lizrael update

What’s been going on.

The past week and a half has been intense, painful, busy, impatient,  energetic, emotional, nerve-wracking and exciting. And it’s not only for the reason you’re probably assuming. I haven’t  been able to get all my thoughts out in an organized manner, so instead I’ll spew them in bullet form.

• People will ask what gender your baby is and not believe you when you tell them you don’t know.
• It’s ok to support the mentality of the Gaza incursion while feeling guilty and sad about deaths of innocent.
• When it rains, it pours… No family visits for almost a year and then everyone comes at once. And then it (actually) rains that whole time.
• It’s ok to feel like four years is a long time when you’re surrounded by people who have been living here for ten.
• People will assume everything you are feeling has to do with being pregnant; you’re hungry/tired/energetic because you’re pregnant, not because you’re human.
• There’s a big difference between charedim in Israel and charedim in the diaspora.
• There’s a big difference between living on ‘this’ side of Israel and living on the side of Israel that is getting pounded daily.
• ‘Friendly’ fire… what a strange name for a painful concept.
• Some people will offer really good perspectives and advice on pregnancy, birth and becoming a parent, no matter what their core beliefs.
• It’s ok to pick and choose with whom you are willing to discuss the Gaza war. There are certain friends and enemies for whom you are just not willing to convert conversation into debate.
• Sometimes after you’ve accepted the fundamental differences between you and loved ones, you discover that maybe they are not so fundamental after all.
• Not feeling festive, even though it’s a holiday time, is perfectly fine when your country is in a state of war. That also goes for Inauguration Day partying.
• Amidst everything else, you can find a kind of comfort in the movement in your belly, which no one else can give you. You can be intense, impatient, energetic, emotional, and excited about soon meeting someone. You can sorely miss someone you’ve never met. You can confide in them when everything around you is just too complex.

Falling in love.

How do you fall in love with a picture?

Back in week 15-16 we had the first of two major ultrasounds done. Going into it, we had already seen the ‘kid’ twice: once as a chulent bean in the beginning and once a few weeks back as something that might have come from a veterinary text book for all we knew. 

But this major ultrasound - we had no idea what we were going in for, just that we’d ’see’ (hear?) the size and shape of the fetus and make sure it has some of its vital parts. 

Well, I got on the bed and jellied up (gross) and then we saw this creature: sleeping inside my body. Upside down. I stared mostly while the doctor remarked over and over how it was in a bad position for the check up. He couldn’t access all parts. He needed it to flip over, which apparently translated into literally pushing around my belly to try to get it to flip. 

After about fifteen  minutes of my child-to-be displaying incredibly stubborn tendencies (who does s/he get that from?) or just enjoying a really deep sleep (we know where it gets that from), the doctor ordered that I go take a 30 minute walk around the block and eat some sweets - in very non-medical terms, jump-start the flipping. 

I ate some candy and we walked up and down the block and came back. Baby-creature was still on its stomach, curled up and looking more comfortable than I’ve felt in months (thanks a lot). We all kind of chuckled as the doctor worked to flip it over again but to no avail. After twenty minutes of nudging, he sent us off again to eat sweets, take walks, and drink coffee. Not my idea of nine o’clock on a week night, but hey, that’s the budding of maternal sacrifice. 

After 40 minutes we returned to his office and I again laid down, waiting to see it, face up or face down. It was… face down. Still. Kid, I hope you sleep that well in 5 months is all I can say. 

Worried that we’d never get the check up done (what exactly was s/he trying to hide, anyway?) the doctor again nudged and pleaded with the ultrasound feeler thing jabbing my stomach. After five minutes of that (and my own radiating brainwaves of Jewish maternal guilt sent towards the little one, which is what I think did it) the fetus flipped and settled - seemingly comfortabley - on its back.

I don’t know if it was this back-and-forth experience - the sort of silent communication with my unborn child - or it was watching as the doctor measured legs and arms, counted ten fingers, ten toes (remember when you had to wait to find that out?), highlighted the heart beat, blood flow, stomach, brain… Or maybe it was just a combination, but watching all that - not a fetus, but my little tiny unborn child - on this screen in front of me, knowing it was all there, inside my body…

Well, I fell in love right then. It was unlike anything, ever. Falling in love for real, knowing it at that moment it happened, love at first sonogram. All at once, I understand what love can be, more than I ever thought - bizarrely unconditional, completely overtaking… I guess in the past that first happened at the actual birth, but modern technology is what it is, and now I can pinpoint the moment I fell in love with my child, in picture form. 

