Avivah Werner

Category: Parenting

  • First day of school – what a difference!

    I started writing a post about preparing for school in Israel, and how you basically are given very little information that you need until the last minute or past the last minute.  I was going to share that to let people know this is normal so they don’t get frustrated, but I decided to delete it because it sounded negative and I don’t like to be negative, so instead I’ll share about the first day of school today.

    Today was such a good day!   It was so dramatically different from when everyone began school last year – at that time none of us knew any of the teachers, administrators, kids in the classes.  We didn’t know what the school rules or schedules were, what supplies we needed; all of the kids except the high school girls were signed up for school after the school year officially began.  The kids didn’t speak Hebrew and hardly understood anything going on in the classes, and were extremely limited in communicating with their classmates.

    And this year?   I know the teachers and principals at each school, and they know our children and their needs.  (I spoke with two principals yesterday to make sure they understand the kids will continue to need academic support throughout this year.) The kids now understand Hebrew (varying levels of this, but in every case it’s much, much better than last year) and most of them were going into familiar school situations.  Everyone left with backpacks filled with the requisite school supplies, with the appropriate uniforms – last year it took a week to buy what we needed for dd10 since they didn’t sell anything that fit the school requirements in the city (the school sells uniforms but only had clothes left for very little girls).  They all came home positive, basically saying how big a difference it was between this year and last year.

    Yesterday ds6 participated in the orientation for first graders – the parents of the first graders and the first graders were invited to the school in the late afternoon, and the principal and teacher went over school rules and what the boys will be learning while the boys did an activity together.  This was the second meeting for incoming first graders; the first was several months ago and I was very pleased they did this.  It took away the unfamiliarity of a new situation and helped the kids become familiar with their teacher, classroom, and classmates, and ds6 had a great first day of school today.  I ‘ve been vacillating about where to put him in school and questioning the decision that I had made, as well as the reasons that I made the decision I did – it’s hard to send to a school that hardly anyone in the charedi community is sending to, and sometimes I doubt myself and wonder, if my reasons are so good, why doesn’t anyone else who shares my concerns make a similar choice?  But yesterday at the orientation I had a feeling of peace that it really was the right thing to do.

    Ds4 (will be five in a week and a half) had the hardest time today.  I had been anticipating that it would be pretty smooth for him to begin kindergarten, since he was entering the class that ds6 was in last year, and he accompanied me every day to pick up ds6, so he was familiar with the teacher and the building.  But a few days ago I found out that they shuffled the teachers and class locations, so he now is in a building that he’s never been in, with teachers he’s never seen before.   One positive part is that he knows a number of the boys from last year, despite the shuffling of the boys in the classes into different groupings.  Another positive aspect is that thanks to the shuffling, his class size is now 22, down from 34 last year, which was overwhelming for him.  When I took him in to the kindergarten class, I was pleased that the atmosphere was so calm, since lots of noise and stimulation is hard for him.

    I stayed with him for 45 minutes, then thought it was a good time to leave since he seemed comfortable and told him I would be back later to pick him up.  As I was walking out of the courtyard, he came running out presumably to say goodbye again, then burst into tears.  The teacher told me to leave him there, that he was crying because I was there and it would be easier for him if I left him, but that’s not my belief.  I understand why it seems to work better to leave children despite their crying and screaming, but when they do quiet down, what looks like their acceptance of a new situation is often them shutting down emotionally because they feel unsafe.  Resignation and acceptance are very different emotions that look quite similar from the outside.  I was reminded of Dr. Gordon Neufeld’s statement that peer oriented children look so much better than parent oriented children, because they seem more confident and look as if they’re doing better in new situations.  Looks can be deceiving.  To the teacher, I only said that everyone knows their own child and I didn’t think it would be a good idea for ds4 to leave him there against his will.  I took him home and we’ll give him a chance to adjust to kindergarten more slowly, so that when we leave him there, he feels comfortable with it.  Pushing him to stay there before he’s ready isn’t going to be beneficial to him.

    I wasn’t looking forward to school starting – it feels like the summer went by too quickly and since it was the postpartum period for me, I didn’t spend the kind of time I wanted to with the kids.  Nonetheless, the kids had a nice summer and despite my reluctance for the summer to end, I’m glad that they all had such a positive start to this year.

    Avivah

  • Balancing needs of new baby with needs of other children

    >>I was wondering how this nursing around the clock is affecting your other children, especially the younger ones? I am not saying to ditch the nursing and switch to the bottle, but I wonder about the cumulative effect on the family.<<

    This is a very reasonable question!

