Usually, I reject the desire to be normal, because I believe we need to examine every situation separately and manage our behavior accordingly. This week, I had my beliefs questioned when I heard about a conflict between parents who are both my clients about the way to raise their 2-year-old daughter.

Damian and Alice were very successful. They were wealthy, established professionals, yet they struggled to raise their 2-year-old daughter Mel. Damian was anxious about their daughter and Alice tried very hard to reach "normality".

At first, I thought Alice's desire to be a normal family cluttered her perception. I did not really understand what she meant when she said, "Damian is not normal", but the more I got to know them, the more I realized that although striving for normality may be limiting, having no sense of normality can be devastating for children. I understood that isolation and normality could not go hand in hand.

The conflict between Damian and Alice started when Mel, their first and only child, was born at a very late stage in their life. Damian was 47 and Alice as 45 when their daughter was born after 20 years of a wonderful life together. Unlike most couples, Damian (not Alice) retired from life and dedicated every possible moment to his daughter. He lost interest in friends, hobbies, his wife, his work and counted the seconds until he got back home. When he came home, Mel was on his hands and he did not leave her for a second on her own. He talked to her constantly, even when he went to the shower or the toilet. When he was home, he did not allow Alice to spend any time with Mel and insisted on being her main carer.

Alice was OK with that in the first couple of months, because she was home during the day, but when she went back to work (as the main provider), evenings became a parenting competition.

They called me when Mel threw horrible tantrums, refused to let her mom take care of her and said she only wanted Daddy. At the age of 2, she could not say a word yet and she whined and cried constantly. By that stage, I did not think it was unusual, because in many families it happens the other way - the child prefers the person who takes care of them most of the time, which is usually Mommy. This time, it was Daddy and I could understand the delay in language development because Mel grew up in a bilingual home. However, as I spent more time with them, I realized the problem was much bigger than that. Damien was so isolated in his world of joy he had no idea what to expect of Mel or how to help her develop.

For a year, Alice was convinced everything was pretty normal, until one day, they visited members of Alice's family she had not seen for years and saw their 1-year-old daughter sitting on the floor and playing with toys by herself. Alice said to her cousin, "Wow, your daughter is amazing. She plays by herself" and her cousin looked at her surprised and said, "What do you mean? Every 1-year-old child can sit on the floor and play with toys".

Later that weekend, when Damian played with Mel on the floor, fed her and talked to her constantly without giving her a second to respond, Alice's uncle came to her and whispered in her ears, "What's wrong with him? Does he ever stop and let her be?"

Alice came back home and did not think much of it until one rare day when Damian could not get home in the evening and she had a chance to take care of Mel. She discovered that Mel was a wonderful girl. She played on the carpet, she did not throw any tantrums, she communicated with Alice without words and Alice's concept of normality changed.

The following day, she noticed that when Damian was with Mel, Mel was very clingy and did not allow anyone to help her, feed her or shower her. She whined and cried constantly. When they went out to a restaurant together, she threw temper tantrums and when she spent time with Mel on her own, she was the most wonderful baby in the world. Alice started demanding to have private time with Mel, which made Damian even more anxious.

Damian said to me that he was very worried for Mel. I smiled when he said that. A first child always makes parents worry. But his worry was not normal. He did not "allow" her to be on her own for a second - not on the carpet, not in her bed, not with Alice and not with her toys. When I asked him why, he said, "She is too young!"

When he found her awake in bed, he made sounds of disaster, "Poor girl, you must be sad", and when she cried, even if she was on Alice's hands, he picked her up immediately and said, "Daddy will take care of you".

When Mel had a rash and the doctor suggested them to avoid showers for a while, Damien decided they would shower her once a week. I saw them a year after the rash incident and asked them if they had seen the doctor since. They said, "No". When I asked them if they had tried showering twice a week, they said, "No". When I asked them how long they planned for her to shower once a week, they both looked at me puzzled.

Damian did not want their cook to come when Mel was home, saying, "There are knives on the bench top". "What's wrong with having knives on the bench top?" I asked, "We all use knives to cook". He said, "Not when Mel's around. Knives are dangerous".

Mel could not hold a spoon, because she was "too young" to feed herself. If she played with the kitchen drawers where plastic containers are stored, he said, "It's dangerous for a 2-year-old to play with plastic containers". He refused to let Alice fly with Mel on her own. When Alice gave him examples of a woman he knew who had flown with her baby, he said, "You're not Deb and Mel's not her daughter".

When they flew away for a vacation, he asked Alice to book a hotel that was close to a hospital and book tentative flights back home in the middle of the vacation, "In case Mel gets sick". They never had dinner together. "Mel is intensive. When she eats, she constantly demands attention", he said and Alice protested, "How do you explain her sitting at a restaurant with both of us?"