So the answer I have to my original question is: you fall in love with a picture by it being your unborn child, up there portrayed in front of you, simultaneously in your body and in front of your eyes, breathing, beating, living off/with/inside you.

And as soon as I was ‘disconnected’ from the machine, I missed it terribley.

Bigger.

I just returned from a week in the States. Flew out for work, but I wasn’t going to let an opportunity like that go by without doing some shopping. What kind of Israeli would I be? What kind of woman would I be? And most importantly, what kind of pregnant Israeli woman - who doesn’t fit into any of her pants - would I be?

Here’s a little-known fact about me: For the last month I’ve been literally wearing my jeans open, held together with a rubber band, with long shirts covering the zipper. I knew I’d be going to the States for work and the maternity clothes selection here sucks; at least for jeans. For the rest I can wing it with over-sized or hippie fashions.

On my way to buying bigger pants for my bigger belly, I noticed a lot of other bigger things I’d never see here in Israel… yet:

Bigger remote control cars, courtesy of Costco, the bigger store.

Bigger battery-operated kids’ ride-on cars jeeps, also courtesy of Costco (Yes, they make them in 4×4 jeeps now!? What happened to the plastic tricycles I rode?).

Bigger remote controls, found at my mom’s house. Maybe the patent purpose was for the legally blind, but I did see them sold at household stores as a gimmick.

Well, I got my bigger pants in the end. And in the spirit of bigness, my belly ‘popped’ while I was staying in New York.  Which lead me to wonder if it was really my pregnancy or the peer pressure.

A late night meeting.

I’ve been experiencing a crippling muscular pain in my lower back (ahem… very lower back) for a few days now. It just seems to get worse. I sit and stand up, it sharpens. I stand and sit down, it sticks into me.

Yesterday I went to the doctor (how many times have I seen doctors in the last half year?) who said that lying down and sitting are not going to help; constant movement is what I need (and some pain killers). Hmm… I sit at a computer job all day and I’m not a fan of medication even when I’m not pregnant.

All this is reminding me of a childhood/teenagerhood sprinkled with these half-joking words from my mother: “I carried you for nine months!!!” (of course, I’m leaving out the juicy bits).

Last night, as I was lying in bed, not sleeping and trying to find a position that would not result in a knife-like feeling for the lower half of my body, I rested my hands on my belly as a gesture of peace towards this unborn child. No resentment here, kid. This is all for you. Unless one day you get your tongue pierced like your mama did.

And then I felt a pop…

And a poke…

And another one…

So as I couldn’t sleep from the stabbing back pain, and my husband couldn’t sleep from my stabbing restlessness, we lay awake entertaining ourselves with the thought…

…our baby wasn’t sleeping either.

He preggo’d my eggo.

It’s like holding your breath for 16ish weeks, but here I go, coming out of the first trimester closet.

Ta da! We made aliyah separately almost four years ago and now together we’re making an Israeli-American-Australian baby combo. Or at least, I am… He’s done his part already, as the dati doctor pointed out, quite scientifically.

So far seems the kid is more American than anything else, since as the doctor was showing us some images in an ultrasound, he noticed its hand in an upright politician speech-making position and said, “See, he’s just like Obama!”**

So, now that we’re out with this, I can post all the back-dated entries I’ve been writing and saving… It’ll all be under the category b’herayon.

And now for a fetal high five:

**Also a commentary on how Obamania has infilitrated Israeli society, but that’s for another time.

When secrets become surreal.

It’s been real hard keeping this baby stuff a secret from friends, coworkers, family. When the only person you have to talk about it with is your partner, and even he gets tired of your late-night online research about your body’s minute-to-minute changes, it starts to become surreal.

I mean, it’s not just this little bean growing inside me. It’s the bean of craziness growing inside my head as I slowly go insane from having to keep all this information to myself.

Which is why, it was extra surreal, when we went to discuss mortgages with the bank today.

We’re sitting there, and answering questions about our lame salaries and savings, and how we totally don’t qualify for a grass hut, and then the dude goes, “So. Are you five months pregnant?”

I thought I hadn’t understood him correctly. Maybe herayon means something else besides pregnant. Maybe it means in debt. I asked him to repeat that.

“Sorry…” He gets an awkward look on his face… “But I have to ask - Are you five months pregnant?”

Me and my husband turn and look at each other, like in a movie or something. It’s as if we mouthed to each other, How does he know? I mean, on one hand, jeez I’m not that fat, and on the other, if I’m not showing at all at five months, I’ll be concerned.

We both look back at him and answer at the same time, stuttering in unison, “Yes - we’re pregnant - but not five months - just two… But how did you know???”

