Five months ago, Mariam Abu Adghaim stood on the edge of hope.
Aged 27, she and her husband hoped a rare moment of quiet during a ceasefire in Gaza offered them the peace they needed to start a family.
“I got pregnant in February,” she told The National, her voice breaking. “We thought, since there was food, a ceasefire and a little bit of calm, we could finally live like other people. We just wanted a child, like any couple in the world.”
But that calm was shattered within weeks. In March, Israel closed border crossings again, broke the ceasefire and reignited its war. And Mariam, like thousands of pregnant women across Gaza, found herself fighting a new battle, one for the life growing inside her.
Dr Zaheer Al Wahidi, head of the Health Information Unit at the Ministry of Health in Gaza, said the war has created a silent but devastating crisis of reproductive collapse.
“In just the first half of this year, we recorded 17,000 childbirths, but also 2,500 miscarriages and neonatal deaths,” he told The National.
When Israel broke the ceasefire, it also applied a total blockade on aid. Dr Al Wahidi accused Israel of a deliberate policy of starvation and siege, particularly targeting pregnant women.
“Pregnant women need specific nutrition, vitamins, minerals, proteins, to support foetal growth. These are nearly nonexistent now," he said. "And the result is rising miscarriages and stillbirths.”
UN reports show that one in five people in Gaza are facing starvation. A UN agency for reproductive health warns that for pregnant women "each missed meal increases the risk of miscarriages, stillbirths and undernourished newborns".
Loss and heartbreak
Among them is Mariam, whose pregnancy became a nightmare when nutrition vanished from her daily life. With no prenatal vitamins, no protein and barely enough clean water, her health deteriorated rapidly.
“I developed low blood pressure and other complications,” she recalled. “My doctor warned me several times that the baby was at risk because it wasn’t getting the nutrients it needed to survive.”
She had already chosen names. She had already imagined singing her first lullaby. But by June, when the foetus was four months old, her worst fears came true.
“They told me the baby had died in my womb,” she said quietly. “I had a miscarriage. I never got to hold my baby.”
“I still cry when I think about it. I wanted to feel that moment, to be a mother, to hear a cry. But the occupation stole that from me. That was my right, my human right, and it was taken.”
At Al Helou Hospital in Gaza city, Dr Fathi Al Dahdouh, an obstetrician, is seeing what he describes as a “surge” in pregnancy complications he has not witnessed in decades. “Miscarriage cases have increased significantly,” he told The National.
“We’re seeing malnutrition, anaemia, blood pressure irregularities, all tied to the lack of food, medicine and the toxic air caused by constant bombardment.”
Smoke, dust and rubble from Israeli air strikes are releasing pollutants into the air, worsening conditions like respiratory distress and hypertension, both of which can be deadly for a pregnant woman or her unborn baby.
“The physical exhaustion and psychological trauma, the constant fear, it’s all making pregnancies in Gaza unbearably difficult,” he added.
Dr Zaheer Al Wahidi is blunt about what he believes is happening: “This war isn’t just killing people. It’s targeting the possibility of life itself. Killing foetuses, ending pregnancies and breaking the hearts of parents before they even begin the journey of parenthood.”