    When the baby was born, I stayed with him in the hospital for the first four days.  A friend called to let me to know that the hospital had apartments that could be rented for a nominal sum so that I could stay with the baby over Shabbos after I was discharged, and I told her that I planned to go home.  She wanted to know what would happen with giving him my milk, since I was pumping and he was getting it through a feeding tube, but I couldn’t get ahead enough to leave him with enough until I would be able to come back on Sunday morning.  I told her that the staff would give him formula when the milk I left him ran out, and though it wasn’t ideal, my kids at home needed me, too.  She answered, “Oh”, and I thought that she was keeping her disapproval of my choice to herself, that I wasn’t devoted enough to my newborn baby.

    The next day I got an email from her.  She wrote how much she admired me for being willing to give the baby formula even though it clearly wasn’t my preference in order to be there with my other children.  She shared her regret that when she had a very medically needy child several years before, she was so focused on being there for him that she wasn’t able to give her other little children what they needed – her presence.

    A week or so later, another friend called.  About a year ago, she had a baby who was born with serious health issues; we had talked about this when we last chatted around the time we made a bar mitzva, and she wanted to let me know that an article about her and her baby had just been published in Binah a few days before to flesh out our conversation.  I filled her in on our news (she hadn’t yet heard we’d had a baby), and we got to discussing exactly this point, of how to find balance between the very real needs of a sick infant and all the children at home.  She told me that looking back, she regrets one particular choice because it took too much time that could have been spent with her children at home.

    But the fact is, hindsight is always 20/20.  These women are both wonderful mothers who are very devoted to their families, and although they may be hard on themselves for what they could have done differently, I’m positive they made the best choice they could at the time.  I’m making what I think are the right choices based on what I can see in front of me right now.  I feel very strongly that nursing this baby is a priority right now, for the reasons I shared in my recent post.  It’s true that I’m more limited in time and energy than I would otherwise be.  But I’m trying to be available for the other kids, too.  When I’m nursing or pumping, it’s not like I fell off the face of the planet – I’m still at home, even if I’m spending much more time in my bedroom than the living room.  The door is open and the kids come in and out all the time, to talk or hold the baby or to read with me.  (I can’t read to the littles when I’m nursing, but I do read to them when I’m pumping.)  An advantage of giving Yirmiyahu a bottle is that feeding him isn’t limited to just me.  The kids take turns giving him bottles, and all them get to do this – including our three year old.  They all vie for the chance to hold him, and I make sure that they all get to do that – I think it’s important that they feel this is ‘our baby’, not “my baby’.  So I involve them as much as they want to be involved with his care.

    Also, the littles get a lot of attention from their older siblings, especially now with it being summer vacation.  Though I’d like to be able to to more with them, they do have brothers and sisters who spend time with them.  Sometimes it’s something special, like ds19 taking ds6 for a two hour bike ride.  Sometimes it’s something ordinary, like dd11 or ds10 taking them to the park a couple of buildings away.  Whatever it is, they aren’t being neglected or ignored.

    Balancing the needs of a new baby with other children is a challenge that most mothers face in the early postpartum period, even if there aren’t medical complications.  Actually, this isn’t limited to postpartum.  This is an ongoing parenting issue, of balancing the needs of all of your children, and sometimes one child will really need you more than the others.  Being fair doesn’t mean giving everyone the same thing, but giving each child what he needs.  Sometimes you do have to make compromises in order to help the one who needs it most.  But the reality is that a mother’s physical and emotional energies are limited; we simply can’t be everything to everyone all of the time, and we shouldn’t even have that expectation.  We have to be careful not to beat ourselves up for what we can’t do.    Hashem gave us these children and Hashem gives us the challenges that we need to grow, and part of that is learning to accept our limitations and love ourselves the same way we love our children with their imperfections.  In any given situation, we can only do our best, and ask Hashem to give us the wisdom to make good choices and the strength to follow through.

    Avivah

  • Double birthday dinner cookout

    Our oldest son turned 19 two days after Yirmiyahu was born, so there wasn’t much of a celebration for him at home.  We wished him a ‘happy birthday’ and joked that the shalom zachor celebration was a party for him, too, since it was the evening of his birthday.  🙂

    Exactly a month later, dd16 had a birthday.  Again, no celebration, though it’s not uncommon for us to delay parties somewhat with the hope to surprise the birthday celebrant.  Yesterday dd17 and dd11 took her to the beach in Akko (Acre) as a girls’ day out in honor of her birthday, but it wasn’t a family get together.  But plans were in the works for both dd16 and ds19.

