It all started in mid-November when Matt suggested we have a "hodesh ivrit" / "Hebrew month" during which we would only speak Hebrew to each other. Knowing that once the twins were born we would only speak English at home so they would learn it, we figured we had at least a month (I wasn't due until the beginning of January) to focus on our Hebrew.
Then my water broke.
I was only 33.5 weeks along and we were wholly unprepared. We had no plan of how we were getting to the hospital, no bag packed and nothing set up in the house. So, at 11pm we called our neighbor to ask for a ride to the hospital. And this is when "hodesh ivrit" really began.
We arrived at the hospital only to find out they had no room in their NICU and would need to transfer us to another hospital on the other side of the city. Despite this news, I was feeling pretty great because I had just recently learned the word for NICU in Hebrew (pagiah), so I knew exactly what they were talking about!
When we got in the ambulance, they got me all strapped in and then the driver informed us that the engine wouldn't start. That's ok, I because I had learned the word for engine (manoa) in Ulpan. While we waited for the new ambulance, the EMT was concerned about timing my contractions (tzirim). I knew this word too, so I was feeling pretty confident when my contractions starting to be between 3 and 5 minutes apart.
We finally got to the hospital and in a string of miracles, the doula (who we had decided not to call because we had just met her the day before) was assisting the women in the room next door. She agreed to be present at my birth, too. Somehow we navigated labor and delivery all in Hebrew and I even yelled at a few doctors and nurses in my adopted tongue. As soon as the babies were born, they were whisked away to the NICU, both coming in at under 2 kilo (one just under and one just over 4 lbs). It would be hours until we would get to see them. In the meantime, I was asked a number of times by doctors and nurses about my height and weight. This is where my success with Hebrew broke down. I only knew my details in feet and pounds, they wanted centimeters and kilos. I kept apologizing that I didn't know my height and weight in the right units and I was too exhausted to do the math, but they would just walk away, frustrated. It took a Canadian medical student to actually pull out his phone and do the conversion for me. Thank you random Canadian med student.
We spent the next month in the Children's Hospital NICU watching our healthy (thank God), but tiny babies grow big and strong enough to come home. For the majority of our time there, we shared our room with two other sets of twins and their parents. One couple we became particularly close with, whose identical twin boys were born at just about the same time and the same amount premature as our babies, was from an Arab village about an hour from Haifa. Our amazing nurses were from all over the world - Russia, Uzbekistan, Argentina, and of course, Israel. The one language we all had in common was Hebrew, so that is what we spoke and in the end, we succeeded in getting our "hodesh ivrit" (Hebrew month).
All of that now seems so long ago as we gear up to celebrate Lev and Hila's 1/2 birthday this weekend. It's hard to believe that 6 months have gone by, but we can hardly remember life before parenthood. Besides learning how to be parents, we have also had to learn how to be parents of twins. On top of that we had to learn how to be Israeli parents. Here are a few things we've learned:
1. Everyone and their mother will tell you how to raise your children. Smile, nod and ignore. Countless Israeli women, including complete strangers, have commented that our kids are too hot, too cold, not wearing a hat when they should be or have sun in their eyes. I know their intentions are good, so I usually throw a hat on them when they say something. We live in a country full of Jewish mothers.
2. Strangers stare at your children and this is not considered creepy. On the bus, on the street, people may come up to the stroller and peer in. When the babies are being carried in carriers, our personal space is often violated. This is only magnified by the fact that we have twins.
3. Everybody has a sister's friend's cousin's daughter's babysitter's barber's nephew who has twins and they want to tell us about them. Every time we go out to a restaurant with the kids, someone comes up to our table to tell us about the twins they know. There have been times we have needed to avert our eyes and break eye contact to get our visitors to go away.
4. Two babies may be double the work, but they are also double the fun. Especially now that they can play together. And by play together, I mean, stick their fingers in the other one's eye and/or mouth and/or ear. Watching them interact with each other has been one of the most awesome things of all time, especially when they hold hands.
5. Twins can (and are encouraged) to share a crib, until they can't. How do you know when they can't? When you wake up in the middle of the night to see one babbling to himself with the other, who has rolled on top of him, screaming in his face.
6. Double strollers are great, but also a huge pain in the butt when you live in an apartment on the third floor of a walk-up in a city built on a mountain. You therefore learn to love baby-wearing. We have worn our kids in baby-carrying wraps every week to shul, day trips to Tel Aviv, quick grocery store runs, to archaeological sites and on hikes - all without a stroller.
7. You have skills you didn't even know were skills. For example: getting a double stroller onto a city bus by yourself, changing a poopy diaper in the dark, carrying two infants at the same time while answering the door, cutting fingernails that are microscopically small, not sleeping through the night and somehow still being responsibly functional by daylight, nursing two babies at the same time while writing this...
8. It is possible, albeit exhausting, to be a full-time working (from home) mother and a full-time student father and still raise your kids at home - with the help of friends and neighbors turned babysitters.
9. It is amazing how different two babies can be. We can easily differentiate between their cries, laughs and babbles. They have opposite personalities. They are developing at completely different rates - which is totally normal. We have been told not to compare them, which is hard, but we try.
10. Being immigrants far from your family is challenging at times, but the network of other olim (immigrants) is powerful, endlessly helpful and inspiring.
There are so many more things to say, but this is long enough. We are thoroughly loving being parents, parents of twins, and of course, Israeli parents. It may be another 6 months until I write again (my time is precious, I spend most of it doing laundry), so please feel free to be in touch if you want any intermittent updates.
Enjoy these gratuitous baby pictures!
Shabbat Shalom and have a great weekend,
Stef
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