Oh, Baby!
Shpitzle Shtrimpkind2011Best of the BlogsReflectionsReligion
Credit: brains the head
Every so often Yoelish wakes up in the morning especially enthused, the birth of a brilliant idea rousing him from his deep slumber. “You know what just occurred to me that we do?” he’d say to this snoozeaholic. “Listen to this great plan for a minute. It’s about you, us!”
Then he’d explain. I can’t repeat verbatim, but in general he says something like this:
“I think… how about… this plan: we get YOU very, very fat! But not only that, we make you sickly, have you vomit daily, get you dangerously moody, and sensitive to smell, and unpredictably and ravishingly hungry, and slow in motion, and breathless, and full of stretch marks and varicose veins, all bloated and blown up, with a lot of nighttime heartburn, and also, prodded by a doctor where you like it least? And then we’ll get you to the hospital to be hooked up to monitors and huge needles, with scrunching, crunching contractions and hell-raising pushes of the pelvic muscle. After that you’ll have postpartum depression and temporarily give away all our other children!”
He’d sit up with a jolt, extra pleased with himself, and ask exceptionally cheerily, “Huh?! What do you think? I think it’s time! C’mon, you want it too.”
I’ll tell you what I think, and I’ll tell you what I want!
I love that bearded fella in the nightgown from the bed across the carpet, for my life I do, but I don’t want to hear all that fuss about another pregnancy. Whenever he attempts to mention a combination of the words “baby” and “more” my face freezes over with a stepford smile only a married man knows to crouch from. I look at him in my morning mode, while making a mental note to send him away first after the heartburn and pushing. If I say I want it, that’s one thing, but him?
My husband is suffering from Birth Control Anxiety Disorder, according to my expert diagnosis. That’s the result of a drastic, spiritually defeating change of pace in his life. Before he got married he’d been assured that he’s getting a woman, a few truckloads of EPTs (maybe even some free stretchies and sweater-sets) and soon enough, a dozen or so children would be generated. He’d be able to give kiddish in shul for all to attend, throw vacht nachts, drag a troupe of boys with him to shul, make sizable bar mitzvahs and eventually, knakedige weddings. The notion of having fewer than ten kids never crossed his mind. It wasn’t a possibility.
When I first started to trigger his BCAD by mentioning that I might cut my supply of babies, after a fair share of physical and emotional pressure, his reflex was to repeat like a broken record player that “m’meg nisht,” – it’s forbidden! — and “nobody does it!” Eventually, it wore him down. I’d like to say it was the hat-stand I bought him as a gift, but maybe it was just that babies made him snap. Or even more likely, the sleepless nights made his wife snap, and that really left him desperately running for a rabbi.
I proposed the strategy. Walk into the rabbi’s house, learn a bit of something of lushen koidesh for good luck, and then proceed to take the sponge-tichel-clad rebbetzin hostage. Yoelish would call 9-1-1, and tell the police that he’s not letting go of the wife or the shep-leffel weapon until the rabbi gives away a two-year baby-making break. Then he could come home with some of their chicken and kneidlech soup (might as well do it all the way), and we’ll celebrate the heist.
I didn’t get the soup, but somehow, someway, I got a nice heter, much to my husband’s surprise. From then on, if a kid wasn’t on the way (and sometimes even if there was) we would get those guilt ridden BCAD morning rituals where Yoelish wanted another kid NOW.
To cure the absence of my maternal yearnings, I attend the Bonei Olam party once a year. The ladies come to the party having left all their valuables at home, except those with a an inbound valuable. We sit around, yelling above each other’s voices about nursing clean and nursing clean and nursing clean, and by the time the speakers are through we all nod in agreement that we better not complain. On the walk home, late at night, all of us talk about how ungrateful we are for always complaining when others have nothing.
I do sincerely feel sorry for couples that have infertility issues, but I have trouble comprehending how 16 for me would make it better for them. What I do know is this: while I’m not eager to go through child bearing again so soon, I love my children with everything I got. Every single one, deeply.
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Originally published on Shpitzle Shtrimpkind on April 22, 2007, and reprinted here with permission. Authors have asked us to note that as the essays featured in “Best of the Blogs” document journeys of transformation, the author’s views may have changed since initial publication.
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13 Responses
LOVE IT!
Sptiz, how many kids to you have? Have you had any more since you originally wrote this post?
This reminds me of a t-shirt I saw. It said, “Drink your beer. There are sober people in India.”
