The Miracle of Love

by Ondine Sherman

  But the pregnancy proved hard work: weekly ultrasounds (the doctor had a machine in his office), blood testing for common hereditary diseases, and even an amniocentesis. Under vials of oil, my skin split like an overripe watermelon. Everything ached and I got up to wee three times a night. I tested positive for gestational diabetes and was put on a strict diet (pining for chocolate on an hourly basis). Although I was only thirty-two, my pregnancy was stamped ‘high risk’: identical twins shared the same placenta, which increased the chances of things going wrong. The obstetrician hammered this fact into me, warning that the death of one foetus was not uncommon. I walked around holding my belly protectively, full of fear, sure I would lose one, or both, babies.

  At twenty-four weeks my cervix shortened, showing signs of a dangerously early labour. The obstetrician put me on bed rest, the kind where you’re supposed to have your feet up twenty-four hours a day. A wannabe hermit often cajoled into activity by an extroverted husband, I secretly revelled in the first couple of months of this forced isolation, though looking after a two-year-old was tricky.

  ‘Do you want me to fly over now and help?’ my mum asked over the phone.

  ‘But I’ll really need you later, when I’m in hospital,’ I said.

  ‘I can come back again for the birth. Oh . . . but I do have the opening of Ai Wei Wei next month after the Venice Biennale in June, and there’s a speech I need to give in Brisbane, when’s that? Oh yes, October, to a group of art philanthropists, do you remember that lovely . . .’

  ‘Mum,’ I said.

  ‘. . . who came to dinner after Janet’s show last year? Anyway . . .’ she continued, explaining her upcoming commitments. All the inner workings of her mind, the intricate web of thoughts, concerns and preoccupations were verbalised in a stream-of-consciousness style that was uniquely hers, one that I found amusingly eccentric or frustratingly myopic, depending on my mood. I knew she would stop, eventually. But today I had less patience than normal.

  ‘Mum,’ I said a little louder. ‘Mum!’ I shouted.

  ‘Oh! What did you say, darling?’

  ‘It’s okay. I’m fine. I’ll manage.’ I did appreciate my mother’s generous offer. Israel was a good twenty-five-hour flight from Sydney. Not fun.

  ‘Jasmine is very happy playing at home,’ I reassured her. ‘Anyway, I’ve bought a ton of craft projects to do with her.’

  Jasmine, despite the occasional tantrum, had a wondrous amount of patience and concentration, and loved nothing more than sitting on my bed colouring in and doing puzzles in the long summer afternoons after day care. I read her stories and we sang songs together in Hebrew and watched Israeli cartoons. Debbie and Simon’s eldest child, six-year-old Noa, relished every opportunity to play with Jasmine, who idolised her. It was a perfect match.

  During the day I worked on Voiceless, my big belly an island in a sea of papers. I judged applications for the Australian Museum’s ‘Voiceless Eureka Prize for Scientific Research that Contributes to Animal Protection’, and another sixty Voiceless grant applications. Propped up against the bedhead with four pillows, my laptop hot on the sheets, I drafted opinion pieces for the media.

  We had dinner with another couple, Hadas and Mark, who had also had a toddler and then twins.

  ‘You don’t have either set of parents here, no sisters? Get help!’ Hadas laughed as I helped bring the plates to the table.

  ‘Especially since you have no other family here!’ Mark agreed.

  ‘I slept on the twins’ bedroom floor for six months. They fed every hour. I slept about four broken hours a night.’ Hadas rubbed her eyes at the memory.

  ‘Yes, she was lots of fun to have around. If you hadn’t breastfed for so long,’ Mark added, ‘maybe it would have been different.’

  ‘It was only three months,’ Hadas explained. ‘I wish I could have done it longer, but the sleep deprivation was killing me. Of course, he had to go to work, so it was me around the clock.’

  ‘We had no idea how hard it would be,’ Mark added with a sigh.

  ‘Yes, don’t make the mistakes I did,’ Hadas said, glancing at her husband, ‘and think you can do it all yourself.’

  ‘Either get a nanny or move back to Australia,’ Mark concluded.