    Dd16 was at the forefront of plans for this birthday party for her brother, not knowing that a couple of her siblings were conspiring to surprise her at the same time.  She baked him a lovely cake decorated with a gemara (Talmud).  Ds10 baked a cake for dd16 a few days ago but the freezer was full and so it stayed wrapped on a pantry shelf – it was still pretty fresh but dd17 wanted to serve something nicer.  So she tried to get dd16 out of the house while ds13 prepared a chocolate brownie cake with a vanilla pudding layer and a chocolate pudding layer.  Yum!

    Preparing for campfire

    What they decided to do was to have a family cookout at a local forested area that is legally zoned for campfires, so we didn’t have to get permission to have it there.  It took a good bit of preparation to gather the wood, shlep all the food there, etc, but it was worth it.  Once the campfire was going, dd16 lit the candles on the cake for ds19 and we all started singing ‘Happy Birthday’ to him.  He was really surprised; at first he thought we were singing in honor of his sister’s birthday!

    While he was admiring his cake and thanking everyone, dd17 was lighting the candles in the shape of a 16 on the second cake, and he had hardly finished thanking dd16 for the cake when we all started a second round of ‘Happy Birthday’, this time for dd16!  It was amazing that they were able to surprise dd16, but that’s why the cake was baked just an hour before the cookout; if they had done it further in advance she’d probably have gotten wind of it.

    They both cut their cakes and served everyone a piece of each.  The other family in the campground area apparently heard us singing because a few minutes later, they brought over plates of bamba (a popular Israeli peanut corn puff snack) and popcorn.  A couple minutes later, they came with the next round, a plate of nuts and sunflower seeds and a plate of olives.  And a couple minutes after that, they brought us four containers of dips – eggplant, humous, techina, and red cabbage salad.  They were finishing their family party and hearing our party, wanted us to enjoy what they had rather than take it home – and they assured us that everything was store bought and had a badatz hechsher (kosher supervision).  Only in Israel!  It was really nice and their additions definitely added to the festive feeling.

    While everyone was enjoying the cake, ds13 was grilling hot dogs and chicken wings, and checking the potatoes and onions that they had started roasting as soon as they had gotten there to set up.  We also brought a marinated kidney bean salad that dd11 prepared, so there was plenty to eat!

    After we all ate, the kids built up the fire again.  As they were doing that, seven bicyclists with flashing red and blue lights headed straight for us.  Our backs were to them, so we didn’t realize until they spoke to us that they had come to check out what we were doing, and that they were policemen!  They were very pleasant and it seems they just wanted to check out what was happening.  After suggesting that we be careful and try not to set the forest on fire – we agreed that would be a good idea – we wished each other a good evening and off they rode.

    After that, we sang together by the campfire.  When we’ve gone camping, one of the nicest parts is always the evening meal – building the fire, cooking the food over the grill, eating it, and then singing together.  I miss being able to go camping – without a car it’s not so simple to go to a campground.  The older kids were researching campgrounds last week because they wanted to have their own camping trip, but it was so costly and complicated because of travel that they opted not to pursue that.  Having this tonight was like having the best part of a camping trip, without having to go far from home.

    Finally, what campfire would be complete without marshmallows to roast?  The little kids loved being able to do this by themselves, even ds3.  We brought along wafers and they sandwiched the roasted marshmallow between the wafers, our Israeli version of smores.

    It was a wonderful evening that we all enjoyed, and it happened thanks to everyone getting involved and doing their part.  My family is growing up and I appreciate every opportunity that we have like this when all of us can be together.  I know it’s not going to stay like this forever, and I savor it while I have it.

    Avivah

  • Nursing baby with Down syndrome – not easy but important

    Yirmiyahu – (5 wks old)

    When Yirmiyahu was born, I wasn’t able to nurse him right away – we were rushed to the hospital in an ambulance, then the nurses kept him in the nursery for hours until I finally saw him.  At that point, he was in the deep sleep that newborns go into a couple of hours after birth, and nothing could induce him to wake up.

    That was before that we realized there were medical issues or Down syndrome; then he was transferred to the NICU. For the first week he was there, he was on a feeding tube.  When they told me he was strong enough to start nursing, it was very slow.  Initially he couldn’t get latched on, then once he could latch on, he couldn’t stay latched on for more than a second.  It was very challenging to teach him to latch on and I had to do it again, and again, and again (at five weeks old, he’s getting the hang of it but doesn’t latch on for more than a minute and never does it without my help, so he still needs a lot of assistance with this).

