The Jewish Way in
Miscarriage and Morning-
Hello
to all of the Jewish pregnant ladies in the whole world! I love
you! You're the greatest!
All
of you know that I always try to keep things happy and inspirational
at Jewish Pregnancy/Childbirth Online, but this week was a week
of tragedies- one thing after another, and when this kind of string
of events develops, I feel like Somebody wants me to share what's
going on in my life with all of you. The first thing that happened
this week was I got an e-mail from a mother in South Africa whom
I'd been corresponding with for a few weeks that she had sad news-
she had just had a miscarriage after years of struggling with fertility
difficulties; then I heard from another friend from Jerusalem that
she had miscarried last week in her tenth week, and then, finally,
I heard about another friend who miscarried at the end of her fourth
month. A week of tragically-ended pregnancies- horrible, blood-curdling
sadness, disappointment, from the heights of happiness to the deepest
valleys of lost hope, lost life.
The friend who lost
the baby in her fourth month was still in the hospital- still waiting
there after several days of unsuccessful attempts to induce labor
in order to deliver the fetus. This friend is one of my favorite
people in the whole world- even though she is very busy with her
five children, and I am very busy answering letters from a large
percentage of all the Jewish pregnant ladies in the whole universe-
so even though she lives only two blocks away, I only see her once
every two or three months. She has five beautiful, healthy children,
a history of symptomless pregnancies, and she is an amazingly healthy
person- running and going to the gym almost every morning. She is
also a very upbeat person, the kind of person who is always giving
giving giving to others- a pillar of strength in our little community.
To hear that this
had happened to her made me very sad. Not so long ago I would have
felt uncomfortable going to a person who had just been through such
an awful tragedy- worried about it being awkward, not saying the
right thing, worried that I was imposing on their space, disrupting
their privacy. But two years ago, I had a pivotal experience. I
went to the shiva for a fourteen year old boy who had been tragically
murdered by terrorists. I had been so haunted by his story that
I felt I had to go- and even though I had never met this family-
I sat with the family, and just listened to them talk for a very
long time about their lost son, and then, when I was about to leave
I told the mother how much I, and the rest of Israel, had been touched
by this awful horrific tragedy- and I could see it meant something
to her and her husband as well that I had come. So, I learned from
that that the Torah is right on track when it teaches us that two
of the most important things we can possibly do in the whole world
is comfort mourners. And I didn't have to be therapist or a pop-psychology
genius to be of help- just listening and being there had been enough.
So I went to visit
my friend on Monday morning. She is a very popular person- and I
expected that I would barely be able to get into her hospital room,
pushed into the hall by the crowd of visitors- putting in a symbolic
appearance for half an hour and then rushing back home to my computer.
But, when I got there,
I found my friend shaking and convulsing in the room all by herself-
nobody around to sit by her side as she went through labor to give
birth to this dead fetus that they had been trying to induce since
the previous Thursday. Her husband had been going back and forth
between her and the kids, waiting for the birth, and had stayed
at the hospital until five am the night before- and then when the
nurses told him the birth would not happen any time soon, he had
gone home to sleep.
When I walked in, and saw my friend
in this terrible condition, I thought for a moment that I was intruding-
that maybe she would not want me to see her like this. But then
I saw what a good thing it was that I had arrived right then- an
incredible thing that I had shown up at that very moment- to help
her out by getting her a cup of ice, distracting her with conversation,
and mostly listening to her talk- getting things off her chest after
four days of facing this terrible tragedy more or less alone with
her husband- or just plain alone.
After an hour, the nurse came in,
and told me to stand outside, and when I came back five minutes
later my friend was sitting on the bed looking a bit stunned. She
had had the baby. Can you imagine if I had happened to come a day
earlier, an hour later- what she would have done? Gone through this
all on her own? The thought of this is just horrifying. Then I went
with her to the surgery ward to finish up the D and C procedure,
held her glasses and scarf in my purse and went to buy some food
for her after the hours and hours of fasting required before surgery,
and then sat in the waiting room to accompany her back up to the
Gynecology ward. All in all, instead of half
an hour, I was with her for five hours.