  Nanny? That was cheating, wasn’t it? Breaking the rules of the Perfect Mother Club I was eager to join. But I swallowed my guilt at letting my babies down even before they were born and found myself a nanny who could start when they arrived. Her name was Efrat and she worked at the jewellery shop on the corner near our apartment. Efrat was the sweetest, most happy-go-lucky, smiley person I had met in Israel. She was also a raving beauty with long, shiny black hair falling over a size eight figure I coveted longingly. Every day, as Jasmine and I walked past her shop, we would look in the window at the strings of shiny beads and glitzy rings. Jasmine was a sparkle addict and would collect glittery objects like a bowerbird. Seeing Jasmine’s face glued to the glass, Efrat would come to the door to chat and try rings on her fingers.

  Efrat began babysitting on the odd nights Dror and I went out to try to make more friends. Perpetually anxious about my future duck-chasing, stick-wielding toddlers, I somehow calmly persuaded Efrat to quit her job and work for us instead. ‘I would never hire a nanny that beautiful,’ one of my new friends told me. I also found the number of a night nurse who could come from midnight to 6 am to help with feeding and settling both boys.

  My parents had promised to fly to Israel for the birth, mainly to take care of Jasmine while I was in hospital, leaving Dror free to help me with the babies. At thirty-four weeks I called them in a panic that my labour would soon start. I was terrified of the labour and had raised the possibility of a caesarean section, but my obstetrician had insisted we wait until after thirty-seven weeks before discussing it as he wanted them to ‘cook’ as long as possible. I was having regular and highly uncomfortable contractions every night.

  My parents arrived and we waited impatiently for three weeks, with my contractions only leading to anticlimaxes. My mother cleaned out our fridge and rearranged Jasmine’s wardrobe. New fruit bowls, vases and coat stands appeared around our apartment. She carried Jasmine with her on her hip, never letting her go. Inevitably, Jasmine wore new sparkly pink clothes, as Mum accomplished her daily list of order-making. Occasionally her incessant tidying and pedantic attention to detail caused me to regress to childhood, ready to rebel, sulk or slam my bedroom door, but thankfully she took great care to defer to my routines and rules with Jasmine, not assuming but checking with me before making arrangements. This thoughtfulness allowed me to enjoy her in the role of grandmother without fear of competition in my still new position as a mother.

  Finally, at thirty-seven weeks, I went into labour. I was nervous about a natural birth but, in spite of myself, the babies came out the old-fashioned way: Dov headfirst and Lev in breech. They were immediately taken away from us to the observation area of the hospital. Dov remained under observation for most of the first week: his temperature was below normal and he was put onto a hot bed to warm up. Lev was in and out of the observation room as well and I walked the halls trying to breastfeed them both.

  After eight days in hospital, we returned home.

  At the age of thirty-two I was now a mother of three. I could scarcely believe it, but after four months of bed rest, a belly that looked like the love child of a hippopotamus and a jellyfish, with purple stretch marks the size of Charlotte’s web, I believed I’d earned my stripes.

  I walked down the street squeezed into my old clothes with my muffin top down low and my head held high. Dov and Lev were 2.5 and 2.7 kilograms, respectively; they had no eyebrows, eyelashes, hardly any lips to speak of, and their bodies were like little stick figures, with not an ounce of fat, not even on their bottoms. Lev was as red as a beetroot: too much blood supply I was later told. Because he had had to be wrenched out of me with the full weight of the obstetrician and nurse pulling his legs, his head was also misshapen: squashed and we
ird-looking. We joked that their lack of good looks would surely be compensated by strength of character.

  My parents returned to Sydney and in that first month I thought I had things nailed: I looked after my boys alone in the morning, went for a walk at lunch, leaving Dov and Lev with Efrat, and then on to pick up Jasmine and have mummy and daughter time in the early afternoon. Late afternoon, evening, we would all be home, prepping for dinner and bedtime. Bonding with them was more challenging than I had experienced with Jasmine. But I wasn’t concerned; my energy was split three ways and I felt confident that in time my love would grow.

  At five weeks old their breathing suddenly became laboured during the night, and Dror and I took them to hospital. They were diagnosed with severe bronchiolitis and immediately strapped into oxygen masks and placed in clear plastic cribs, side by side, on a twenty-four-hour watch. Dror, Efrat, the night nurse and I divided the days and nights into shifts to be by their side. After five days they were released. A clean bill of health. Or so I thought.

