In the last specialist maternity ward still under Ukrainian control in the eastern Donbas region, the windows are packed with sandbags. Rooms used for births at the Perinatal Center in the city of Pokrovsk follow the two-wall rule, which says the safest parts of a building are separated from the outside by at least two walls.
"Sometimes we've had to deliver babies during shelling," said Dr. Ivan Tsyganok, head of the center. "Labor is a process that cannot be stopped."
The center, roughly 40 kilometers from the closest front line, gives a glimpse of the suffering the war is inflicting on pregnant women — their anxiety over where they can give birth, fears of whether the hospital will come under attack, and what doctors have observed to be an increased rate of early labor.
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