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Home
and Family
A Challenge That Is Its Own
Reward
by Tamar Wisemon, Tsefas
Shira, aged eighteen months, had just come out of her bedtime
bath and was standing, shivering, waiting for me to diaper
and dress her. Then Rachel, aged two months, started to
whimper in the other room -- she was hungry. "She'll just
have to wait," I thought, as I dried my elder daughter.
Rachel's whimpering turned into mournful cries and then
rapidly catapulted into screams of despair. Shira, now
diapered, was becoming unnerved by the baby's howling and
began to fidget. This made her more difficult to dress and I
began to snap. "Sit still, stop wriggling!" Meanwhile, Rachel
had become so hysterical that she had begun to gasp for
breath. "Don't move!" I ordered, as I rushed off to grab the
baby and place her beside me, in the hope of calming her
down. Rachel simply screamed louder and turned purple. Shira
started to cry too. And I was about to join them.
Both of my daughters had simple, basic needs, one to be
clothed and one to be fed, but when two such needs conflict
with one another, a mother has no choice but to decide which
takes precedence. When she has two children who are both
essentially helpless infants, who can't be expected to
perform many of the most basic tasks, then even daily
routines such as getting dressed or negotiating the stairs,
can become a nightmare.
We all appreciate the immeasurable blessing of having
children. But sometimes the days ahead can look a little
daunting, with two or even three babies still in diapers and
each one waking a few times during the night. Despite the
confident claims of friends that none of their kids had ever
woken the others up, I spent many nights dashing between
rooms, trying to quiet one daughter before she woke the other
up, only to hear a distraught wailing as the first was on the
verge of dropping back to sleep. I distinctly remember an
exhausting visit to my parents, with the kids sharing our
room. Shira awoke with hysterical screams, minutes after
Rachel had finally succumbed, following three hours of
constant feeding and patting. I just couldn't calm her and
the baby started to move restlessly in her crib. My husband
finally calmed Shira down, but the damage had been done and I
had another two hours of rocking Rachel to go before the sun
rose and this daughter fell asleep.
I know that I am not the only one who sometimes wondered if I
was even capable of attending to a double set of needs. A
friend of mine confided that when she was in the hospital
recovering from the birth of her second child, her heart sank
as she watched her firstborn, 16 months old and still
crawling, coming through the doorway on all fours, to her
bed. It was only then that she realized what a baby he still
was.
We both found that our biggest inspiration during this stage
came from speaking with other mothers. When Rachel was born
and I was feeling overwhelmed, an aunt who was visiting from
England reminded me that my two cousins, both older than I,
are eleven months apart. She told me that although it might
be hard at first to juggle responsibility of two little ones,
soon they would be old enough to keep one another
entertained. Since she herself had survived this stage, I
could trust her encouraging words.
Indeed, just a few months later, around the time Shira turned
two, she suddenly developed a wonderful new trait - the
ability to wait just long enough for me to see to Rachel's
needs first. Then Rachel, too, became more patient. Finaly,
last week, I was frenziedly preparing for Shabbos when I
realized that for two whole hours, my daughters had been
quietly playing with their dolls. For one hundred and twenty
precious minutes, not only had they not demanded my
attention, but they had also kept one another happily
occupied, leaving me free to do my work.
Hashem gives us many challenges that are ultimately their own
reward. One of these is the blessing of having children
closely spaced together. We just need to weigh the year or
two of their babyhood over the time span of the rest of their
lives, and the initial sacrifice of time and energy seems
negligible compared to the close sibling bonds that can
result.
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