GROWING UP TOGETHER

 By Batya Ruddell

Courtesy of Hamodia Magazine

Not for reprint

     It was like a dream.  She’d imagined this day, although never really believed it would arrive.  As the summer sun set behind the Jerusalem hills, casting a warm glow over the chuppah, Tova felt her heart swell with happiness.  Her Yitzi was getting married!  Twenty years ago, when she and Yehuda were new immigrants, Hebrew illiterates, struggling to acclimatize to life in Eretz Yisrael without family, she could not have dreamed this would happen.  Because then they had struggled with something else as well, something that had shaken her to the core, and had slowly ad stealthily stolen all her self-confidence.  And now, as she watched Yitzi and his radiant kallah leave the chuppah, basking in the joyous mazel tov blessings, her mind traveled backwards.

***

     Twenty years earlier:  “Well,” said Miri, the nurse at he local mother-and-baby clinic, “it looks like he simply isn’t thriving!”

     Tova tried not to look at the numbers on the scale as the nurse handd her wriggling six-week-old baby back to her.  Could it be her imagination, or was there a hint of disapproval in the professional woman’s eyes?

     “Six weeks old,” Miri muttered as she strode down the corridor, “and he hasn’t gained a gram.”

     A woman sitting in the waiting room, the one with the gurgling, rosy-cheeked infant bouncing on her lap, gave Tova a sympathetic glance.

     “It’s hard when they don’t gain weight, isn’t it?” she empathized.  “But don’t worry, he’ll be big and fat before you know it.”

     “Do you rally think so?” Tova pounced on the optimistic hook she’d been thrown.  “It’s my first baby, so I don’t know what’s normal.”

     “Sure,” said the woman, whom Tova was ready to appoint as her expert adviser on the spot, “it happens all the time.”

     Suddenly the nurse reappeared,  deflating whatever optimism Tova had developed.  “Okay,” the nurse announced authoritatively, handing Tova the little blue card with all the heights and weights recorded on it.  “Come back in a week, but see your doctor first and do these tests.”

***

     He was crying again.  Screaming. Tova felt his screams shooting into her head like sharp arrows.  She opened her eyes groggily.  What time was it?  She groaned.  Did it really matter?  Time for her had become a continual jumble of crying, screaming and feeding—it seemed that ll the hours of the day rolled into one.  She was so terribly tired.  Leaning over the bassinet, she picked up her baby and staggered sleepily  down the hallway to the living room, where she could feed him quietly without waking her husband.  She gazed down at her son squirming in her arms.  He seemed hungry now, rooting for food with a normal, healthy need.  The thought of feeding him, of pouring nourishment and vitamins into his tiny body, brought a rush of satisfaction that only a mother can truly feel.  He was soon lustily gulping down the life force as if he would never stop.  Tova leaned back contentedly on the couch, watching the dark night through the window as it rose slowly upward, giving way to the dawn.  She allowed herself a sliver of hope.  Maybe this time it would go well?

     And then he stopped! Just like that!  Throwing back his head, he let out a shrill scream that pierced the silent rooms.  How ling had he been at it this time…five minutes?  How much could he have ingested?  As usual, he was inconsolable.  He would stay that way, emitting his high pitched scream tha shattered any illusion of serenity.  He’d scream, on and on, while Tova rocked him, soothed him, walked with him, rubbed his tummy until, exhausted, he’d fall asleep.

     Her pain was so raw that her tears hurt as they poured down her cheeks.  She had so many questions.  Was all this screaming normal?  If he was hungry, way hadn’t he nursed longer?  What, she asked herself for the hundredth time, was she doing wrong?

***

     “We need to know how much he’s ingesting.”  Tova looked blankly at the young pediatrician sitting opposite her.  “Uh, how do we do that?”

    “Bottles,” he announced, “that’s the best way…much more accurate. Let’s see if he’s actually getting enough to eat or if he’s just burning up too many calories.  Maybe he’s tiring from the effort of nursing.  I’ll need to check his heart.”

     “it might be his heart,” she told her husband worriedly when she got home.  This was all a foreign language to her, but at least, she thought, it might not be her fault after all.

***

     “Heart’s fine,” pronounced Dr. Kaplan, carefully examining the echo-cardiogram report in front of him.  “Come, let’s put him on the scale.”

     A wave of nausea rose up inside her, catching in her throat.  Little Yitzi floundered uncomfortably on the cold, metal weighing tray.  She’d have thought he’d be used to it by now.  Tova averted her eyes from the flashing numbers.  They reminded her of the red signal flashing on her dashboard, alerting her that the tank was almost out of gas.  Actually, that’s exactly how she felt, like an empty tank, unable to supply what was needed.