When they had guests while Mel was awake, Damien ignores the guests and they usually ask Alice, "Is it always like this?" When I asked Damian about it, he was surprised I said, "They don't understand. She is just a baby".

Isolation limits perspective

When I talked to Damian, he said several times, "Alice doesn't know what to do with her. Mel won't let Alice put her in bed. She's just a baby. All babies throw temper tantrums. I can't take the risk". He was totally convinced that Alice was incapable of taking care of her daughter and that leaving Mel with Alice was a real risk.

I have heard from lots of women that their husband "couldn't change a diaper" and I knew it was part of the "I'm the more important parent" game that Damian was playing with Alice. Unlike many husbands, Alice did want to change diapers and during the first year of their daughter's life, feeling rejected by her husband and daughter, she developed the idea that she was not normal and that something was wrong with her motherly instincts, until she saw her cousin's daughter playing by herself.

Whenever I talked to Alice about her feelings and the way she treated Mel, she was amazing. She was very clear and allowed her to have wonderful experiences. As long as Damian was not around, she felt great being a mother. So she started changing her schedule and worked from home more to be with Mel during the day when the nanny was home. As she built her confidence as a mother (when Damian was not around) she realized that their parenting was dysfunctional and she asked my help.

When I talked to both of them, I realized that neither Damian nor Alice knew what was normal for children and what was not. Their life circumstance had made them very isolated from the world. While I was with them, I said to myself that my first nephew was a wonderful lesson in normality for me and that having an early childhood center with 1.5- to 5-year-olds had given me lots of perspective by allowing me to see a wide range of behaviors. Isolation interferes with developing perspective.

Damian was an only child who grew up with his grandparents after his dad left and his mom could not raise him for some reason and came to visit him on weekends. When I asked him if he had ever seen a 1-year-old baby before he had Mel, he thought about and said, "No, never. Mel is the only 1-year-old baby I've ever seen".

I thought to myself, "Well, no wonder he's anxious. He doesn't know what to expect".

Here is a list of things that isolated Damian and Alice and prevented him from developing perspective that is so important to parents.

1. Having kids at a later age. By the time Mel was born, Alice and Damian's friends already had kids who were 10-18 years old. At first, Alice and Damian spent time with their friends, but soon after, they stopped. They had no chance to learn how parents treated their kids, what was normal and what was not.
2. Both Damian and Alice were "only children" and had no siblings, no nieces and no nephews to see how to behave or how their parents behaved.
3. Most of the parents with kids around Mel's age were very young and they did not feel they could relate to them, so they did not hang around them.
4. They did not attend any playgroup.
5. Their daughter did not go to childcare, so they could not see other kids' (or parents' or carers') behavior.
6. Their families lived overseas, so they had no support structure.
7. They did not participate in any Internet parenting forum.
8. They were both highly educated, but did not read any parenting material.

It was amazing how small changes can make a huge difference in people's life and lead them into developing perspective. Damian and Alice still have a long way to go, but in the last 3 months, Mel has started going to a childcare center, she showers every day and she is calm and friendly. Alice called and told me they had gone to a birthday party on the weekend and Damian had allowed Mel to go with Alice to the room where all the kids had been. For the first time in her life, Damien had stayed with other dads to have a chat. Mel had played with the kids for 3 hours and Alice had watched her with tears.

"At first she struggled, but after about 10 minutes, she was fine. She was just a normal girl", she said. Damian said it was not easy for him, but he had never seen her so happy.

Parenting your children is (and should be) a unique experience. Doing what everyone else does is not always best, but being exposed to a variety of parenting styles and options can help greatly to fine tune your uniqueness as a parent.

Happy parenting,
Ronit

You may want to read

• Ronit’s Parenting Bible: Babies
• Kids’ Declaration of Independence: Decision Techniques
• Kids’ Declaration of Independence: Teaching about Choice

Down Syndrome can be detected during pregnancy by checking the amniotic fluid (Amniocentesis) or after birth by a quick physical test. In 1866, a British physician named John Langdon Down described the condition. Almost 100 years later, Jerome Lejeune discovered it was caused by an extra copy (whole or part) of the 21^st chromosome. The chance of having a baby with Down Syndrome is 1 in 733, but it becomes more common with the age of the parents.

Apart from very distinctive facial features, the average IQ of kids with Down Syndrome is 50, as opposed to the general IQ average of 100. Their health is very poor and their life expectancy is very low, and even though their life expectancy is increasing, the intellectual and physical disabilities remain part of their life and the life of their parents.

