Family Matters

Posts Tagged ‘family planning’

I have always thought of myself as a good mother. It has been easier for me than for other people, because I have studied Special Education and I have had the knowledge to raise happy and successful kids.

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.

I talk and write a lot about choice. It is no coincidence my motto is “Happiness is a choice!” Yet, there was a time when I could not live by this motto. It was after I had lost two babies. I wanted to make the choice to have only one child and to let go of my desire to go through another pregnancy to satisfy my wish to hold a baby, take him or her home and be happy.

… 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.

Would you test your baby’s genes to see what kind of a person he or she will grow up to be?

A couple of weeks ago, I got an email offering me just that: genetic testing for babies (they also test adults). As always, I discussed this with Ronit and we came up with some interesting points about the good and bad in genetic testing for kids.

Grief is hard for grownups and can be even harder for kids. As we grieved for our lost hopes and our two dead babies, our very-much-alive daughter Eden was going through a very tough time.

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.

…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 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.

… I spent hours closing my eyes and trying to wake up in a different life, where the scar is not so painful. I knew what it meant to have a broken heart. I was broken, damaged, feeling like my body had failed me. I had been through a caesarian section and I was in such emotional pain I felt nothing at all.

“I have Eden”, I told myself, trying to find some comfort. Our house was in a total silence. We had to take the new crib back to the store and pack all the little things we had already put in the baby’s room. I was grateful I didn’t have to take care of the funeral arrangements – Gal did that with Eden. The thought of him choosing a tiny coffin was too hard for me and I tried closing my eyes, but that did not help.

I have been writing this blog for over two years now and published more than 500 posts about parenting, but I know I have been skipping a big part of my own parenting. I have been skipping this part deliberately, not because I think it is not important, but because it is too important to write about it lightly. Writing about it means I need to open my heart and as all heart surgeries go, it may bleed.

Do you remember the last scene in the movie The Sixth Sense, when the kid tells his mom, “I’m ready to communicate”? I think I feel the same now. I am ready to open my heart and tell you about some of the defining moments in my life as a parent. It is long and a bit painful, so I think I will do it in installments.

It was on the 39th week of my pregnancy. I woke Gal up and told him my water had broken.

Today, I am flying overseas to see my two new 7-month-old nephews for the first time! In the last 7 months, I have seen them in photos and on Skype video calls (thank God for Skype), but when I hold them in my hands, kiss them, hug them and smell them (and their mothers, my two sisters), I will cry for joy.

Both these nephews are the first children of my 36- and 42-year-old sisters and because of the mothers’ age and the pressure of a tough pregnancy of the older sister they are obviously very precious babies. Look at them! I think they know how precious they are. These photos are their real photos with the permission of their mothers.

For one of my sisters, this baby is precious for another reason.

Yesterday, when I drove with my daughter Noff to a “girls’ night out” at her school, she said to me, “I wish I had a baby sister or a baby brother”. That started a conversation about what is best to be – the youngest in the family (she is 8 years old and she is the youngest), the middle child (in our case, this is my 13-year-old son Tsoof) or the eldest (my 20-year-old daughter Eden).

Well, it was very interesting having a conversation like this with an 8-year-old, but she was mature enough to detach herself from her desires, stay in the conversation and examine all the advantages and disadvantages of each position. Here is how the conversation went:

Are kids of some ages worse than others? Is there a link between age and behavior? Are teens especially terrible?

I think not.

A few days ago, I went to pick Tsoof up from school and bumped into his guitar teacher, Andrew. We had a chat about Tsoof’s progress and how much he was enjoying his lessons, and then Andrew asked me, “How old is Tsoof?”

“Just turned 14″, I said.

“That’s the worst age”, he said, “Lots of kids stay nice until about that age, but then they start having problems and going wild. That was the most difficult age for me too”.

As it happens, both Ronit and I have heard this sort of warning from many people, so Andrew was expressing a very common notion about teens and how they change, but it made me want to write this post.