To digress upon that theme: my friends would ask me, didn’t your mother tell you to clean your plate because of the starving children in Europe? No, I replied. I was one of those starving children!
you describe when the husband is sick on bcad its realy not easy but i think that in this case you can work on him that for women its very hard and he will understand it but when the sick one is the women its much more worse its very hard to explain that you just don’t want to work overtime to feed onother 15 children and even then to be in debth
The commandment says, “pru o’rvu”. We’ve done that. Now what?
There are many aspects of frum life that one can look to for a display of absurdity but asking a rabbi for a ‘heter’ for birth control must rank in the top five, I cannot understand it even within the context of a halachik system.
There is nothing that the Rabbi knows that the couple doesn’t; once they have fulfilled pru urevu it is a question that is answered entirely on an arbitrary basis, for some rabbis it can depend on what mood they are in or what they think the couple can ‘handle’, as if they know.
It kills me to see couples mindlessly having children, especially BTs who were never taught how to game the system and which rabbis are the ‘yes’ ones to ask for the heter, as one woman told us “I love a Friday night Mikvah because we live too far and I can’t walk so it pushes pregnancy off for at least a day”.
The fact that in the community that I come from birth control is not taught as a perfectly legitimate option in many situations, is a travesty, thankfully one of the modern trends beginning to take hold among younger people is the proliferation of it.
Toeh,
Even when Bts (and many FFBs for that matter) know that heteirim exist, they are taught that it is God’s will for them to have as many children as possible and that God will not give them anything they can’t handle. Because this is emphasized so strongly in Chabad, no one wants to get a heter because that would be implying that there is something wrong with her, because all “normal” women can handle large families and view many children as a blessing, etc.
I knew heterim existed, but I never would have dreamed of asking for them because I wanted to be “normal”. My crisis of faith began when I had my third (and youngest) child and realized that I didn’t want any more. I had to cope with my feelings of being weird and inferior until I realized that those descriptions were more fitting of Judaism than of me.
“The fact that in the community that I come from birth control is not taught as a perfectly legitimate option in many situations, is a travesty, thankfully one of the modern trends beginning to take hold among younger people is the proliferation of it.”
and hopefully a right the conservatives in Congress don’t strip us of!!!!
Fence Sitter,
In a sense I am making your point. Couples may know of a heter but they don’t think of it as an option because of the arguments and social circumstances you described. I guess as I go along it surprises me how many people actually do get the heter and how arbitrary and non-halachik the prohibition is. The fact that the majority is left to live a life where they don’t feel comfortable to make some of life’s greatest choices with their own faculties, is painful and frustrating.
my friend, a mother of five kids, told me yesterday ‘my dream is to have 10 children. that’s what i feel would make me an accomplished woman. However on second thought, if i did have more kids, the five i already have will have EVEN less time with me for as it is i am struggling to find time for them between work and everything else…’
this monologue came as she told me of her earlier conversation with her 7 yrs old daughter ‘all the kids’ mommies in my class are pregnant. when will you be pregnant?’
my sister in law, who is pregnant with her 16th child, cried bitter tears when she had a miscarriage after her 5th child. she felt useless. broken and unworthy of her husband or anyone else’s love and recognition. she was only comforted when she became pregnant AGAIN (and again and again)…
my brother begged her to go on birth control when the second one came 11 month after the first. she wouldn’t hear of it, making him feel like he was the ‘bad jew’…
so it boils down to their education as they are being taught and made to believe that a woman is only validated and is an accomplished member of society by the number of kids she has.
the pain and dysfunction this social and thus mental pressure is infused and mounted on women AND men for too long is becoming a danger zone for those who are trying to survive.
i applaud all those that find the strength to stand apart and boldly take charge of their own lives as well as the lives of their children, teaching them through role model how to be an individual in a society that doesn’t allow that.
“so it boils down to their education as they are being taught and made to believe that a woman is only validated and is an accomplished member of society by the number of kids she has”.
JK, as a Chasidic women myself, I have to disagree with your statement. We are not explicitly told or taught that we are judged by the number of children we have.
The reason why so many frum women want to have large families, is because their worldview, passions, interests and hobbies are so restricted. What then should they do, what else will give them satisfaction and attention, what else can they show off, if not their adorable new born baby?
If you have no life, you can at least live vicariously through your children.
“There are many aspects of frum life that one can look to for a display of absurdity but asking a rabbi for a ‘heter’ for birth control must rank in the top five,”
I don’t get this either. Why do you even need a heter? Do what you want, in the privacy of your bedroom. He’ll never know! (The rebbe, that is. Unless he’s there too.)