The announcement of the condition came to the couple as a shock, but surprisingly, their family and friends took it even harder. While Naomi talked to people on the phone, she found herself comforting them, rather than them comforting her. Some people even said silly things, not because they were mean, but because they had never experienced the grief of losing a baby. It reminded me of the things people said to me after losing my second baby, "Never mind, you will have another one". As a grieving mother, I was not in the right state of mind and that sounded to me as if I were a machine on an assembly line, going for make the next product.

It was amazing to hear how people reacted. The first reaction was, of course, "Is it definitive?", "Can you have another test to make sure?" and "Is there anything they can do to reverse this?" Unfortunately, the Amniocentesis merely confirmed the earlier Alpha feto-protein test result that clearly showed a problem. The doctor showed her 5 different tests indicating an extra 21^st chromosome.

The second was a religious reaction of accepting what God had given her and having no right to stop the pregnancy. Personally, I have an issue with this position, which I see as hypocrisy. I look around me and see millions of religious people doing their best to cure the illnesses that God gives them. They build houses to stay away from the weather God gives them. They innovate and an create better technology, making lots of progress and showing no sign of accepting what God gives us (unless of course you decide that what God gives us is the mind and body to do just that).

I remember the ethical debate we had during my special education studies. We talked about "innocent lives", "rights" and "choice", but how on Earth can you use "right" and "choose" in the same sentence? It is an oxymoron!

I always thought that when talking ethics, we are only debating whose definition is more important? Who is more important, the Down Syndrome baby's life or the lives of about 50 people around them (parents, siblings, grandparents, uncles, aunties, cousins and friends) whose lives will change significantly? What about the education and health systems that need to support them for the rest of their life?

Throughout the discussion, I was surprised by parents of kids with Down Syndrome who justified their own condition. I am not talking about those who discovered the condition at birth and had not known their baby might have Down Syndrome. Those people should be admired for doing the best to make the most of this condition and find the "gifts" in a bad situation. We can learn from them how to make the most out of life and how to deal with the condition, but cannot take their recommendations to abort or not to abort the pregnancy.

I have heard some people talking about the baby's right to live and that the parents have no right to kill a baby just because it is "damaged". I do not know about you, but I find it more problematic when parents cause damage to their babies by smoking, using drugs and abusing their body during pregnancy, but I do not hear the same noise being made about these things.

It is amazing that the discussion starts when the test shows a bad result and not when the mother decides to have the test. Why would anyone do a test, especially a risky test like Amniocentesis, if they plan to ignore the results?

As you can see, I am very emotional about it. I have worked with children with severe physical and cognitive disabilities and supported their parents and I have no idea why anyone would voluntarily do this to themselves. The only person I would take advice from is someone who would make the same choice twice.

Personally, I do not believe I could tell someone else what the "right" thing to do is, because I believe that in this case, "right" is something that no one else has the "right" to choose for you. People who do not have to deal with the consequences of their judgments lose all their "rights" to the decision.

Therefore, the poll is not about whether someone having to make that decision is right or wrong but what would you do if you had to make that choice.

May you never have to face this choice!
Ronit

You may want to read

• Baby’s Sex – To know or not to know (poll)
• Mother: The Best Job in the World
• Ronit’s Parenting Bible: Babies

Some friends said to us, "It's silly to have a party for a 1-year-old, because they don't understand what's going on and will never remember".

Well, Eden was our first child, so we ignored them and had the party anyway with the whole family. I could swear Eden knew everyone came to see her. You see, when Eden was 1 year old, she could walk, say some words (luckily, we captured it on video, otherwise no one would have ever believed us, not even she) and respond to people's requests. For a whole day, we walked like peacocks, watching her going from one family member to another, clapping her hands, dancing and moving her hands and fingers to the rhythm of the songs and acting out the lyrics.

When Tsoof had his first birthday (13 years ago), we were in Thailand and celebrated with some friends. When he was 14 months old, we flew to visit our family and had another party for him. At that stage, he was very aware of everything that happened around him. He already talked and felt like a prince for a day as the family came to celebrate his first birthday. He used the opportunity to show off his skills and abilities. Whenever anyone asked him to do something, he did and when they started clapping him, he joined in and clapped for himself with pride.

When Noff was one year old, we packed our house and were preparing for an 8-week trip around Australia. We had some friends over and, just like Tsoof had done, she used the opportunity to show off her dancing and singing and was very happy with all the attention. We were happy and excited about the trip and her first party was very much a farewell party. Noff was cute and every time we had guests, she thought it was a party, because people loved her and played with her.

Recently, my two sisters had their sons' first birthdays. People around them said that it was not worth the effort, because the kids would not understand it was their birthday and would never remember it anyway. That brought back all my memories about my kids' first birthdays.