     “His weight’s gone down,” the good doctor announced, tight lipped and obviously displeased.  “I’ll give you another week,” he said, as if he were doing her a favor.  “If there’s no change, I’ll have to hospitalize him.”

     Everyone, it seemed, had something to say.  She was surrounded by concerned experts who all, unlike her, had raised healthy, happy, thriving infants.  Suggestions swept in uninvited, well meant, of course, but nonetheless suffocating, pulling her deeper into confusion and self-doubt.  Her head was reeling, spinning with images of baby bottles and formulas.  Every formula boasted more calories than the others; each feeding bottle was more “state of the art” than the next.

     Both sets of grandparents worried frantically from afar, their twice daily phone calls often making her wish that modern methods of communication had never been invented.  Why didn’t she and Yehuda just come home to America, their parents pleaded; all this religious business was bad enough without them moving to Eretz Yisroel by themselves!  Poor Yehuda was just as frazzled as she.  This was new, uncharted territory and they had no idea how to navigate it.

***

     “Tova,” her best friend Mali began.  Mali was sitting next to her on the living room couch, holding her own newborn in the crook of her arm.  “Tova, are you bonding with your baby?”

     Bonding with…of course she was!  Well…she supposed so.  She kissed him, didn’t she?  Held him, hugged him, worried about him---wasn’t that bonding?  But did she love him?  She wasn’t sure of anything anymore.  She just knew that there was a huge, empty hole inside her that she desperately wanted to be filled by the sight of a contented, well nourished child.  Maybe he didn’t love her yet?  Was there such a thing?  He still hadn’t given even a suggestion of a smile.  Tova let out a deep weary sigh.

     “Yes,” she murmured to Mali, “we’re getting there.”

***

     In the hospital they were installed in a small, one windowed cubicle where she could sleep on a fold out bed next to Yitzi’s crib.  Nurses bustled busily around her.  They were quite nice really, some of them even motherly; but she was certain she could read their unspoken thoughts.  Poor thing…a young mother…overwhelmed…not coping.  All she was now, it seemed, was an inexperienced first-time mother who couldn’t feed her baby.  But she was also other things…a good wife and daughter, a loyal friend and neighbor.  She’d illustrated children’s books in her past life…and she was actually quite good at it.  And not too long ago, though now it seemed like a decade, she’d never left the house without a well-styled sheitel, wearing light make up and well coordinated clothes.  Was anyone interested in that?

     When had she begun to lose a sense of herself?  She’d always been competent…or had she?  This plunge into motherhood had pulled the rug of self confidence from under her feet and she was floundering in the insecurity she had discovered lurking beneath every comment, every look.

     But now, almost immediately on their arrival, a super-efficient nurse slipped a feeding tube into Yitzi’s little nose at the speed of lightning.  “We need to bring his weight up quickly,” she explained.  “He’s very weak.”

     Tova could hardly find Yitzi’s face underneath the while, sticky plaster taped on his cheek to keep the thin pipe in place.  Then an IV was insertd into his skinny arm…”to keep his electrolytes balanced,” she learned/  If she was struggling to stay connected to him befoe, now she really felt as if he didn’t belong to her.  Just what was this strange new world she had found herself in?

     They ran test after test.  Blood went into his tiny veins; blood was taken out.  They snapped pictures of almost every part of his body.  He was fed with the tube; he was fed without it.  More calories were added to the formula; the IV was removed and put back.  And they, the experts, observed her while she fed him.  Over and over again they sat beside her, guiding and instructing her.  She felt like a laboratory rat beneath a microscope.

     During the day, visitors arrived.  Many offered to take over so she could go home for a  few hors’ rest, but she always refused.  She was not leaving her child with anyone else!  Of course, Yehuda stayed with her whenever he could take a break from kollel, but he too was confused.  He herd words like post-partum depression, over exhaustion  and anxiety.  What connection did that have with his wife?  What did it all mean?

     Life slipped into a series of dark nights.  Everything beyond the four clinical walls had ceased to exist.  It was during those long, lonesome nights that she cried herself to sleep, pleading and begging Hashem for strength, trying to clear her bewildered mind.

