Breathe. Hold. Push. Shlomo's Birth Story

Guest post from the amazing and beautiful Estee Berkowitz

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A while back Zalmy’s friend documented his wife’s birth of their son. At first I thought it was weird (I tried to imagine being in her shoes, having her husband snap away during painful contractions seemed annoying). But then I saw the post on his website and thought it was absolutely beautiful, like tears in my eyes beautiful, and asked Zalmy to do that for our next baby.

And so he did. With film developing and processing and all, it took over a year for me to finally see the photos (besides for the polaroids… no they’re not extinct). I didn’t mind the wait, shooting film and waiting a while to see the results has become second nature for me in this instant-everything world, and besides the fact that there are rolls of film, cameras, prints, polaroids, light meters lying all over the house, I’m grateful to wait. Capturing moments and wondering how they will come out and then forgetting about them and then a few months later actually seeing them is very rewarding. Anyway, I was kind of curious what the birth photos looked like, and what emotions they would conjure up for me.

For a stay-at-home-homeschooling-mom, I think social media is a great thing. I’m able to keep in touch with so many people from my past and present, somewhat keeping up with their lives, without having to go out to coffee with them. And people can see how my life is going and actually have a visual of my crazy family-unschooling-sourdoughing-Torah-observant-life. But it also makes me quite nervous, and this is the part of me that I’m pretty insecure about. I think people see my photos of my family and my life and get this image of what it’s like and it’s really not like that at all. And not just for me, I think it’s one of the biggest problems with social media. We only show a fraction, a glimpse of what our lives are like on the internet, (okay, maybe besides us and our naked or underwear modeling children) and yet who we really are, what’s really going on in our lives and in our hearts is left in a black cloud of unknown, undocumented air of silence. The parts of us that we wish we could share and the parts of us that are screaming for attention, but the parts that we hide underneath an everything-is-okay-smile.

Shlomo was probably the best thing that happened to me that year. And seeing these photos reminded me of that. It was a year I put up with a lot of flack for homeschooling and was constantly explaining why and what we were doing. A year I put up with a lot of criticism and pain from people who made me feel like a bug that needs to be squashed. A death of a loved one and an illness diagnosis of a family member that I’m still in denial about. A time that I felt so unbelievably lonely in my thoughts and feelings.

During Shlomo’s pregnancy I got a double ear infection that kept me bed ridden for over a month. I never had an ear infection in my life. After two rounds of antibiotics that didn’t work (and anyone who knows me knows I don’t do antibiotics)… a bunch of holistic stuff and almost a whole bottle of tylenol (okay, kick me out of the crunchy mom group) with the guidance of a wonderful friend I went to a chiropractor that does applied kineseology and got me on the right track to healing.

Mari, this above mentioned wonderful friend, also told me to connect to G-d. If I came to her with a complaint she told me talk to G-d about it. Here am this kosher keeping, sabbath keeping, Torah law following religious Jew and I needed to be punched in the chest, or in this case, my ears, to really truly connect with G-d. She told me that G-d has isolated me during the ear infection, it was time to really connect and pour my heart out to Him. And so heart pouring out, I did.

On our walks to shul I noticed there was a tomato plant growing in a crack of the concrete road. Every week, this tomato plant grew and my kids and I watched little green tomatoes form into orange and then red tomatoes. This tomato plant came out of nowhere; no one would plant a seed in a concrete road, let alone water it. But grow it did, against all odds, from the harsh concrete, life! I’m not so good at explaining analogies, but I guess i’m trying to say that from all that physical and emotional pain came a wonderful relationship with my Creator.