Then he laughs. “Oh, it’s just a question I have to ask; once you are five months pregnant, the bank considers you with at least one child. It’s for the questionnaire. I didn’t mean it like that.”

I can’t describe how weird it was to tell someone who isn’t wearing a lab coat, out loud, that we are pregnant. I also can’t describe how I really really thought this guy was some kind of mind-reading freak until he explained that.

This is just one big old learning experience after another, isn’t it.

It’s a blessing, not a sickness.

Took my first pregnant blood test today. In Beitar. I find that they’re used to this kind of thing already, so I can feel pretty confident under their care.

Nurse was very kind and kept repeating, “Enjoy this! It’s a blessing, not a curse! You’re not sick, you’re pregnant!”

Figures she was Mizrachi…

Bad example.

The thing about trying to get pregnant/being pregnant, is that you start to see pregnant women everywhere. This is probably true everywhere in the world, but when you’re in Israel, you really are seeing them everywhere because out of all the demographics in Israel, the one thing they have in common - whether charedi, Arab, or secular - is that they like their babies.

Usually, seeing pregnant women walking around Jerusalem is a positive experience. The maternity clothes are fun, the women are usually attractive. Then, once in a while, you come across something so utterly disgusting, it makes you want to run your car over it.

I’m talking about a giant, third-trimester arsit waddling around puffing a cigarette with the rest of the pack in her other hand. We were confronted with this scene today, as we sat in our car at the train station waiting to pick up some friends. The car was on and it took everything for us to not step on the gas and run this woman over, thus saving her unborn child from a life of misery and patheticness.

And I don’t mean because of the side effects of being born crappy from a smoking mom. I mean being born the son of an arsit, aka, a Beitar hooligan.

Today’s word: דופק

Today we had our first official visit with an ob-gyn (male, charedi) doctor. All in all, a positive experience. I wasn’t expecting anything crazy, pretty much a questionnaire of whether I smoke and if I’m taking vitamins. Oddly, neither of those topics came up.

Oh sure, I’ve been to Israeli gynos before, male charedi gynos even, but this was, of course, different, because I wasn’t only getting a questionnaire, but a checking-out, and not only a checking-out, but a souvenir.

Even though it’s only about seven weeks, we had our first view of the little bean that is currently residing within my insides. It’s amazing how hi tech this stuff is. He showed us the ultra-sound screen and pointed out the little bean that looks nothing like a creature, nevermind a human.

Then he said, “Yecholim l’rot ha-dofek. At ro’ah et ha-dofek?”

I had no freakin’ clue what he was talking about. Doesn’t dofek mean heartbeat? How does that thing have a heartbeat? I nodded and smiled politely but I knew he knew I had no clue what he was going on about. So he kept repeating it, and the word dofek pulsed in my brain. Hey, doc, if you think it has a heartbeat, then I’m perfectly ok with that.

Later on, we sat back down at his desk and went over the details. He said things are looking good for these early weeks. He mentioned the dofek again. I had to politely interrupt -

“When you say dofek, what exactly do you mean?”

“Dofek - pulse, heartbeat - you mean you didn’t see what I was talking about?”

“Oh… uh… I did… I just… They have heartbeats already?”

I guess I have a lot to learn. Like planning our wedding in Israel, this is a whole new experience that’s going to require a whole new Hebrew vocabulary.

Genetic testing, Jewish style.

I have no idea how genetic testing works outside the Jew-on-Jew baby-making bubble, but for us in the family it’s a fascinating tour through Jewish history.

We went today to get checked out, just in case. I’m a mutt from one Turkish/Bulgarian parent and one Eastern European chulent mix parent. This automatically helps decrease the chance of conceiving a child with the typical Eastern European all-in-the-family diseases, but you never know. My husband is a hybrid of Romanian/Austrian and Polish genes.

Now, what do all those details matter, right? If you’ve thought like me your whole life, you’re thinking, Ashkenazi or Sephardi? Spit it out. But actually, they really ask about the specific countries your parents and grandparents are from. After the nurse gets all the details, she enters them into this giant chart; your genes go in the grid and then your partner’s genes go into the grid accordingly. Then she matches them up and checks out what the chances are as well as which of the many tests you should take.

So a rough sketch of this chart looks something like this:

I couldn’t believe it. I thought this was the coolest thing I’d ever seen. It’s like a map of Jewish exile and diaspora throughout the ages.

We were handed a printed form of about six tests to take and thankfully, we passed through all of them without any high risks. I guess in humans, mutts are valuable to have around. Unless you’re Hitler, of course.