Drained

23 weeks pregnant, which means Tikva has been growing inside me for 21 weeks - 5 months.
Here is a part of what it said at BabyCenter about her development:

"Your baby is more than 11 inches long and weighs just over a pound (about as much as a large mango). She may be able to feel your movements now, so put on some tunes and dance around the house. Blood vessels in your baby's lungs are developing to prepare her for breathing, but complete lung development will take many more months. The lungs are the last organ to fully develop."

The lungs... the ever important lungs.
I never really thought about Dahlia's lungs when she was just the Bean inside me.
I knew that it was important for her to be born after 36 weeks, so that the lungs would be developed enough to sustain her outside of me.
But I didn't give it much thought beyond that.

Now it's the most important thing for Tikva, more important than whether her organs will be able to be put back in the right place once she is born, which sounds easy compared to everything else that is ahead for her.
Whether her one developing lung will be developed enough that she will be successfully stabilized post-birth, so that she can get help from machines for her lungs...
Whether her brain or other organs will suffer in any way, and what that might look like in the future...
Whether she'll need in-utero surgery to help encourage the development of her lung pre-birth...
How long she will need to be stabilized by machines - if she can - before she'll be able to breathe on her own...
And how long it will take for her second lung to catch up - possibly years...

I've been doing an amazing job staying positive, holding it together, getting through this one step at a time.
AND... those fears do come up, and when they do I need to name them and acknowledge that they are there.
Take away their power so they don't consume me.
All the while holding hope and trust and optimism.

I feel like I am juggling so many balls right now, and I'm exhausted.
A lot of people here in Israel want to see us before we go, and I feel overextended.
It's an unavoidable part of leaving any place... I feel like we just did this.
When we get to the Bay Area, I just want to sleep for about 4 days.
But right away when we return, we have so much to do...
File our 2007 taxes so we can get Dahlia (and possibly Dave and possibly me) on MediCal/Healthy Families.
Go to the MediCal office to talk to a real person, NOT over Skype.
Visit a possible temporary preschool for Dahlia in Marin, and contact some others in San Francisco for afterwards.
Get cell phones.
I'm just looking forward to being able to make a morning-in-SF call in the morning, rather than at 11pm Israel time when the last thing I need is to be filling my brain with more thoughts and worries.

Dahlia is still fighting whatever virus she's had for the last 3 days.
And now Dave has a chest cold.
Making him toast with jam this morning, I dropped the jar of strawberry jam as I was reaching to put it back in the refrigerator.
Crash... jam and glass all over the kitchen floor.
As I was taking deep breaths and cleaning it up, I thought to myself, "I am ready to leave Jerusalem."

This has been a really hard 7.5 months for me... I can't really say it any other way.
I came here with colitis, and spent my first 3 months on prednisone to clear it.
I said that I was going to leave my colitis in Israel, and I am happy to say that I am.
But even though it worked, those three months on prednisone while I was trying to adjust to this new life away from my community and family... well, they were not the best three months for any of us.

Then I got into a little groove.
All the efforts I had made to make the best of things and get comfortable here were starting to pay off.
I was feeling okay here, even enjoying the few things that were keeping me busy: shopping trips for good food at the shuk; working on my psychology class for pre-nursing; visiting Marcelle at the nursing home on Thursdays; connecting with a few kindred friends I've made here; enjoying my Dad's visit when he came in October; loving seeing Dahlia start to learn Hebrew and get comfortable here and make friends at her gan.
Taking long walks around the city without even a hint of colitis to hold me back.
Our trip to Petra and Sinai during Sukkot.
Being pregnant.

Then these weird blisters appeared on my back at Thanksgiving, and I was knocked down with shingles for over a month.
In Jerusalem, away from the familiar, I found the doctors and alternative practitioners I needed for the shingles and my pregnancy.
And I spent almost a month on the couch, watching the entire series of Twin Peaks on the computer.
I don't know that I've ever experienced physical pain like I did those first 3 weeks of the shingles; nor worse sleep during the painful weeks and then afterwards with the itching.
Such relief when that was over... even if the scars are taking their sweet time to heal completely, and weird patches of psoriasis have appeared where the blisters had been, sometimes itching terribly during those hours in the middle of the night when I wake up and can't get back to sleep.