A few weeks before my due date my good friend Robin (who I love and miss) connected me with her friend Kat who was studying to be a doula and offered to be my doula for my birth. I was honored she’d want to help me, and she was honored to assist the birth of this mama’s fifth baby. She was wonderful and just like that tomato plant in the concrete, came completely out of nowhere. She helped me birth exactly the way I wanted to. When it came time to push the baby out (sorry if that’s too much information), there was this huge barrier and I couldn’t do it, my body was ready but my mind was crying I can’t. I shifted my position, took a deep breath and said in my mind: G-d, You do this. Out came another boy (against Chanaleh’s wishes, although don’t worry, he is still her little doll). And just like his name, this little boy has been nothing but a sweet, peaceful, and delightful little addition to our crew.

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And a few polaroids.

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Organic, (relatively) Healthy Cookies

Quite often our neighbors can't come over to play because they are doing homework. And my daughter thinks that just isn't fair. "Why can't I have homework?" She asks. If something holds someone back from coming over to our estate, it must supersede it in the fun category. What is this magical thing called "homework" that rules others' lives, she wonders.

"I know math" declares my oldest. We were doing some "learnin", and every time I brought up a possible subject, he was suspicious. "Is that called learnin?" he asks.

Formal learning is not something we do too much with our kids. If they get interested in a subject we'll go to the library and get a few books about it, talk about it, maybe watch a youtube video or two about it. We learn by doing, by living. But sometimes they want to "do learnin". So we'll go over some writing, some math, some Jewish history or theology.

Over Chanukah, my kids got a good amount of Channukah gelt (which, contrary to popular opinion, is not a chocolate coin). Zusha, when getting his second dollar, looked it over, turned it around a couple time, "I, I, I, I, I, don't want any more monies" (this was during his stuttering phase). Mendel got a bit more and just gave them to me, didn't care too much. Chanaleh was a bit excited, counted her money, and promptly misplaced it (we found it later, after many tears). Zevi was over the top. He loved getting money, kept on comparing how much he got with how much the others ones did. Over the next couple of weeks we learned a lot about money. How change works, where money comes from (well, we tried talking about that, it's complicated), how to save, how to spend, what costs how, and how costs who, and most of all, how he could get more monies.

29 hours, 98,217 questions later, mostly asked during telephone conversations and late Friday afternoon, Estee and the two older kids decided to make an Orange Juice and Cookie stand. The kids made the OJ (fresh squeezed, it turns out there's a reason people sell lemonade, it's waaaaaay easier and cheaper), and made a large part of the cookies. We made some signs, put them up, set up our little stand, and waited.

We started late, on a chilly (for Southern California standards), afternoon. $.50 for a cookie, 5 for $2.00, $1.00 for a cup of orange juice. They learned how to make cookies, what goes into making money, how to talk maturely to adults, semi-complicated math ("How much could I get for $5.00", "If I want 6 cookies and 2 cups of orange juice, how much will that be", "$4.50? I have a $10, how much change do I get?"), tithing, and customer service.

During the hour and a half they were out there (we had to close shop when it got dark), they pulled in about $30 dollars (minus the 50 cents they gave to someone who needed some extra change for the bus). Which sounds pretty darn good for a chilly afternoon, though after coating the hour and a half of prep, 45 minutes of clean-up, and the cost of the ingredients, the hourly rate drops into the low twos. But I can see some serious income in the Summer…

Birds of Small Bag

"Eagles are smaller than me, but their wings are bigger. The Tawny Eagle is the biggest." "The Condor is a vulture. Like in Lion King. Their wings are soooo big. We saw one at he zoo."

"Seagulls are baby eagles. So they are smaller."

"LOOOOOOOOK!!! A pigeon!!"

"Why can't we fly?"

"Can birds swim?"

"Can we go swimming?"

"Can we buy a new pool?"

We homeschool. That is to say our kids stay home and don't go to school. In my very limited experience and slightly less limited thoughts, it seems that the most important aspect of homeschooling (especially in the younger ages), is to foster and encourage kids natural curiosity about anything and everything. One week it might be worms, the next gardening, the combustion engine, or maybe Egypt and the ten plagues (or Mongolia. They are convinced that "bad people" live there). One of the great advantages of homeschooling is that you can spend as much time on whatever subject your kid is interested in at any given moment. A kid may be obsessed with whales in 4th grade, but by the time they learn about them in 5th grade he's into tractors. Or by the time he actually gets excited about them, the class has moved on to the indigenous people previously known as "the Indians".