I am not sure what people mean when they say kids do not "understand". What is there to understand? It is a fun day when everyone comes to show how happy they are the new baby has come into the world and give them lots of attention. Besides, birthday parties are not just for the kids. They are also for their parents, because they are congratulated for having their kids and they will surely remember.

And what do they mean when they say this kids will not "remember"? Do they mean the food? What games they played? The special suite they were wearing? Then no, they will probably not remember any of these. But I believe they will always remember being loved by so many people, being smiled at, being cheered and being happy. Every person spends every day of their life longing to feel like this - to be loved just the way we are, regardless of our looks, abilities and talents. Being unable to do anything properly and still being surrounded by an ocean of love.

I have to say I do not remember my first birthday but my kids will, not because I did something special, but because they were born at a time when we could capture they special day on video. All they need to do is put on the DVD of themselves going around the room, smiling to everyone and being lifted up high with a bouquet of flowers on their head to recreate the memory.

Look at the kid in the pictures. This is my nephew on his first birthday. It was a joyous day for his parents and for everyone else who came to watch him showing off his tricks and his beautiful smile and he had a ball. I even got to celebrate his birthday from a distance and hear all the stories of him through photos and YouTube clips, thanks to the development of technology!

So what is your opinion? Will he remember or not?

Happy parenting,
Ronit

You may want to read

• Mother: The Best Job in the World
• Mirror Mirror on the Wall
• Put a Little Love in Your Heart

Only when I got pregnant for the first time, I learned about all those beliefs and traditions:

• If you are pretty during your pregnancy, it means you will have a boy (because girls take away your beauty)
• If you hold your necklace with your wedding ring hanging from it and the ring moves in circles, you will have a girl
• If you touch your nose after someone sprinkles salt on your head (without your knowledge), you will have a boy (because he will grow a mustache under his nose), but if you touch your eyebrows, you will have a girl

It was so funny, I thought back then I could do a PhD thesis on the beliefs surrounding the sex of babies.

Somehow, my story was a bit more complicated. Everyone said I had a boy (because of my head, my butt and my beautiful hair during the pregnancy) and I never argued. When I had the first ultrasound, I asked the doctor about the sex of my baby, but he could not tell, because it was too early or the position was not comfortable or something.

For about 7 months, I thought I had a boy, not that it mattered, until one weekend, I went to visit a relative and met her mom, who was an old woman from Iraq. She walked up to me, touched my belly and asked me "Would you like to know what you have?" I smiled. I "knew" I had a boy, but I was curious to discover another traditional way to tell.

"Sure", I said.

"You have a girl", she said confidently.

"How do you know?" I asked her.

"I was a midwife in Iraq and I can tell by your belly button. I helped deliver thousands or babies and I've never been wrong".

I went home smiling. There was a conflict between all the other predictions (boy) and the Iraqi midwife's (girl).

Two weeks later, I went to the hospital, thinking my water had broken. The woman who did the ultrasound thought my baby was too big, which could indicate a developmental problem.

"Would you like to know the babies' sex?" she asked.

"Sure", I said, curious to know what modern medicine would predict.

"You have a girl", she said. I did not know what to think.

However, the doctor was not very happy with that technician's measurements and said to me, "Come back tomorrow. The other technician here is very professional and I would like her do the measurements again. By the way, if she says it's a girl, it will be accurate".

So I came the next day, hoping the measurements were not accurate and my baby was not too big. The other technician said everything looked fine and "Yes, you have a baby girl".

After almost 8 months of thinking I had a boy, I had to come to terms with the idea that I had a girl (which did not take too long, because I was happy either way).

In the evening, I called my mom and said on the phone with lots of excitement, "Mom, I had another ultrasound today and I have a baby girl".

And my mum replied, "Never mind. It's not so bad".

I always knew my mom thought that having a first son was the best thing. Her first was a girl and in the culture she grew up in having a first daughter was a sign of weakness (I am so happy I was not born then and there).

I think that more than having a first son, which is a tradition of cultures that puts the responsibility on the first born to take care of the family and his aging parents, the desire to have children from both sexes is greater. When my first was born, I did not mind at all about the sex. With the second pregnancy, I wanted it to be a different sex to allow me to experience both sexes.

Knowing your babies' sex is a debate that I hear many times. Some say it does not matter, that it cannot be changed anyway and it needs to be a surprise, just like nature meant it to be. Others say it is better to know in advance. For them, you cannot change it anyway, so it is better to know and prepare for yourself. If it is what you wanted, cool, you can be happy months before. If not, you can prepare yourself and get used to the idea.