I have been thinking about this experience
nearly non-stop ever since. I have never before been so close to
a miscarriage- having always heard about miscarriages as something
that happened to someone I know long in the past, but never being
right there while it was happening. It's made me realize a few things.
First of all, I've been thinking about how incredibly, amazingly
important it is to visit women who have had miscarriages. Maybe
we think that they want to deal with everything on their own, and
we want to respect their privacy, and in some cases maybe this is
true. But Judaism teaches us that when a person is sick or suffering
we are required to reach out to them- even if we go all the way
to the hospital or their house, and they tell us that they would
prefer to be alone, and we come right back home. We are required
to make our effort. This is especially important in the case of
people who live far from their families- as so many people do nowadays.
I was also thinking how the tragic
loss of a pregnancy makes us value so much more a basic, healthy,
boring pregnancy, a basic, healthy baby after a basic, boring birth.
It is so easy to take these earthshaking miracles for granted as
something that is expected or ordinary. For me, being with my friend-
and focusing for five hours on the fragility of life- made me come
home and look at my children differently. I looked at my two-year
old, who, just between you and me, has been driving me up the walls
on the long days that we have been more or less homebound because
of the war with Iraq and two weeks of cold, rainy days- and I saw
for the first time in a long time what a miracle she is- how she
is growing up into a little person with her own personality, her
impressive strength of will, her little face that is so amazingly,
adorably her. The birth of a child, and being able to raise that
child to adulthood is such an incredible incredible gift from G-d-
and unfortunately, it took a tragedy to make me hug my children
as tight as I really should every day- unable to take them for granted
as I do all too often.
In the book Stuffed by Patricia
Volk (about a Jewish restaurant family- the best book I have read
in years!) she writes about how Jews take an egg on Passover night,
and dip it in salt water, and eat it. She suggests that this means
that we take life (represented by the round, cycle-like egg), and
dip it in hardship and sadness (the salt water), and then we do
not throw the sadness in life away- instead, we eat it. We gain
sustenance and strength from it. We make it into a gift, we try
our hardest to make something holy out of it- because that's the
Jewish way.
My Favorite Kind of
Year
This year (not 2003-
but 5763) is the best best kind of year... it's a year with two
Adars (we stick in an extra month in order to keep the Jewish year-
which is a lunar year- in synch with the seasons (Passover always
in the spring, Rosh Hashana always in the fall etc.- as opposed
to Ramadan which can be any season of the year since the Muslims
never add an extra month). That means, that this year is a PREGNANT
YEAR, that's really what we call it (shana meuberet). I just had
to share that with you.What an incredible year to be pregnant in-
may it be full of only blessing and happiness and good news.
The Best Link Ever
Wow, was I excited
to hear about a new website, a forum
for pregnant women in Jerusalem (my home for the past decade).
With practical info, and forums for advice. What a wonderful idea!
The Book
My book, Expecting
Miracles, which will turn your pregnancy and birth upside down-
and generally change your life, will be coming out this summer (2003).
But, if you're pregnant, and must must must read the book now- then
I have made some copies of the manuscript that I will very happily
send out to women who will give birth before publication (which,
if you're pregnant now, means you). Click here to get details on
how to
order.
28,000 hits
Just checking my site statistics,
and saw that a few months ago I got an all time high! 28,000 hits!
Thanks so much for helping to make this happen!
I get letters almost every day
from women who tell me about their pregnancies and births and lives.
Believe it or not, while you might think that as the Jewish Pregnancy
lady I am being stalked by the producers for the Today Show and
the New York Times Middle East Correspondent for interviews, I'll
share a secret with you- I actually have an incredibly small, largely
homebound life, limited more or less to the five block radius around
my house in downtown Jerusalem. I barely even know anyone outside
of my own neighborhood (and I am totally serious)!
And then I come home and get an
E-mail from San Diego or New York or Panama or Singapore or Berlin
or Antwerp (I really have heard from all those places). It is just
an incredible incredible gift- and may G-d bless me that I use this
site well, to inspire all you pregnant ladies out of the doldrums
of pregnancy- and see G-d's hand in all of this incredible process.
G-d is waiting for us to call out- to need His help- to establish
a relationship with Him- and, ladies, these nine months is the greatest
time in a woman's life to do just that.