Lately the older half of the Berkowitz offspring have been mindjacked by anything with wings. Ostriches (the biggest. Doesn't fly. Crazy people with sun addled Aussie minds ride them), Peregrine Falcons (the fastest, not that strong or big), Condors (especially the California one, not that many left, bigger than Tatty (me), lays eggs on cliffs), Eagles (they LOVE eagles, they fly the highest), Seagulls, Pigeons, and lately, Terns, Herons, and Ospreys.

So one Tuesday morning, in the latter part of the early hours we packed up some apples, cheese, water and cameras and headed to the Bolsa Chica Wetlands (sounds much better in Spanish. The English version would be "Small Bag Wetlands". Don't ask.) The wetlands are (is?) a huge swab of land on the Huntington Beach coast set aside for all sorts of odd birds and their even odder watchers. The real estate value of this land chunk is seriously crazy.

We saw stingrays, ospreys, terns, herons, seagulls, bird watchers with monstrous camera lenses, bird watchers with ipads, bird watchers with binoculars, barnacles, pelicans, and red ants. The kids were most excited about the ants.

We ran, danced, climbed, photographed, whined, dined, cried, and spent 20 minutes looking through the cracks in the bridge at pigeon nests.

We did end up buying a pool and swimming in said pool, but that's another story.

Milk, knives, & 5 year olds

We drink raw milk. We can only get it every other week, it costs around $8.70 for half a gallon, doesn't really freeze well, and it has more of a chance of having bad bacteria than the pasteurized, homogenized versions. It's also much healthier. The cows and milk have to live up to much higher standards (regular milk doesn't need to come from healthy cows, they just kill (pasteurize) any bacteria. It has all the good bacteria still there, and tastes a bit richer. In fact most "lactose intolerance" (as in my daughter's case) is only in relation to pasteurized milk. They do fine with the raw stuff. Yes, there's always the fear of some sort of E. Coli situation (although very rare) but I'm okay with that.

If kids didn't play there'd be less broken bones. If we protected them from all sorts of danger they'd be less mature, have less self esteem, and less equipped to handle the unsurities of the world. And in regards to food and medicine they'd be much less healthy.

We don't vaccinate (for the most part) or get anti-biotics "just in case". Because in insuring yourself against possible future harm you are subjecting yourself to a definitely less healthy present (and future).

Here is Zevi wielding a ridiculously huge knife. It's actually his job to cut up the melon on Shabbos and before we go to the park (in the Summer. In the winter it's mostly apples and cheese). Is there a chance of himself cutting himself? Of course there is, and it scares me a bit too. It also scares me when he zooms down the sidewalk on his bike, and I'm sure I'll be freaked when he starts to drive. But we know our kids. And Zevi is a very responsible one, obsessed with rules, structure, and order. He is way more careful with that knife than most adults (look how far his left hand is from the knife). He knows never to use it when we're not around and not to use it on smaller items (such as apples) where there isn't much room for his other hand.

I doubt we'd let the other kids use knives when they get to his age. My Chanaleh is in a different universe most of the time, and Mendel just loves to make trouble, but they have other responsibilities and jobs. And they thrive on it.

Why am I sharing all this? Well firstly, because I'm want to post these photos and don't want y'all to freak out :). But mainly I want people to realize that when it comes to your own life and family you are the expert. No one knows more than you do what each kid needs, and how to discipline, reward, teach, and love each individual member of your family. There will always be the judgers (yes, I know that's not a word, but it works better than judges here, or "those who judge"), the naysayers, and the social normers. Ignore them. Do your own research, trust your gut, and live fully.