    I continued pumping (he had gotten my milk from the first day via the feeding tube) and hoping that he’d get strong enough to nurse fully, but it was very discouraging.  He was such an easy baby, hardly crying at all – the exceptions were when he got a blood test and had a bris, and even then he stopped crying as soon as it was finished.  So you can imagine how hard it was when he would scream and scream as if he were in pain every time I tried to nurse him.

    After three weeks, I contacted a local La Leche League leader for help.  I’ve nursed nine babies before this and never needed the assistance of a lactation consultant, but this was a different situation.  Since he was getting most of his nutritive needs via a bottle, I was concerned that he’d have a hard time transitioning to just nursing since the way a baby uses his mouth when nursing or when drinking from a bottle is so different.  I specifically asked about the SNS, supplemental nursing system.  She was eager to help until she heard that he had Down syndrome – then she told me that she didn’t have experience with that and gave me the number of a friend of hers who successfully nursed her daughter (who had DS) for two years.  But I wasn’t interested in traveling to yet another city to meet with her.

    Anyway, the LLL leader met me on her way out of the city for Shabbos, and gave me the scaled down equivalent of an SNS – a feeding tube.  I told her I could work out how to use it with the help of the internet, and dh got busy rigging a makeshift SNS system for me (my husband is very good at finding creative solutions!).  When I tried to use that, I came very close to crying or screaming with frustration.  I ended up flinging it off and later put it away in the kitchen cabinet, where it’s never emerged from since.  🙂

    A lot of time was being taken up every day with the feeding process: I’d nurse him, pump, then give him a bottle so he’d actually be full.  It was very tiring and time consuming, so much so that it felt close to a full time job sometimes.  At one point, a good friend responded to my exhaustion and told me I wouldn’t be any less of a mother if I just gave him formula. And she’s right, I wouldn’t be.  Breastfeeding isn’t what makes you a good mother; how you parent does.

    But even though it was so demanding, I felt like this was something I had to do for him.  Babies with Trisomy 21 have weak facial muscles and this is a big part of why breastfeeding can be so challenging – they often lack the oral strength for nursing (his weak muscle tone in his tongue was responsible for his episodes of apnea when he was in the NICU).  Most babies with T21 develop tongue protrusion, and this practice is encouraged by bottle feeding.  That’s not something I want to encourage.  Nursing can help prevent this from becoming an issue – an excellent article that I read by a well-known speech therapist detailed how some of the features associated with Down syndrome are part of a cascade of consequences that begins with bottle feeding.  It’s called The Oral Motor Myths of Down Syndrome.   Breastfeeding is an oral workout for a baby, since it works the facial muscles, including the tongue.  So I think of every nursing session as oral motor therapy for him.

    Nutritionally Yirmiyahu needs the qualities of mother’s milk since his health was compromised when he was born, and also because it’s typical of those with T21 that they have weaker immune systems.  Studies have also shown that breastfed infants have IQs that average 5 – 10 points higher than bottle fed babies.  I’ve never thought of this as a big deal with neurotypical children, but it’s worth the short term discomfort and pressure for me in order to give Yirmiyahu this long term benefit; there’s a lot I can’t control or change about him having Down syndrome but this is something that I can do.

    I had pressure from his doctors to stop nursing him and give him formula.  This was because his weight didn’t go up for the first few days after he came home from the hospital.  I wasn’t worried, since I saw he had plenty of wet and dirty diapers, but they were concerned.  But the numbers on the scale were more important than my opinion in this case.  It would have been so, so easy to quit. It’s challenging to be working so hard at something and then to be told that your baby is better off without your efforts.

    Yirmiyahu (5 wks)

    I’m not yet at the stage of fully nursing; I’m still pumping for about fifty percent of feedings.  When I nurse him, it takes a long, long time, and often he’s still hungry forty five minutes later; in those cases, we give him a bottle afterward.  But we’re getting there and I’m confident that we’ll make the transition to full nursing.  Most mothers with babies who have T21 don’t nurse them, because the experience can be so daunting.  I totally understand them!  The main thing that helped me was remembering why I felt this was important, keeping my eye on my goal.  And the other aspect of this was not giving up.   Sometimes you have to keep on keeping on when you have tough situations to get through, and this is no exception.  Persistence, persistence, persistence!

    Avivah

  • Private nursing rooms in public places – so, so helpful!

    Today I took the baby to a pediatric cardiologist in Nahariya for a follow-up – the NICU doctors recommended we take him to different specialists for each of the concerns they had right after his birth. (The doctor said everything is normal and that there’s no reason to come back for another six months, when we’ll check everything again.)

    Visits to the pediatrician and for blood work are easily taken care of locally.  But all of the specialists are located in different cities, and this adds a component of stress to the experience.  The night before I have a visit, I spend a lot of time figuring out which bus to take to whatever city I’m going to, then which intercity bus to take once there, and how to get from the bus stop to the office I need.

