” 
My friend shrugged. 
It seemed like the only 
reasonable thing to do at 3 
a.m. on her baby’s first day 
of life. She nursed on the left 
breast, and the other mother 
milked her on the right. 
Outside the hospital, 
tensions were high between 
Israelis and Palestinians, but 
inside that nursing room, 
there was only compassion, 
gentleness and peace. 
“Once,” my friend later 
told me, “we lived in a 
village and we took care 
of each other. When one 
mother couldn’t nurse, 
another mother nursed 
for her. Our children were 
like her children and her 
children were like our 
children. This is still in our 
nature. Maybe it’s time to let 
women run things around 
here in Jerusalem. We might 
just figure it out together.” 

Sarah Tuttle-Singer is author of 

Jerusalem Drawn and Quartered 

and the new media editor at Times 

of Israel, where this essay was first 

published. 

Sarah 
Tuttle-Singer

essay

An Israeli Mom, 
A Palestinian Mom 
— and the Village 
That Could Be

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