My mom thought she should comfort me for having a baby girl (as a first born) and that I should not have asked to know the baby's sex. I guess she thought the disappointment is not as great when you already see your baby and hold her in your arms (or maybe when you are partially sedated).

So, if you or your partner were pregnant and the doctor asked you during an ultrasound check if you would like to know the sex of your baby, what would you say?

Please tell us why in the comment box below.

Regardless of their sex, I hope you have fun with your kids,
Ronit

You may want to read

• Having a Baby with Down Syndrome (poll)
• Mother: The Best Job in the World
• Are You a Normal Parent?

Maxine wanted babies all her life, but never wanted to have one by herself. Single parenting was not very appealing to her. When everyone started nagging her to get married and warned her she was "missing the train", she kept saying she would not have a child on her own and since the right guy could not be seen on the horizon, her baby dreams seemed farther and farther away.

Then, at the age of 37, Maxine met Don, who was even a bit older. They both knew the clock was ticking for both of them, but Don was afraid of the commitment and did not want to rush their relationship. The wonderful love between Maxine and Don was cluttered by the ticking sounds of their advancing age.

Every few months, pressured by the "ticking body clock", Maxine said goodbye to Don. "I love you very much, but I'm looking for someone who wants to have a family with me", she said.

Every time, after 2 days or a week, Don would call her again and ask her to reconsider. "I need some more time", he said.

After a year of ups and downs, Maxine and Don moved in together. They talked about having a baby more often than before, but Don was still trying to get used to the idea of having a family. "After so many years of being on my own, I need time", he kept saying.

About 6 month later, Don and Maxine decided they were ready to start a family. A month went by, then 2 months and finally, Maxine went to see her doctor. After some tests, the doctor suggested in vitro fertilization and Don and Maxine went through all the heartaches associated with the procedure.

After 4 unsuccessful attempts, the doctor suggested using more hormones, but the increase in hormone dosage sent Maxine to the hospital with a new problem cause by the hormones. It took Maxine another 2 precious months to recover as Nature took its time.

Maxine celebrated her 39^th birthday with the joy of having a partner she loved, but with the frustration of hearing the clock ticking loudly. Don offered to see a very expensive specialist who took Maxine through a special test and told them that if they ever wanted to be parents, they would have to use an egg donor, because Maxine had no viable eggs left.

The search for the right egg donor started and after preparing her body for IVF again, Maxine went through her first IVF attempt with another woman's egg. Alas, that was unsuccessful.

After another 6 months of preparation, having to manage the storm of her emotions as she went through a grueling wait and hormonal changes, Maxine went through the second IVF attempt with a donated egg and was very happy to tell the world she was finally pregnant!

On Maxine's 41^th birthday, she and Don celebrated with their gorgeous, healthy 9-month-old daughter.

Whenever Maxine tells me about the expenses of having IVF, the specialist who charged hundreds of dollars to see them for just 10-20 minutes over 6 months before she got pregnant and 9 months after, the payments for the egg donors and all the hormones and the treatments she went through, I tell myself that some kids are literally "precious" kids (as in "expensive"), because to have them, their parents have had to pay a fortune (not to mention the emotional price they have had to pay).

Sometimes, I wonder why I meet these people in my life, but the answer comes automatically that they teach me to appreciate what I have and not take things for granted.

If all you had to do to get pregnant is to make passionate love one night and enjoy every second of it, you are so lucky!

Be happy in life,
Ronit

You may want to read

• Give Me 22 Reasons
• What doesn’t kill you, makes you stronger
• A Choice I Could Not Make

Whenever I asked myself what I was afraid of, I knew I was scared of dragging myself again through old emotions of loss and hopelessness. I had been there twice and the feelings had faded but not disappeared.

This sticky note on my shelf is what made me write the posts about my loss.

A long time ago, I made the courageous decision not to talk about my loss, to let go of the past and only to take the learning from it. So, without talking much about how "smart" I have become as a parent (the hard way), I talked to people about my learning. When I made that decision, I did not want others to feel sorry for me, nor did I want to feel sorry for myself, so I focused on what I have learned from the experiences. You can find many examples of my learning in over 500 posts in this blog.