    Then early in the morning, I wake up early in order to have time to pump so that I’ll be able to take a bottle with me, and also nurse the baby.  Until today I’ve taken the electric pump with me and have to find a place to use it so that I can prepare a second bottle while I’m out.

    So a good bit of this pressure is related to needing to have bottles ready for when I go out. This is because we’re still at a transitional point with nursing; it’s going very well but where we’re at right now is more typical of a few days after birth than five weeks. That means that he needs a lot of help latching on and staying latched on, which is really hard to do discretely; this requires more privacy than generally is available in a public place and I can’t do it with a blanket thrown over my shoulder.  I’ve been dreading these appointments more and more since they are so wearying and take so much energy to prepare for, over six hours away from home due to using public transportation, and then I’m so tired when I get home that I have to rest.

    Today I went to a part of Nahariya that I’ve never been to before, so there was the usual effort involved in trying to figure out how to get there. Once I arrived, I was over an hour early for my appointment, so I strolled through the mall where the office was located.  As I got to the third floor, opposite the cardiology clinic, I was surprised to see a room with a sign: “Nursing and changing room”. I pushed the door, expecting it to be locked (it looked dark and unoccupied) but was pleasantly surprised when it swung open.

    Inside was a simple setup – a couple of padded chairs, a low table, and a sink. Nothing fancy. But it was quiet and it was private – and it was perfect! For the first time in all of the traveling I’ve been doing with the baby since he was born, I was able to nurse him somewhere except for at home. It was so, so relaxing. Sometimes you don’t realize how much tension you carry around with you until you don’t have it!

    And for the first time since doing all of this traveling, I didn’t need to give the baby a bottle. He was content during the entire doctor visit, slept soundly for the next two and a half hours until we got home, and I didn’t need any bottles at all during the entire 6.5 hours we were out!  Having this room made such a huge difference to my day – I was so grateful and wished I knew who thought of the idea so that I could personally thank them.

    Maybe these rooms are common – this is the first I’ve seen in Israel, but until very recently I wouldn’t have been looking! If so, it’s a trend that will hopefully catch on and become much more widespread.

    Do you have nursing rooms in public areas near where you live? Are they common or hard to find?

    Avivah

  • Building sense of responsibility, competence, confidence in children

    I’m in the happy situation of currently reading aloud to my children two of my all-time favorite books – the Little House on the Prairie series, and Understood Betsy, by Dorothy Canfield.  A couple of days ago when I read one of the chapters, it struck me how similar some of the underlying messages of the books are.

    Yesterday a reporter emailed me some questions to flesh out an interview for a magazine I had done with her about homeschooling, a week after Yirmiyahu was born.  Insightful and valuable as her questions are, I won’t have time to respond in detail to them, but they really underscore the same indirect underlying message of the two chapters that I wanted to share with you.  I don’t think it’s a coincidence that I received the questions that relate to the topic I was planning to post about today!  The questions were, how do you go about:

    1) developing a sense of personal responsibility in children

    2) developing a child’s natural curiosity and love of learning

    3) instilling in the child a confidence in his unique abilities

    In the second chapter of Understood Betsy, a young girl of nine is moving from her home where she has been extremely coddled and overprotected to living with her relatives who value independence and hard work.  In her very first interaction with them, she’s handed the reins to the horses and told to go ahead and drive home.  City girl that she is, she has no clue how to handle them.  But since her uncle who is with her is seemingly unaware of her inability to drive the wagon and busies himself with something else, she has no choice but to try.  And after a bit, she figures out what to do.

    This happens again and again throughout the book, that she’s given opportunities to do age appropriate activities on her own or with strategic guidance from adults, and it’s fascinating to watch the transformation of an insecure, dependent, incompetent little girl into someone who thinks for herself and trusts in her ability to find solutions and get things done.

    Similarly, in Farmer Boy (third book in Little House series), Almanzo is given a yoke for a calf for his tenth birthday.  His father leaves him with two young calves and tells him he’s sure he’ll figure out how to train them using his new yoke.  Initially, Almanzo is mystified about how to go about this but through trial and error, he figures it out.

    Both children experience tremendous pride in themselves when they figure out on their own what they needed to do.  What was it that the adults around them did that led them to their discoveries, to building their sense of responsibility, competence, and confidence?

