Expecting Miracles Sneak Preview: Section Seven

A Time to Start Noticing Miracles

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Everyone always says that pregnancy is a miracle, but for the women in this section, the miracles they experienced were as impossible to overlook as the splitting of the Red Sea. In each case, the woman had initially doubted that she would be able to become a mother, until G-d showed her that everything would work out.

A Modern-Day Sarah

Tamar is forty-nine years old, and is presently in her last trimester of her first pregnancy. She grew up in South Africa, and was a successful businesswoman in Capetown before she moved to Israel four years ago. When Tamar married a fellow South African two years ago, she still believed that she would become a mother. Tamar was forty-seven at the time, and her husband was near sixty, and most people around her found it difficult to share her sense of hope and incredible faith. Thank G-d, in the end she proved them all wrong.

Personal Background

I married for the first time when I was twenty-eight, and I was focused on career and not on having children. I had had the idea in the back of my head that after a few years we would think about having children, but my husband passed away suddenly when I was thirty-one. You can imagine that I was just in total shock and despair for several years. Here was a perfectly healthy young man whom I loved so much who was just gone from one day to the next. The bulk of my childbearing years passed. It was very difficult. As the years passed, and my chance of having children were getting smaller and smaller, I became increasingly depressed.

The Path to Pregnancy

Four years ago I moved to Israel, and studied at a yeshiva here in the Old City. Two years ago, I met a man who even though he had children of his own was interested in having more kids- and having them with me. So after we got married we tried to do that, but we weren't too successful initially. We went to several Kabbalistic rabbis throughout the beginning of our marriage, and before our marriage. They were generally encouraging about my chances of becoming pregnant. Most of them felt that I would have at least one child. I decided on my own that I had to do treatments, since time was running out. I mean, one of the rabbis said something that was fairly obvious to me- that if I reached the age of fifty without getting pregnant, then I wasn't going to.

We probably went to about four rabbis, and the only Ashkenazi rabbi we went to said that I would have a baby by this coming Rosh Hashana, which is actually around my due date. But he didn't say anything about twins. That was the surprise.

All this time I had been concerned with the spiritual as well as the physical and medical aspects of what was going on. I went to a few doctors, ranging from one who was outright nasty, who told me that women my age had no business having children, and I left his office in tears, to Doctor Brooks at Zer Chemed, which is a wonderful non-profit fertility clinic for religious women in Givat Shaul, who was very encouraging.

So we were going to Rabbis, and I prayed a lot, and I went to the Wall. Then one day a year and a half ago my husband was meditating, and he felt a weight on his abdomen, and he told me about it. So I told him to go back into meditation and ask it what it is, because I was very much into that kind of work. The answer he got was "We are your unborn children." There were two of them. They said that they would be born to me.

These children would visit at special times like Shabbat and Sukkot, and would give us encouraging messages that they were in fact on the way. It was interesting that Philip was the one who got it- that they would communicate with him, and he would always feel that same weight in his abdomen. Sometimes they would appear to him at the age of eight and sometimes in their twenties.

It's a bit of strange story. It was a boy and a girl. The girl was usually the spokesperson for the two of them- the boy was sort of reclusive but very, very spiritual. He appeared to us for the first time wrapped in a tallit [prayer shawl]. The girl is much more out there, more articulate, and comes across as a very loving being. She looks after her brother, who is quiet, intense and very spiritual. Philip saw this all in his mind's eye- and we believed it, that two very special beings wanted to be born to us, and that they for whatever reason had chosen us to be their parents. When we found out that I was expecting twins we were not surprised. We were hoping that they would come through at the same time. It will be interesting to see if the twins end up being like the ones who appeared to us.

After a year of marriage we had started various kinds of fertility treatments, which was difficult in this country since the Kupat Cholim [health fund] didn't want to cover the cost because of my age. But I got to the point where I was actually experiencing the symptoms of menopause, with hot flashes and the like, and this went away with herbal treatments, but I knew this was very bad. I decided I couldn't wait any longer, and that I had to do something definite.

Through a dear friend we found a wonderful doctor who was willing to help us with IVF, and thank G-d, I was blessed to get pregnant on the first try after we had been married for two years. I have to believe that Hashem wants me to have these children, since it is difficult enough for younger women to get pregnant; there is only a 20% success rate with each try. So, we were very blessed, on the first try with IVF they implanted two embryos, and they both survived.

The doctor did the procedure which took about ten minutes, and then I rested there for an hour, and the whole time I was lying there saying "I've got a life in me! It's so amazing!" That was the highest moment of the pregnancy- feeling them inside of me for the first time.

After I did the pregnancy test, I told a nurse I liked at the clinic that I had done a test, and she told me she could get me the results early from the computer, and she looked and found out the test came back positive. I burst out crying, because I had done so many blood tests over the years, and they had always been negative. So I called the doctor and told him the number. He told me to repeat the test and to call him in a few days and to tell him the new number, and when I called him again he said "Well, it sounds to me like you're having twins." When the doctor implanted the two embryos, I told him, "Doctor, I want both of these babies".

There are moments when I feel overwhelmed, when I think about two of everything- two cribs, two strollers. But I'm so happy that they will be born together. I kept worrying about the fact that we are old to be having kids, and hopefully we'll live to 120, but there is a point at which these children will be on their own, and we know that at least they will have each other. Having lost a parent when I was very young, I'm sensitive to the whole subject. But hopefully, we'll be able to give them more years than my father was able to give me, and I've turned out OK. I have my scars, but I've turned out OK, and they're going to have each other for support, and I think that's great. I also don't know if I'll be able to get pregnant again, so it's a good thing that they're coming through together.

I thank G-d every day for blessing me with these babies, and I pray that He will help me to be able to carry them to full term, and that they will be healthy, and that we will be able to bring them up to walk in G-d's pathways. That's my prayer every day and every Shabbat- every time I have a chance. I pray essentially to remind Hashem that these are His babies, and that I know that I am just carrying them- that they really belong to Him.

I feel G-d's intervention so strongly in the whole process of getting pregnant, and their growth. Philip and I are going to care for them and bring them to adulthood and then they're going to belong to Him. They're going to be very special souls, and we're going to have to prepare them for whatever they're going to do in the world after we're gone, and it feels like a real privilege to be able to do that.

Postscript: Tamar gave birth this past spring to a healthy son and daughter. When I saw Tamar at her son's circumcision she glowed, and looked easily twenty years younger than she had before the pregnancy. Philip was beaming as well, happy to be a father again. Miracles in our days…

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Also in this section: My Mother and Me, Nine Months to a Baby a Different Way- an Adoption Story