  Dov and Lev were six weeks old when they started crying a lot, never taking a breath between cat-howling wails when we attempted peaceful strolls with the pram. Dror would take them for long evening walks, drowning out their crying with loud phone conversations with his parents, Anita and Yaakov. Dov and Lev were their first grandsons and they were excited. They had already both come independently to visit and relied on Dror for regular updates on Dov and Lev’s growth and development. Sometimes after the walks, Dror would report back, with great delight, how concerned women would stop and, seeing him sitting on a park bench, two babies crying in the double pram, ask, demand even, to help.

  Israelis are dramatic, screaming at each other one minute, only to be the best of friends moments later. A crying baby is a national catastrophe and when witnessed in public spaces prompts well-meaning people, women and men alike, to offer advice and instruction on how to be a better parent. They would peer into the pram and examine the state of the baby blanket, which seemed to cause them extreme concern, no matter if it was wrapped around the baby or placed by his feet. ‘Too hot’ or ‘Too cold’, they would assert forcefully. The angle of the pram was also noted and passers-by would provide advice on whether the baby was comfortable lying horizontally or at a forty-five-degree angle. ‘He has gas and needs to be upright,’ or ‘Lie him flat, he wants to sleep.’ Dror thought the constant unsolicited advice amusing and would pass the babies to these members of the public; when, in spite of their attempts at patting and shushing, the crying continued, he would say, ‘See, it’s not me, it’s them. They are just cry babies.’

  Dror was not a baby person.‘They’re boring; just cry and poo,’ he said. ‘Don’t worry,’ he reassured me, ‘when they’re older, when they can talk, that’s when I’ll enjoy them.’ And I believed him because that had been exactly what had happened with him and Jasmine. Now that she was a walking, talking child his relationship with her had blossomed beautifully.

  Dov and Lev hated the car, and each time they were put in their baby capsules glass-shattering screams bounced off the windows. Jasmine would sit in a toddler seat between them and block her ears with her hands.

  ‘Mummy!’ she would shout, hoping for some attention. ‘Mummy? Abba?’ She called Dror ‘Abba’, ‘Daddy’ in Hebrew.

  ‘Not now, Jasmine,’ I’d yell back. ‘I can’t hear over the noise.’

  She sang to herself ‘Hot Potato Hot Potato’ amidst the wails and I dug my fingernails into my palm and practised breathing techniques. ‘In for one, two, three, four, five . . . Out for six, seven . . .’

  Days went by when I was unhinged, mumbling to myself, ‘Nightmare. I’m in a nightmare,’ and trying to calm myself with mantras, ‘Breathe. Just embrace the chaos,’ while standing in front of two screaming babies on the change table at 6 am.

  I’m tired, tired, tired . . . was all I could think as I changed yet another nappy. Baby vomit made its way down my arm, poo under my fingernails.

  Overwhelmed, my stress occasionally turned into comedy.

  ‘It’s a poo party!’ I would shout in an hysterical manner and start dancing around the room.

  ‘Thank God for Efrat, I would never get out of my pyjamas otherwise!’ I told everyone who asked, supremely grateful that, with my parents’ support, I could afford the help. But still I felt guilty that others did it harder and I was taking the lazy way out. I tried to let the guilt go. After all, it was a huge relief to have the extra hands and it allowed me to enjoy some one-on-one time with each of my children. Efrat had turned out to be a treasure with a lovely energy, laughing, upbeat, sweet and affectionate with Dov and Lev. She shared my cynical sense of humour, so I could also rely on her to have a laugh with me.

  At other times things weren’t so funny or sweet.

  Dror was training for another marathon. I knew I shouldn’t complain. Long-distance running was hardly a vice, when he could, I reminded myself, be spending whole days on the golf course or nights drinking in the pub. But still. I needed Dror more now than I had ever done before. And I hated that; resented relying on him, pleading for help.

  One Sunday he sat on the tiled steps, the coolest place in the apartment, slowly peeling back muddy sweat-soaked socks to expose his big beaten-up black toenail, his worn smelly shoes discarded by his side.

  ‘You should have seen the view from the hills around Beit Shemesh,’ he said, still excited. ‘There’s olive groves to the west and oak forests facing the ocean. Sooo beautiful.’