     But here was a bright side to this insulated existence, a flicker of light flashing in the darkness.  For there in the hospital, she met other mothers who also couldn’t feed their babies.  Some even had a houseful of healthy children at home and could not be relegated to the realm of “the inexperienced” like her.  She discovered there were many reasons why a child didn’t thrive.  Some infants possessed their own, unique physical blueprints that didn’t allow them to grow.  For some there was no physical explanation for failing to thrive, and their parents required patience, prayer, and the hope that over time their infants would outgrow it.  Funny, but the other mothers didn’t seem to blame themselves like she did, but then, that was her area of expertise; bowing her head humbly while soaking up guilt as it rained down on her.  It was her childhood legacy.  Maybe…and the thought flitted through her mind with more frequency now…it was not her fault at all.  But if not, then what was wrong with her baby son?

***

     One cool, colorless morning, the resident doctor breezed into Tova’s room.  “Mrs. Berger, you can go home tomorrow,” he announced cheerfully.  Tova was momentarily stunned into silence.

     “There’s nothing more we can do for your baby now.  We haven’t found out why he’s failing to thrive, and all the test results were normal.”  Tova stared at this messenger of so-called good tidings and forced a few words from her lips.

     “And how,” she asked timidly, “am I supposed to feed him?”

     “Oh, you can keep the tube in at home.  Try to give him a bottle first and then top up with the tube afterwards.”

     “But he’s not…”  Ina flash, he was gone.

     “gaining weight,” her voice reached out, like an extended arm, to the empty doorway.

     So that was that!  Dismissed, like a naughty schoolgirl…after three weeks.  She had never felt so abandoned.

     Once the door stopped swinging and the air settled, Tova gently lifted her sleeping baby out of his crib and laid him on the mattress beside her.  With one finger she tracked the translucent blue veins snaking across his pale, bald head, like rivers on a road map.  She felt his fragile body, his fleshless fingers weakly clasping hers, watched the feeble kicking of his feet.  He couldn’t even raise his head, and she was still waiting for that first smile.  Suddenly she saw him…really saw him, instead of herself, the inadequate mother, failing at her job.

     “You,” she said to him softly, “are a sick baby.  Even I can see that.”

     In a moment of clarity, a newfound confidence surged through Tova like a huge tidal wave.  She picked up her child, strode over to the doctor’s room and rapped loudly on the door.  The man in white who opened the door loomed over her, but this time Tova stood her ground like a soldier on the front lines of the battlefield.

     “Something,” she declared, nodding towards the sleeping bundle in her arms, “is wrong with my baby.  I am not leaving this hospital until you find out what it is!”

     And this time, the one who swept away, leaving an aura of determination behind…was she!

***

     Twelve months later:  Hopefully Yitzi wouldn’t need the feeding tube much longer.  The rare enzyme he was missing had been flown in from Italy where it was manufactured in its pure form.  It still amazed her, each time she crushed it up before his feeds and syringed it down the tube, how one small gray pill could change a life, how some messed up molecules could send a system haywire.

     The paralyzing, self-criticizing voice inside had been replaced by an all-encompassing worry and fear for her child that had fueled her to search for a diagnosis.  Her husband had called, consulted and conferred with as many experienced rabbis and medical experts as he could.  Tova and Yehuda had become relentless in their search for an answer.

     When the results finally came, Tova collapsed; every bone in her body felt like it had finally crumbled from the weight it had been bearing.  The release, the lifting of that huge boulder from her shoulders was liberating.  She felt it shift, relished the feel of it sliding off her, envisioned it rolling off and away until it was gone.  At last, she could let go!  She and Yehuda had done whatever they could for their tiny, beloved Yitzi; now it was up to Hashem.

     Of course they still had to adjust to Yitzi’s unusual condition, del with the enzymes he’d need forever, cope with the constant follow ups and occasional hospitalizations/  Then there were the sympathetic whispers and people’s curious tares at the tin pipe threaded through Yitzi’s nose, but that was a small price to pay for his blossoming health.  Actually, they considered themselves fortunate, because at least now, they had a diagnosis.  Everything  was easier once they knew what they were dealing with.  Not everybody was that lucky.

     Whenever Tova looked at her healthy baby these days, she couldn’t atke hr eyes off him.  She filled herself with his very existence; drawing his sweet laughter inside herself, infusing it into all her spaces.  There were fewer of those spaces now, since Yitzi’s perilous predicament had forced her to turn inward and pull out strengths and confidence she didn’t know she had.  She’d learned to believe in herself, to not give up but grow up instead. 

     Just his morning in the park, while enjoying the warm, soothing sunshine, she had turned his chubby face toward hers so she could soak up his huge wide, wonderful smile.  Yes, she marveled, he was growing nicely now…and so was she!

***

As Tova lovingly eyed her newly married son, she found it hard to connect him to that tiny, weak infant who had once struggled to survive.  Bechasdei Hashem, they had both come a long way.