Tag: newborn

  • New baby: One month.

    There is nothing like those first few days with your newly born baby. It’s a gray zone; they were just inside you, an extension of your body, but not yet uncurled, open, an entity apart from you. One of my favorite parts is the smell. Before they’ve been cleaned, had a bath, smell like laundry…

  • Guess I’m old, then.

    “Hi, I’d like to order my high school transcript signed and sealed, sent to my address in Israel.” “May I ask, for what purpose?” “Proof of my residence in the United States; I have to register my daughter’s birth with the US consulate in Jerusalem.” “Right. What class were you?” “Class of 2000.” “No problem,…

  • Home birth and the PKU test.

    Because it doesn’t seem that many people know about this, and it’s unnecessary for more home birthers than just us to have that millisecond of freak-out when receiving the phone call, I’m sharing this information with the Israeli home birthing masses: If you’ve birthed in a hospital, you know that before you are discharged, your baby receives that torturous PKU…

  • Registering your newborn after home birth.

    In Israel, when you give birth in the hospital, the hospital takes care of the bureaucratic paperwork fun-time, otherwise known as getting a teudat zehut number for your newborn. They submit the papers which go to Misrad Hapnim to get processed for a birth certificate and ID number. But when you do a leidat bayit – home…

  • Rude awakening.

    Ventured outside today for the first time since Bebe was born. I hated having to get in the car with my five-day-old daughter to drive into the center of Jerusalem and visit, of all places, Misrad Hapnim (ahem) (and here’s why). The idea of city-center air up her nostrils alone makes me sad. But really,…

  • Just want to shout it from the rooftops…

    I JUST GOT SIX CONSECUTIVE HOURS OF SLEEP!!! Why, I could… I could run a marathon! Cook a Thanksgiving meal! Do a Phd! There is nothing in this world – at least in the newborn world – like going to sleep when it’s dark and waking up when it’s light. Nothing. (And this kid’s started…

  • A lesson from newborns and Coney Island.

    Today was the most bizarre day I’ve experienced in a really long time. The same day consisted of me holding the newborn boy of a girl I consider a cousin as well as punching myself in the face on Coney Island’s Cyclone. This pseudo cousin gave birth to her first child deep into Saturday night.…