  I didn’t respond.

  ‘How has your morning been?’ he asked innocently.

  ‘It’s not morning. It is already twelve o’clock.’ My fists clenched with each syllable. ‘You said you would be three hours. Instead you’ve been five or six.’

  ‘Yeah, it was hard going on the way back; I had to walk for a while. I hit the wall after twenty kilometres, felt like I had bricks in my legs.’ He looked dreamily towards the door. ‘I don’t know why, last week I was fine. Could be the humidity.’ He looked at me with a question mark. Like I was interested. ‘It is really hot today.’

  ‘So that took you an extra two hours?’ I sneered.

  His tone changed. ‘It’s hard to predict exactly how long a thirty-seven kilometre run will take. You know that.’

  After thirteen years together, I knew it fine.

  The steriliser started beeping, giving me a good excuse to walk away. I took out the bottles, warm and misty, and put them into the dedicated drawer. With twin babies you need a lot of space for bottle paraphernalia.

  ‘Where are the kids?’ He looked around.

  ‘They go to sleep at twelve, same every day, remember?’ I hissed. If you said sorry, I thought, I could move on instead of being such a bitch.

  ‘So, what have you been up to?’

  ‘Well, Dov and Lev took turns crying for about two hours, then Jasmine had a tantrum when she couldn’t wear her favourite leggings because they were still wet in the laundry, which I unloaded, by the way. The boys then both did huge diarrhoea poos. Water’s leaking from the washing machine again, so I cleaned that up too. That’s about it.’ My back was facing him as I banged things in the sink.

  ‘That’s it?’ he asked.

  ‘Yeah, that’s it.’

  My resentment had dissipated by evening. He knew it too, because when he caught my eye to gauge my mood, I accidentally broke into a smile. He was a good dad, I knew that. A good dad and a good man.

  Those times seemed so hard. I was in the trenches. Sleeplessness, crying, dirty nappies and noisy car rides. If only I had appreciated what I had. If only I had known what was to come.

  SEVEN

  At three months Dov and Lev still hadn’t looked at me and smiled. I kissed their pale little faces, tickled their feet and raspberried their tummies: nothing. I referred to and cross-checked my baby reference book, What to Expect the First Year, which I’d followed religiously with Jasmine, and became a little concerned. Just as we made an appointment with th
e paediatrician, their little smiles arrived and all was well. But slowly, the twins started missing the milestones so clearly listed in the book: holding their heads up at ninety degrees, rolling over, holding their bottle, making vowel sounds and copying facial expressions. The authors, careful not to worry new mothers, clarified that if it didn’t happen, it was probably fine. Only when the same item, such as ‘they should be bringing their hands together to clap’, was listed for several months did they suggest you see a doctor if your baby still hadn’t done it.

  My babies were small, they were twins, they had been squashed inside me, and so eventually I put the book back on the shelf. Enough, I thought. Stop worrying about every little thing; they will develop at their own pace.

  I watched them bashing the swinging octopus as they lay on their backs next to each other on the play mat, eyes bright and focused.

  ‘Not every child is the same,’ I declared to Dror. ‘They are fine.’

  Dror nodded.

  They are just fine.

  At five months I took them to the local baby centre. Efrat and I waited to be called.

  ‘Ben-Ami, Dov . . . Lev?’ asked a woman in a nurse’s uniform.

  ‘Yes,’ I said, lifting Dov up from the pram and throwing the oversized nappy bag over my shoulder. I had Dov’s dummy on my finger like a ring, ready for action. Efrat picked up Lev and we left the double stroller in the waiting room.

  ‘Mi rishon?’ the nurse said.

  ‘Do you mind speaking English?’ I asked.

  ‘Yes, okay.’ She looked perturbed. ‘Who will come first?’

  ‘Dov came out first, so let’s do him . . .’

  ‘First . . . measure,’ she said, pointing to the table with the long wooden ruler. Efrat sat cradling Lev and watched.

  I undressed Dov on the change table and put him down to be measured. His thin little body jolted from the fright. He cried as she held down his legs roughly, trying to position the wooden ruler onto his heel. His toes pointed and he wouldn’t flex his foot.