Vatomer Devorah

Recently, I was reading the morning blessings and these words jumped out at me:

אשר נתן לשכוי בינה

Hashem gave the rooster bina- understanding, intuition, discernment, to differentiate between day and night.

The rooster is clearly a male bird. Bina is a feminine trait that women are especially endowed with. Why did Hashem give the rooster bina?

The rooster crows and heralds the coming of the dawn because it is able to discern between day and night before anyone else can. He takes action only after using the trait of bina, discernment. The dawn represents renewal and new life, as each day begins anew.

In fertility care, by proceeding with interventions without discerning the signs of life from the signs of inflammation a doctor is like a rooster without bina: crowing at all hours of the night, a time that is not receptive to life. He may get it right some of the time (or eventually after many interventions). But acting without bina/discernment, makes the process long and difficult, draining people physically, emotionally and financially. And-exacerbating underlying issues in the process.

Proceeding with interventions without environmental context is proceeding in the dark, without knowing whether dawn has actually arrived. That is why the rooster is bestowed with the gift of bina. The rooster takes in the environmental cues so he can understand when it is dawn. The womb is the environment in which new life begins. It is where new life dawns. That is why רחם (womb) is written with the same letters as מחר (tomorrow).