    1) Firstly, loving adults in their lives knew what the task required and knew it was within the abilities of the children.  It’s important to give children opportunities to stretch themselves, but not to give them something so impossibly difficult that they’ll give up in despair.  And it’s also important not to give them something so easy that their abilities aren’t respected or recognized.  (To clarify, I’m talking about when giving over jobs for the sake of building character. Sometimes a job needs to be done and even if it’s boring or repetitive for a child – eg sweeping the floor, washing dishes – that’s okay.  But you wouldn’t want all of the tasks you give your child to fall into this category.)

    2)  The tasks the children were given were real and meaningful.  No one finds busywork satisfying, and children can quickly recognize when they’re doing something of inherent value and when they’re having something fobbed off on them to keep them busy.  They got built-in feedback about what they were doing was working or not (the animals didn’t go where they were supposed to go or do what they were supposed to do).

    3) Lastly, the adults didn’t hover around, giving suggestions or giving the message that they as adults knew what to do and how to do it.  They gave the children the clear message that they trusted them to figure out something new, and gave them plenty of time and space to work it out.  They didn’t within five or fifteen minutes return and start questioning if the children needed adult assistance or tell them the best way to get the job done.  They stayed out of the way.

    This is a hard thing to do, particularly in this day and age.  We want so much to be helpful and encouraging that we easily co-opt the responsibility for the task by being overly involved.  The reality is, however, that only one person can accept responsibility for something at a time.  If your child knows that you’re still taking responsibility for the job you gave him, he’s not going to accept the responsibility for himself.  So sometimes we need to let go, to learn to sit on our hands or bite our lips or whatever we need to go to stay out of the way and let real life learning happen.

    I think all of this is very relevant to modern day parents, though most of us don’t drive wagons or have farm animals that need training!  And it’s also very relevant to the questions I was asked above about homeschooling.  Whether it’s regarding day to day chores around the house, homeschooling, or any other area that we want to encourage our children to develop healthy independence, we need to give our children opportunities that will stretch them, the opportunities should be meaningful, and we need to let them have responsibility for the success of the experience.

    This isn’t just for little children!  As a parent of children ranging up to age nineteen, I continue to remind myself of these principles and come back to them in a variety of different circumstances.

    Avivah

  • Checking out another elementary school option

    In the past couple of months, I’ve been doing research on different school options – girls high schools, boys high schools, and even elementary schools.  This isn’t because I’m unhappy with the local choices as much as that I’m looking for schools that best reflect my personal values.  (I’m hoping to find time to write some posts in the next month on the American/Israeli charedi differences and share my thoughts on that with you.)

    This Tuesday I called the principal of an elementary school that I’m interested in, and she told me that this Thursday is the last opportunity for interested students to apply for entry for the coming year and be interviewed.  I was glad that I made the call in time and that I didn’t have another appointment for the same day!

    I was planning to take the baby with me along with ds6 for his interview, but about ten minutes before I left realized that since I pump and prepare a bottle of my milk for when I’m out with him (we’re in a transitory situation regarding nursing), I could really leave the baby at home and he’d probably be a lot more rested!  On the spur of the moment, I asked ds4 if he wanted to come along, so he rushed to get dressed and then out the three of us went to catch our bus.  From there we went to the central bus station, then onto another bus to another city where the school is located.

    I was so happy that I took ds4 along – his eyes were literally shining with excitement as he was looking out the window at all the sights, and he and his brother were so cute sitting and chatting excitedly together on the bus.  I was glad to have a chance to spend with both of them, since recently I haven’t been giving them as much time and attention as I’d like, and this was a great opportunity to be with them without distraction or interruption by anyone or anything else.

    We got to the yeshiva, and I was surprised by the big and beautiful campus.  We couldn’t figure how to get in at first, but once we did we found the office and went in.  Since we were early, ds6 was taken for his interview pretty quickly, which lasted for almost an hour.  This didn’t go so well, since he felt intimidated by the new situation and it being in Hebrew, and spoke very hesitantly and quietly – though usually he’s very outgoing and confident.  Though his spoken Hebrew is good and adequate to speak comfortably with his peers, he told me afterward that he didn’t know certain words in Hebrew – eg triangle, rectangle – and therefore couldn’t answer some questions even though he knew the answers.  It’s ironic that his kindergarten teacher joked with her assistant that he shouldn’t bother with first grade, he should just go directly into second because he’s so advanced and constantly was telling me how amazing he was, while the interviewer wasn’t sure if he had an understanding of some basic concepts that even my four year old knows easily!  Emotional context and comfort makes a huge difference in a child’s performance.

    In the meantime, I let ds4 take some of the refreshments that had been put out (this kind of thing is a bit of a thrill for a young child who doesn’t get loads of treats at home!), while I scoped out the kids and parents who were arriving.  I was trying to get a sense of who the parent and student body of the school were; I already knew that the focus of the administration was in line with what we like.