The major once are:

1. Life is short.
2. There are no guarantees in life.
3. No one ever said life is supposed to be fair.
4. We are a lot stronger that we think.
5. Grief is debilitating. Grieving people are handicapped. They feel like they are expected to run a marathon with no legs.
6. Forgive people for not knowing what to say.
7. When trying to deal with death, asking "Why?" will only bring you more suffering.
8. "Why me?" is even worse, unless you start believing in a grand plan. If you do believe in a grand plan, the answer to "Why me?" is always that you have been chosen and you have a major role to play in something bigger than yourself.
9. Faith in whatever makes sense to you and gives you comfort is the best cure for grief. Any faith will do.
10. Unfortunately, we appreciate things more when something threatens to take them away from us. What a waste! Appreciate what you have right now.
11. Even when you experience pain, you get no discounts from your kids. They are just kids. When you are in pain, it is no excuse for handing over the captaincy of your family ship to your kids.
12. Tell your kids you love them every day, because you do and because regretting you have not said it is the most horrible form of self torture.
13. Everything will be OK in the end. If it is not OK, it is not the end.

In the past year, as the number of my parenting workshops increased and I heard myself describing the pain I had gone through in order to learn some important things, I realized that talking about it was helping people more that I had thought. It made me think in an odd way that if there is such a thing as a universe and grand plan and the universe was trying to tell me something, it was that through my pain, I was destined to help others become better parents, even if it meant cutting open my heart and telling my story.

When my son, the one who brought my smile back, started playing guitar, he practiced playing and singing 20 Good Reasons by Thirsty Merc. My kids used to make fun of me when I asked him to sing me "22 Reasons" and it became a family joke.

Every time Tsoof sang this song, I found another reason I would have gone through my baby ordeal again and I tried to send it to my younger self, the Ronit who lived 14 years ago with a troubled mind, trying to find the reasons that would help her survive the pain and fear of another pregnancy.

I am adding a video of Tsoof singing me "20 good reasons". He only looks big, but at the time of recording this, he was only 13 years old and had only had 2 months of teaching himself how to play the guitar.

[There is a video that cannot be displayed in this feed. Visit the blog entry to see the video.]

He was sent to me to bring back my smile. I hope you will never lose yours.

Happy parenting,
Ronit

You may want to read

• What doesn’t kill you, makes you stronger
• A Choice I Could Not Make
• What are you made of?

Yet, during my Better Parenting Skills workshops, I surprise people when I tell them that a big part of my parenting confidence comes not from my studies or my professional experience, but from my personal loss (if you are here for first time, please read 35-hour Baby).

You see, when people talk about having it tough, I can relate to it and say, "When you are hit hard, you discover how much stronger you are than what you thought before". When people talk about failure after failure, I can relate to it too. I have failed twice. Big time! I think the best thing I can give them is better perspective, because I have been through it and come out with a smile. If I can do a good job giving you this message about perspective, I will be happy.

In my failed attempt to give up and compromise on having one child, I tried hard to find out what the universe was trying to tell me. Since I knew there were no guarantees what I came up with was the right thing, I knew it was only a way of handling my grief. I looked for courage to try one more time. I looked for some logic and some sense. What I learned, the hard way, was that death and loss make no sense and it is better to let go of the desire to find it.

Just another family photo

It was my aunt's family photo that saved me from this self-torture.

On my refrigerator, for over two years, I'd had photos of family members and friends. My aunt Rachel was in one of those photos. She was there with her husband and her two kids.

My aunt had gone through the long misery of 4 miscarriages and endless treatments. At some stage, she nearly succumbed to cancer, but survived. She was 42 when she had her first child.

In one of the "how to grieve" brochures I had, it was written that for some people, even a miscarriage is a huge loss. At first, I refused to see it as the same. "How can you compare? I held my son in my hands, I hugged him and I kissed him…" but then I realized it was impossible to compare pain.

Auntie Rachel was smiling in her photo, hugging her two kids with pride. "Will I ever smile like her?" I asked myself and my pain answered, "Never".

Whenever I passed by the fridge, I wondered what had been on her mind every time she'd had a miscarriage. Her two kids smiled back at me from the photo. They were gorgeous boys.

I tried to transport myself a year or two years into the future and imagining the kid I did not know I would have, the one that would bring back my smile, but the image of my son, my 35-hour son, would not leave my mind.

One day, I looked at my aunt's photo and asked her, "Rachel, if you knew you would have to go through all this pain in order to have your kids, would you be willing to go through it again?"

Her photo was silent, but her smile answered, "Of course I would!" She was beaming in the photo, as if telling me, "I would be happy to go through it again. Look at my boys! They were worth every bit of it. Every second of pain was worth it".

As I stared at her photo, I found the courage I needed to move forward, to try one more time… and another time… and another time… I was full of confidence. I knew that one day I would hug a healthy, living baby in the delivery room and bring him home. I would kiss him all over and thank him for bringing back my smile. I would answer just like my aunt, "Every cell in his body was worth the pain".

Every time I needed a reminder, I looked at the photo again and I knew that in a year or two, when someone asked me, "If you knew you would lose two kids before having this one, would you go through it again?" I would say, "Yes!"

