Under bombardment, Lebanon's expectant mothers fear for their unborn babies

By Emilie Madi and Amina Ismail

BEIRUT (Reuters) - Tahani Yassine was in her third trimester of pregnancy when she chose to return to her hometown of Beirut to deliver her baby.

Living in Equatorial Guinea with her husband and three young children, she had more faith in the Lebanese healthcare system.

But just a few days after her arrival in Beirut, Yassine began to regret her decision. Israel intensified its military campaign in Lebanon, targeting Hezbollah strongholds in the south, the Bekaa Valley in the east and the southern suburbs of Beirut, close to her home.

Although her area wasn't directly hit, the strikes were unnervingly close, and the boom of Israeli warplanes breaking the sound barrier overhead filled her with fear.

Anxious for the safety of her unborn child, the 36-year-old moved to an apartment closer to hospital where she was due to deliver.

"My doctors told me that I was too far along in my pregnancy to travel. I had no choice but to stay and deliver here," she told Reuters just hours after giving birth at Trad Hospital in central Beirut on Oct. 10.

Lying in her hospital bed, with her newborn girl nestled next to her in a crib, Yassine expressed her relief that both she and her baby were healthy — a very different experience to many expectant mothers in the escalating conflict in Lebanon.

Nicolas Baaklini, an obstetrician and gynaecologist in Beirut, says he has noticed an increase in premature births and foetal deaths since hostilities began last year.

"What has increased the most, and what was shocking to me, is the number of foetal deaths in in-utero babies who died in their mothers' wombs," said Baaklini, 61, who has a private clinic and also works in several Beirut hospitals.

"There are many malformations, and surprisingly, several colleagues have observed the same. When ... in one year, you have two foetal deaths in-utero, and then suddenly, in two months, you have about 15, it indicates that something is wrong," he added.

MOTHERS FLEE THEIR HOMES

Around 11,600 pregnant women remain in Lebanon, of whom around 4,000 are expected to deliver in the next three months, according to a flash appeal published by the U.N. Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) in October.

Many of them are displaced and lack adequate shelter, nutrition and sanitation. Access to safe antenatal, post-natal, and paediatric care is increasingly difficult.

Since the war intensified in late September, the Israeli campaign has forced about 1.2 million people from their homes, according to the Lebanese government.

The conflict between Israel and Hezbollah militants erupted a year ago when the Iranian-backed group began launching rockets at northern Israel in support of Hamas at the start of the Gaza war.

Dressed in white scrubs in the neonatal intensive care unit of Trad Hospital, Baaklini stroked the tiny feet of a baby girl in one of the incubators. The baby and her twin brother had been delivered prematurely by a mother who had to evacuate her home in southern Beirut due to Israeli airstrikes.

He believed that the mother's early contractions were partly caused the stress of the bombardments and having to flee.

He said all the ICU beds were occupied, attributing this to the intensifying bombardments.

"It is not panic that makes you give birth," Baaklini said, as machines monitoring the premature babies beeped in the background. "It is the act of running, falling, and experiencing trauma to the abdomen that triggers contractions, leading to premature delivery."

(Writing by Amina Ismail, Editing by Ros Russell)