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Born a refugee
For thousands of women fleeing the ruin of Syria, a maternity clinic at the heart of a sprawling refugee city has provided solace from the hardships of war.
With their homeland torn apart by civil war, life is on hold for many who have made their home in Jordan's Zaatari refugee camp. But for thousands of young children, this is the only home they have ever known.
Amid dusty streets and a tangle of corrugated-iron shacks, 80,000 refugees fleeing war and persecution are now working out an uncertain life in this makeshift city in the desert.
At the centre of the camp is a medical clinic run by women where over 7,000 babies have been welcomed into the world since the camp opened in 2012. The clinic's growing list of services now includes support for miscarriages, family planning decisions and domestic violence victims.
Five years ago this clinic was operating with just one doctor and one midwife. Now it provides work for 10 doctors, an obstetrician, paediatrician, 17 midwives and many nurses. All of them are women.
A loudspeaker crackles in the hangar-like waiting room, calling up women when it's their turn to see a doctor. The clinic may appear rudimentary but it is also a calm and safe space for women in the camp.
Obstetrician Dr Reema heads the busy medical centre. She jokes that at home her husband and children beg her to turn off her phone so she can spend time with them. Even visitors threaten they won't enter until she has relinquished the phone, she admits.
One patient, Um Hassan, has just given birth to her third child and is now spending the obligatory 24 hours in the clinic's post-natal room.
Amal, a 21-year-old from Ghouta near Damascus, no longer lives in Zaatari but travelled for over two hours just to attend the clinic. Before the war in Syria she trained as a nurse but now requires the help of the clinic nurses for her own family planning.
She came to Jordan with only the clothes on her back after her brother and husband were injured in a chemical weapons attack in Syria. Hassan, her eldest son, has been allowed a quick outing from school to visit his mother and newborn brother. When he sees them both, he breaks down in tears.
Life remains a tricky juggling act for working women and those attending the clinic in Zaatari. Women often marry as young as 14 or 15, elevating the risk of more complex procedures like caesarean section during birth and premature deliveries. Trauma from the civil war also adds to the risk.
But in the clinic, and throughout Zaatari, the Syrian conflict has also given women a renewed sense of purpose to care for their children, families and even their broader communities. For the time being, that seems to have trumped fears about what may lie ahead.
Topics: immigration, refugees, unrest-conflict-and-war, children, pregnancy-and-childbirth, jordan