About a year and half later and after looking at my aunt's family photo hundreds of times, I gave this answer it for real.

On October 12, 1995, after severe bleeding and attempts to delay the delivery, which started at the 35 weeks of pregnancy, I gave birth to the kid who brought back the smile into my life - Tsoof Lee Baras. He was a very special child, arriving after 4 long years, of which I had been pregnant for two and half years. This was one week before my birthday and I could not imagine a better present.

"Tsoof" means "Nectar" or "Sweet essence" in Hebrew. We added the middle name "Lee", which literally means "For me", to distinguish him from the Tsoof who was taken away from us, so Tsoof's full name is "My sweet essence". Fitting, don't you think? Just look at him.

As I hugged him for the first time on the operating table, I knew what the universe was trying to tell me and why I had to wait so long for him.

Come back on Monday and I will tell you how I have turned my grief into happiness every day of my life since.

May you find your smiles,
Ronit

You may want to read

• Give Me 22 Reasons
• A Choice I Could Not Make
• Kid Grief

[If this is your first time here, please start reading from 35-hour Baby]

… On my daily walks with Kathy, my doctor friend, I looked for a way to give up. One part of me longed for a baby, a healthy baby that I can take home, and the other part was afraid I would not be able to survive another pregnancy and possibly another loss. To make matters worse, another doctor I had seen told me that since I had already had one baby with a heart defect, my chances of having another one were no longer 1:20,000 but 1:10 (!) and that certainly did not make things easier.

Kathy, who was in her late thirties, had made a conscious choice to have only one child. We had been walking every morning for about a year. She had evaluated all her options and seemed so happy with her choice, so I asked for her guidance.

"Maybe if I find comfort in one child, it will stop tormenting me", I said to her.

Being a truly wise woman, Kathy explained to me she had made a choice I could not make.

"I can live with having an only child. Eden is the most wonderful girl in the world. You and so many like you can live with one child. Why can't I?" I said.

"Because you want another child. This is why you have gone through the second pregnancy. This is why you have gone through the third. You cannot lie to yourself. You are in pain, Ronit. When people are in pain, their choices are not the ones they would normally make", Kathy said.

She made so much sense it hurt.

I wanted her to be wrong. I wanted to give up, but the more I thought about it, the more I knew she was right. Pain clutters the mind and my mind was in a real mess.

"When you are in pain, you cannot examine all the options properly. You think of having only one child as an option, but it is not a real option for you. You are under pressure and choices made under pressure are not real choices. You can't choose to just give up. That's not a choice".

"Maybe the universe is telling me I need to give up", I told her.

"Or maybe it's trying to tell you something else", she said.

I looked for other things the universe might be trying to tell me. It was so painful that giving up seemed the least painful option.

I found a job in Forth Worth in a child care center, where I had been asked to run my Garden of Eden Program. It kept my mind busy. I tried to prove Kathy wrong and failed in this too. I could not let go of the image of the baby I needed to take home, the one who needs to bring back my smile. I found refuge in my job and did my best not to stop for a second, so the pain would not come back.

Tomorrow, I will tell how a photo that was hanging on my refrigerator changed my life.

May all your choices be made with clarity,
Ronit

You may want to read

• Give Me 22 Reasons
• What doesn’t kill you, makes you stronger
• Kid Grief

[If you reading this blog for the first time and you want to know the reasons for our grief, read our family story in the 3 previous posts in this series: 35-hour Baby, Baby Hope and Another Baby Nightmare.

Eden was 5 years old and could not understand why these things had happened. She was angry with us and we could not comfort her, because we could not comfort ourselves. Most people treated me as the grieving person and did not recognize Gal or Eden's loss. I was angry, sad, in pain and found it hard to give her answers.

She asked us why we had lied to her and we failed to explain to her that life had lied to us. She asked why we could not prevent our losses and we failed to stop trying to bring back time and prevent them and to let go. I tried to say to myself, "Let go", but could not let go. She asked when she would finally have a brother or a sister and we did not know what to say. Every second we spent with Eden, she talked about the big loss. Even in the games she played with her dolls, people were sad, angry and had lots of dead babies.

"All babies die"

There was no place to hide. Every photo, every song, seeing a stroller passing by or just going through the baby isle at the supermarket started the bleeding again.

Every time we saw a baby, Eden asked, "When will he die?"

Every time we explained that most babies lived, she said, "Then why did our babies die?" and we did not know what to say. Inside of me, I hoped she would never know what was going on in my head. People in pain do not make sense. Sense and death do not go together.

As I watched my wonderful girl killing all her baby dolls, I realized she was just a mirror of us and she was trying in her young and innocent way to find relief from something her parents could not.