    I was favorably impressed by the school staff; the parent body seems to be a good match for us, the school values and direction seem to be a good match for us, the local boys who would be in his class are great kids from families who know and like very much, and though we had pretty much decided to transfer ds6 to this school before the interview, I had an increasingly conflicted feeling.

    The conflict isn’t because of the school, which I think is a great choice, but because of the distance.  Transportation is provided to and from the school, so there isn’t a logistical issue, but for a young child to spend another two hours a day away from home in order to travel to school is something that I’m not comfortable with.  It means that he’d have to be waiting for his bus at 7 am and come home at 3 pm (with the additional stress to have him at the bus stop on time – it wouldn’t be outside of our house).  It means he would miss eating breakfast and lunch with the rest of us.  It means not walking to school with ds10 and dd11 and missing the relationship building opportunity with them.   (This past year ds13 picked him up from school for the last couple of months of the year, and it was really nice for ds6 to have time with his older brother, especially since ds13 usually gave him fruit to eat on the way home. :))  It means fifteen hours a week (transportation time plus the school day is 30 minutes longer than the local school) that he’d be spending with his peers in an unstructured situation instead of at home where parents and older siblings are keeping an eye on social interactions.

    I know that most parents wouldn’t agree with me that any of these points justify not sending him to a better school, with secular and Torah studies on a higher level and a religiously stronger peer group.  But to me, all of the advantages don’t add up to fifteen extra hours away from home every single week – would he really gain so much socially, academically or spiritually to offset the gains of being at home?  I’m not at all confident that would be the case.

    So at this point, dh and I have  decided to leave ds6 enrolled at the local school (just a seven minute walk from our home!), because we feel that having more time with our family is a higher value than being in a school that is technically the best fit.  We’re still discussing the possibility of a transfer to this school in the upper elementary grades, but for now, it’s one more decision made and out of the way!

    Avivah

  • Craniosacral work for baby, Mozart for brain development

    Today I spent the first part of my day in Tzfat, where I had two appointments.  Since I already had one appointment scheduled in the city, I thought it would be good to maximize my time in the area and found a craniosacral therapist there to treat the baby, so that was my second appointment.

    I think that craniosacral therapy is valuable, particularly for a newborn who has recently had to fit through the birth canal and probably experienced some kind of pressure on the skull that causes misalignment.  There are a number of potential issues that can be positively impacted by doing craniosacral adjustments, including colic, difficulty in sleeping or feeding, and birth trauma.  The main downside of this therapy is that it’s not something that is covered by health insurance, but then again, it seems that most of what I find most valuable relating to health care isn’t!

    Another thing I had wanted to do this morning was to meet up with someone in the area giving away classical music cassettes.  I’ve been doing hours of research on Down syndrome every day beginning when the baby was two days old, and one thing that I came across was the importance of music therapy in stimulating the brain.  Mozart and Bach were particularly recommended.

    I started looking into purchasing some classical music (you should see the list of things I think would be valuable to buy for this baby!) but was delighted to see a posting a short time later by someone in Tzfat giving away lots of classical cassettes.  A neighbor had given me a cd/cassette player around Pesach time, so I have a way to play the cassettes.  I emailed to ask if she had any Mozart or Bach, and sure enough, she did!  I told her why I wanted them and she very generously put aside 11 cassettes for me, 6 Mozart and 5 Bach!  That was such an amazing thing!  I’m looking forward to using them next week after Tisha B’Av.

    And on a different note, traveling to Tzfat made me once again appreciative that the baby was in the NICU in Nahariya rather than the Tzfat hospital that I was in labor at.  The ride there is along a winding road and so nauseating that I don’t know how I would have managed it every day.  I took dd11 and ds10 with me today, thinking they would enjoy walking around the Old City of Tzfat while I was taking care of my appointments.  Poor ds10 tends to get carsick, and threw up on the way there and the way back.  We were all very happy to get home.  🙂

    Avivah

  • Goodbye ‘Squiggles’ – our new baby has a name!

    Today I looked in my planner and saw the following notation:  !!due date!!

    Guess we’re past that.  🙂

    But it’s the perfect day to share about our new baby’s bris and name!

    On Sunday afternoon we had his bris at a local shul, and were delighted by how many people made time to join us.  It was a diverse crowd, with people identifying as secular, traditional, Torani and charedi all attending.  We had Israelis and Americans, those who were living here for many years and those who were just visiting for a short time.

