Expecting Miracles Sneak Preview: Section Four

A Time to Find the Right Shlichim

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Freedman family lore has it that my parents met for the first time during their obstetrics rotation when they were residents in medical school. Maybe the fact that I owe my existence (in more ways than one) to the field of obstetrics explains my immediate fondness and trust for my own obstetrician.

But there are many women who have to struggle to find the appropriate medical professionals to assist them in bringing a new soul into the world, like the women in this chapter. The women in this chapter discuss their struggle to find appropriate "shlichim" [agents] in the form of medical professionals who are sensitive to their religious and personal needs.

Mother of Fifteen in Mea Shearim

Mrs. Moskovitz is a fifty-eight-year-old mother of fifteen children, ranging between the ages of thirteen and thirty-eight. She and her husband are seventh generation Yerushalmim [Jerusalemites], who identify with the Chassidic community. She lives in the heart of the Yiddish-speaking community of Mea Shearim, where she works as a ritual bath attendant.

[Translated from Hebrew]

How I Felt

They say that in pregnancies with boys you feel more energetic and with girls you feel more lethargic. I never felt any difference between my pregnancies with boys and girls. Thank G-d, I had easy pregnancies. I went through some miscarriages, and then I had to be more careful, and take medicine to sustain the pregnancies. But thank G-d, there is nothing as wonderful as pregnancy and having children. When you have healthy children, and they go in the way of Torah, then that is true happiness. There is no better feeling for a woman.

I married at age nineteen and I became pregnant after ten months of marriage. I was very happy to become pregnant. I grew up with an aunt who did not have children, since, may we be guarded from the evil eye, my mother had a difficult situation at home. I am one of nine children, may we be guarded from the evil eye, and I was a weak child. My aunt very much wanted to help my mother, so she raised me. I lived with her until my wedding, and when I would look at that aunt I would always feel that I also would not have any children.

I felt tremendous stress those first nine months of marriage when I did not become pregnant, and when I did get pregnant I was very happy. With every subsequent pregnancy, I would be very happy to find out I was pregnant. I would pray during pregnancy that everything would go well, but there was no particular prayer I would say. I speak with the Holy One Blessed be He like with my own mother. I speak freely and tell Him what I need. In Yiddish, of course.

The Medical System

I cannot speak for everyone, but pregnancy never bothered me. It didn't even bother me when I had two pregnancies at an advanced age. I was 43 during my next to last pregnancy, and the doctor really made me nervous. She made me do all sorts of tests and told me I had to have amniocentesis. She gave me this speech about how I'm going to give birth to a child with Downs Syndrome. She scared me. She said that I shouldn't endanger myself, and that I need to be a healthy mother for the rest of my children at home. She told me to do amniocentesis during the first three months, so that in case the baby had Downs Syndrome, then we could hurry and do an abortion.

We went to a rabbi, and he told us not to pay any attention to this, and, with G-d's help, I went through that pregnancy with bitachon ["trust" in G-d]. I didn't do amniocentesis in the end, but it's true, that pregnancy I did do a pregnancy test, since in order to get a prescription for the drug to prevent miscarriage, I needed to show the slip to the doctor confirming my pregnancy.

In previous pregnancies, I had never gone to any doctors and had not even done pregnancy tests. My period would not come, and I knew I was pregnant. Then I would go to the hospital to give birth, and I would get a reprimand. The midwives would ask me why I had not gone to the prenatal clinic. I said I had not had time, and that I had not wanted to, Thank G-d. Every time I would get an admonishment from the midwives and the nurses, and I would just take it, and then I would give birth, and that was that.

The midwives would yell at me, "What, are you not a human being? Are you completely not living in this world? You didn't go to check that everything is OK?" As though if they found out that something was wrong that they would be able to correct it?! If Hashem wants everything to go well, then there will be only happiness, and if, has v'chalila, [G-d forbid] Hashem wants things to go wrong then you can go to twenty thousand doctors and they will only be able to make things worse, and that's the way it is.

I always had pregnancies one after the other, Baruch Hashem [thank G-d], and then I had three miscarriages in a row. This started after my ninth birth when there were complications during the birth. So then for two pregnancies, I took this medicine against miscarriage, and the next pregnancy I didn't take it, and I miscarried. So I understood that without the medicine I couldn't sustain the pregnancy. So, Baruch Hashem, I took this medicine.

I had whole arguments with that doctor, and told her that even if I was certain that I would have a child with Downs Syndrome, or any sort of problem, Hashem Yishmor [G-d Protect Us], then this was still a nefesh [living being], and I said to her "If I am walking in the street and I see a crazy person, am I allowed to murder him?" In the end, the fact is that the research the doctor was talking about was simply incorrect. I said to her that now the research says this way and in twenty years it will say the opposite, may you be healthy.

Together with me at the hospital was this young girl, nineteen years old at her first birth, and she gave birth to a child with Downs Syndrome. I gave birth to two healthy girls after the age of forty, so there you have real-life research. Why do doctors need to go digging for research? In twenty years doctors will say the opposite, and my births could be the first cases in the research book.

Thank G-d, I had a daughter when I was 43, and she is wonderful, and gives me so much nachas [pride]. After all the arguments with the doctor, I brought the baby to her after I gave birth and said, "Well, what do you think? Should I have done an abortion! Should I have gotten rid of this child?" She said, "What was I supposed to say, that's what the research says, that's what the books say, that to have a baby at your age is dangerous, and experts recommend against it."

When I was forty-five, I was pregnant for the last time, and I went to the same doctor to get the prescription to protect against miscarriage, and she remembered me of course, and she said "For you, anything you want. Any prescription you want, I'll give you. Anything you say, I won't argue with you. As long as you do these few tests, I won't go against anything you say." She still remembers me well- when I see her to this day on the street she asks me how those two girls are. I am fixed in her memory since I had lots and lots of arguments with her. So I gave birth to the youngest as well, and thank G-d, I get so much nachas from those two girls.

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Also in this Section: A Diabetic Pregnancy and G-d's Help, Pregnancy Culture Shock