I talked to many people and went to see a grief councilor twice and what I learned was very scary. The statistics about grief were devastating. Some people keep the memory of a dead child and practically stop living. They are so depressed they cannot function or go to work. Many couples divorce due to their pain and the siblings of the dead child are pushed to the side, growing up in the shadow of a child who will never change.

From the dark place of my pain and misery, although I could not see any light, I had an intuition that going through that path of grieving all my life, divorcing Gal because we find it hard to help each other or losing Eden would be worse than losing my two babies. I knew I had to stop the downward spiral. The last loss of my baby girl had taught me I was not immune 2 horrible disasters are in my life were no guarantee I would be spared a 3^rd disaster. I had lost two kids and I could not afford losing my one and only living child, the girl who had made me a mother, the wonderful girl who had taught me to love myself.

I needed a plan.

One day, we went to the Scarborough Fair, which came once a year to the Dallas-Fort-Worth area. I looked around. There were many people there and I had an idea.

"Eden, look around. How many people do you think are here?"

"I don't know. Hundreds, maybe thousands", she said.

"Do you know that all these people were born and were babies once?"

She looked around her with big eyes, a bit surprised.

"Look at them! They all have a mother and a father and they stayed alive. Look at them, they are still alive".

I think it helped.

For a long time, every time I took Eden with me to the supermarket, the mall, a fair or a festival, I showed her many people who had been babies once and as I repeated that every opportunity I had, I convinced myself too that one day, I would see the light at the end of my dark tunnel.

Look at her photo. This is our wonderful Eden. She is 20 years old now and 15 years ago, she did not think she would ever smile again (and she was just a 5-year-old mirror of me).

Join me again on Thursday for my way of getting out of grief towards hope.

See you then,
Ronit

You may want to read

• Another Baby Nightmare
• Baby Hope
• 35-hour Baby

Every time I run a workshop or coach a client, when we get to dealing with hard times, I tell people about my loss and how strong I have become as a result. I think I owe it to all my readers too.

[If this is your first time here, please read the lead-up to this post - 35-hour Baby and Baby Hope]

Immunization to heartache

…I hugged my belly every day, trying hard to gain strength to survive another day. Twice, I did a special ultrasound check to confirm that the heart defect that had killed my son would not hit us again. Every time, the specialist reassured me this baby girl was perfectly fine.

Eden, who was just 5 years old, was very anxious. As most parents know, time is not a concept kids understand very well. She had been asking for a baby sister (she would even settle for a brother) for over 2 years and waiting through two pregnancies was way too long for her.

Every time, she asked, "Mom, how do you know it won't happen again? How do you know this baby won't die too?" and every time, we said, "We go to the specialist and he checks and tells us that our baby is perfectly fine". Every night, before bedtime, I explained to her that it had been an accident, that at the end of 9 months, we would bring home a baby and that this baby would bring the smile back to our life.

On the 32^nd week of my pregnancy, I got up in the morning and hugged my belly as always. Much like some other days, I felt no movement. I took a shower, ate some chocolate, which usually got the baby to wake up and start moving, but I still felt no movement.

I rushed to see my doctor. She hooked me up to a monitor and there was no heartbeat!

I tried opening my eyes, hoping I would wake up from this nightmare. It was too real to be a dream. My baby was dead inside me!

I went back in time, trying to push the clock backward and give birth to her just the day before. I had felt her at night. She probably said goodbye and I did not hear. In my naivety, I hoped that after losing one child, I would be immune to further disasters and my next baby would be born healthy, as if I had had my share of heartaches in this life and there was some "court of justice" somewhere that would prevent me from suffering again, but I was wrong. I was so wrong I wanted to die.

For hours, I could not find comfort in anything around me. The next day, I went to the hospital to give birth to my dead baby girl. She had the umbilical cord wrapped around her neck. As if fate was laughing at me, this was the only baby I delivered easily and without surgery.

I did not feel any physical pain. I felt like I was in a dark place, with not a single ray of light. I asked "Why?" and had no answers.

Eden kept saying, "But you said it wouldn't happen again!" with a lot of anger and disappointment. She did not trust us anymore, because we had promised her a live, healthy baby sister she could play with and had not delivered. We had wanted to believe it would not happen again, but it did. It wasn't fair. No one ever said life was fair. Fairness was just not part of the deal. My heart was bleeding and I did not even have the strength to wipe the blood off…

Come back tomorrow and I will share with you some of the thoughts of a tormented mind. You know what I am like now, so stick around until the end.

May you never have to learn the important lessons of life through pain,
Ronit

You may want to read

• Kid Grief
• Baby Hope
• 35-hour Baby