    There were so many nice things about the people who came that I’m afraid to share about some and not others in the fear someone will feel I appreciated the presence of some people more than others – and every single person literally added to our simcha.  But I’ll say that it was especially wonderful to have some friends from Baltimore who were able to be there with us – there’s nothing like old friends!  Dd15’s best friend came with her brother, who is a very good friend of ds13.  And another family we’re friendly with came as well, with three of their children (all of whom our children were friendly with); all of these people happened to be visiting Israel now.  So our kids also had the chance to share the simcha with people they had known for a long time (and then three of their friends slept over so they could have more time together – so, so nice!).

    Until now, the kids have been calling the baby ‘Squiggles’, and three weeks was a long time for them to wait for his real name!  After the name was given, a number of people asked me if he was named after anyone – no, he wasn’t.  He was given a name that we felt was a reflection of his soul.

    In Jewish tradition, it’s believed that after a baby is born, the parents are given a measure of divine inspiration to choose a name that fits the soul purpose of the child.  For every child, dh and I have discussed possible names during pregnancy, and every single time, the names we thought we liked and would want to use were put to the side for names that we thought of after the baby was born.  So we learned the futility of trying to plan ahead!

    However, this baby was different.  When I was pregnant, we were talking about names, and dh made this suggestion.  As soon as he suggested this name (because it ties in well with the Three Weeks, this time period in the Jewish calendar), I knew it was the right name.   So much so that I did something I’ve never done before, I called’ the baby this name when I had conversations with him in my head and then used this name when speaking to him soon after he was born. (I’ve never used a name until the baby was officially named.)  After his birth when we learned that he had Trisomy 21, I said to my husband, “Now we can see what a perfect name it is for him!”

    Yirmiyahu (3 weeks) at bris

    So what is this marvelous name for our marvelous baby? 🙂  The baby’s name is Yirmiyahu (in English, Jeremiah or Jeremy), and it means ‘G-d will uplift’.  We have seen so much blessing in our lives, especially in the last eleven months since moving to Israel, even in the face of many challenges.  Now we were sent our new baby boy, and this is a special gift on top of all the other gifts.  We feel G-d has uplifted us with his birth and that’s why his name is so perfect for him!

    Avivah

  • The Special Mother

    Below is the second piece that a friend sent me after I shared with her that we were awaiting results of genetic testing to see if our baby had Trisomy 21.  I had never read this before, and it brought tears to my eyes when I did.

    The Special Mother 

    by Erma Bombeck 


    Most women become mothers by accident, some by choice,
    a few by social pressure and a couple by habit.
    This year nearly 100,000 women will become mothers of handicapped children.
    Did you ever wonder how these mothers are chosen?
    Somehow I visualize God hovering over Earth
    Selecting his instruments for propagation with great care and deliberation.
    As he observes, he instructs his angels to take notes in a giant ledger.
    “Armstrong, Beth, son. Patron Saint, Matthew.”
    “Forrest, Marjorie, daughter. Patron Saint, Celia.”
    “Rutledge, Carrie, twins. Patron Saint…give her Gerard. He’s used to profanity.”
    Finally he passes a name to an angel and smiles. “Give her a handicapped child.”
    The angel is curious. “Why this one, God? She’s so happy.”
    “Exactly,” smiles God. “Could I give a handicapped child a mother who knows no laughter?
    That would be cruel.”
    “But does she have the patience?” asks the angel.
    “I don’t want her to have too much patience, or she’ll drown in a sea of self-pity and despair.
    Once the shock and resentment wear off she’ll handle it.”
    “I watched her today.
    She has that sense of self and independence so rare and so necessary in a mother.
    You see, the child I’m going to give her has a world of it’s own.
    She has to make it live in her world, and that’s not going to be easy.”
    “But Lord, I don’t think she even believes in you.”
    God smiles. “No matter, I can fix that. This one is perfect. She has just enough selfishness.”
    The angel gasps, “Selfishness? Is that a virtue?”
    God nods. “If she can’t separate herself from the child occasionally, she will never survive.
    Yes, here is a woman whom I will bless with a child less than perfect.
    She doesn’t know it yet, but she is to be envied.
    She will never take for granted a spoken word.
    She will never consider a step ordinary.
    When her child says momma for the first time, she will be witness to a miracle and know it.
    I will permit her to see clearly the things I see–ignorance, cruelty,
    prejudice–and allow her to rise above them.
    She will never be alone.
    I will be at her side every minute of every day of her life
    Because she is doing my work as surely as she is here by my side.”
    “And what about her Patron Saint?” asks the angel, his pen poised in the air. God smiles.
    “A mirror will suffice.”
    Avivah