Skip to main content

Waiting for a baby

Waiting, waiting.  There is nothing more happy or hopeful than waiting for a baby.

Two friends, or rather, one friend and one acquaintance, are due this week, so someone is bound to pop any second.

Not much to say, to do, to think, but I feel anxious, fidgety, twiddly of thumbs, waiting and waiting for these two new people.

One of them is a first baby, and I feel overwhelmingly sad, thinking of the week or so while we waited for YM (waiting for YM while he takes his own sweet time seems to be a pattern; at least, it was this evening when he went swimming with a kid from school instead of phoning and telling me he was going swimming).

Thinking, specifically, of one special dinner and a movie night we were planning, at Milk n’ Honey; I don’t remember what the movie was.  Life had been so crazy-hectic:  he was due the first day of Sukkos, and with finishing school and then the yamim tovim and everything, I hadn’t really had any “me” time.

So two days after Sukkos, that was the plan.  Quick post-term ultrasound to make sure he was okay (he was swimmy and busy and happy so I wasn’t worried) and then out for dinner, ice cream, movie, whatever I wanted.

Except instead the ultrasound person said my amniotic fluid was low and it was time to get the baby out.  So Jeremy went home to get the “baby bag” and I stayed in the hospital waiting to have my labour induced; waiting to have my membranes ruptured.

I sat there, looking at the amniotic-slash-crochet hook and watching Jeremy goof around with all the machinery – the ultrasound thingy, the heartrate thingy – no clue how very awful things were about to become.

Labour should have been a clue, I guess.  That was pretty awful, even with the epidural early on.

But instead of the happy “baal teshuva” life we felt we’d been promised – sheitels and tzitzis and gemaras and a baby:  perfect! – our lives began to spiral out of control:  an awful, hellish descent that, on days like today (almost 16 years later), I feel I’m still struggling to climb back up from.

On days like today, I wish I could take it back.  Not entirely:  I just wish I was still waiting, perched on that precipice, happily, hopefully, waiting for a baby.

Comments

  1. I had no idea that YM's birth was traumatic for you all... it's a story I'd like to hear, if you'd like to share, sometime after our baby appears and I'm no longer anxious about the birth.

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

I love your comments!

Popular posts from this blog

לימודי קודש/Limudei Kodesh Copywork & Activity Printables

Welcome to my Limudei Kodesh / Jewish Studies copywork and activity printables page.  As of June 2013, I am slowly but surely moving all my printables over to 4shared because Google Docs / Drive is just too flaky for me. What you’ll find here: Weekly Parsha Copywork More Parsha Activities More Chumash / Tanach Activities Yom Tov Copywork & Activities Tefillah Copywork Pirkei Avos / Pirkei Avot Jewish Preschool Resources Other printables! For General Studies printables and activities, including Hebrew-English science resources and more, click here . For Miscellaneous homeschool helps and printables, click here . If you use any of my worksheets, activities or printables, please leave a comment or email me at Jay3fer “at” gmail “dot” com, to link to your blog, to tell me what you’re doing with it, or just to say hi!  If you want to use them in a school, camp or co-op setting, please email me (remove the X’s) for rates. If you just want to say Thank You, here’s a

Hebrew/ עברית & English General Studies Printables

For Jewish Studies, including weekly parsha resources and copywork, click here . If you use any of my worksheets, activities or printables, please leave a comment or email me at Jay3fer “at” gmail “dot” com, to link to your blog, to tell me what you’re doing with it, or just to say hi!  If you want to use them in a school, camp or co-op setting, please email me (remove the X’s) for rates. If you enjoy these resources, please consider buying my weekly parsha book, The Family Torah :  the story of the Torah, written to be read aloud – or any of my other wonderful Jewish books for kids and families . English Worksheets & Printables: (For Hebrew, click here ) Science :  Plants, Animals, Human Body Math   Ambleside :  Composers, Artists History Geography Language & Literature     Science General Poems for Elemental Science .  Original Poems written by ME, because the ones that came with Elemental Science were so awful.  Three pages are included:  one page with two po

It's Heart Month: 3 days left to save lives!

Dear Friends & Family: Hi, everybody! Sorry I can’t stop by in person... you're a bit out of my area.  :-) We’re out walking up and down on our street on this beautiful afternoon to raise money for Heart & Stroke.  This cause is important to me (I won't say it's close to my heart , because that would be tacky!).  I hope you'll join me by donating online. Growing up, I watched as every single one of my grandparents' lives were shortened by heart disease and strokes, and my father had a defibrillator that saved his life on more than one occasion.  Heart disease and stroke kill 1 in 3 Canadians and are the #1 killer of women. Please click this link to be redirected to my main page at the Heart & Stroke website: http://tinyurl.com/AtlasHeart Thus ends my personal appeal.  Official information follows.  :-))) ----- Heart disease and stroke is the #1 killer of women - taking more women's lives than all forms of cancer combined. But no one is immune. Th