After that, a few more weeks of calm and normality.
Back into the groove, preparing for Dave's break after his first semester at school.
Really enjoying his parents' visit and our family trip up north, despite a nasty cold that I knew would go away if I just got into bed and slept for a few days.
Knowing that we were now on the downward slope home... more than halfway through our time in Israel, eventually headed towards the homebirth (in a birth tub) of our second child, and our move to Cincinnati, buying our first home, more adventure but in a place where everyone speaks English and they have a Trader Joe's.

Deep breath...
Not so fast - I should know by now to be suspicious when I am able to make too many long-term plans.
When I was able to picture the paint colors of our Cincinnati home.
All of our belongings are in Cincinnati - except the 6 suitcases we brought here - and we are going to leave it all there.
Because that is still our destination, where David will continue his rabbinical program.
But now we can't know just when we'll get there.
It could be 6 months, it could be a year, it could be 18 months.
If it takes that long, it will be because Tikva is doing well, and needs to be in one stable place close to UCSF in order to keep being well.
I am praying that we are in SF that long, for just that reason.
And because I really do love the Bay Area.

There, I admit it - I am relieved to be coming back home.
After such a hard year here - there, I've admitted that too - I am ready to return to the familiar, to the holding of family and community, to what I know.
Especially for this time that is going to be hard enough.
That's what I've felt a lot here in Jerusalem - that if something is going to be hard, it's made even harder to go through it away from almost all of my support.
David has been an amazing partner - all of these challenges continue to bring us deeper with and closer to each other.
But it's not fair to fall back on just one person for all your support all of the time.
I am thankful for my friends here in Israel - you know who you are - who have helped hold me.
And I am deeply grateful for the open arms that await us when we land back home next week.

Yesterday we went to the Kotel one more time.
I put a prayer in the Wall, and the prayers of three friends as well.
I pressed my big belly against the wall, feeling the cold of the stone on my bare skin, placed my hands just above my belly on the stone, and cried deeply for a long time.
Prayed deeply, specifically, asking for the support and holding that I need.
I released some of the pain I've felt here, because I don't need to take it with me.
I looked in wonder at all the beautiful Jewish women all around me, crowded into the women's section that is about 1/4 the size of the much emptier men's section (I won't even start in about that).
I looked up at the Wall with its huge ancient stones that used to surround the ancient temple.
And I prayed some more and spoke to Tikva, who knew full well where we were and was doing flips in my belly as we approached the Wall.

In a weird way, I am going to miss this fiery, intense, heavy and crazy place.
This place where I was born, and where I thought I would birth my Baby Girl.
I won't miss the construction site across the street, or the view of the cranes in front of the YMCA and King David Hotel.
But I will miss the stillness of Friday afternoon and Saturday, when the entire city grows still for Shabbat.
I won't miss the taxi driver who just got out of his taxi outside my window to make a pee in front of the construction site gate.
But I will miss the sweet and funny cab drivers we've had here: when Dahlia sang dreidl songs and spoke Hebrew with one during Hanukah; when the mac-daddy of smooth brothers (aka a VERY groovy young black man - not a common site in Jerusalem) drove us back from our second ultrasound in the most decked-out Mercedes with curtains on the windows, wearing gold chrome sunglasses and a huge smile when Dave exclaimed in Hebrew, "Nice ride"; when one driver asked us to help solve a problem he was having with a friend of his wife's who was putting the moves on him; when another man driving us home from the hospital spent the entire ride praying and reciting psalms under his breath...
Only in Jerusalem moments are unlike any other, and I will miss them in a weird way.

My belly is really big, much bigger I think than it was at this time with Dahlia.
Tikva continues to kick and wiggle and dance all the time.
She's definitely growing, and it's getting tighter for her in there, especially after I've had a bunch of food.
HUC students in Dave's class have brought us meals non-stop, for lunch and dinner.
Our refrigerator and bellies are full, and we are swimming in the abundance of community that is there to help us through these last few days in Israel.

Dahlia, too, is saying goodbye to her life here, her favorite friends.
I think I am the most sad for her, that she has to leave this little groove she's gotten into after some challenges in the beginning.
That she won't be immersed in Hebrew anymore.
That she is leaving her very special friends here, and the sweetest preschool she's been going to, where they so clearly love her so much.
That she has some challenging times ahead, times that will forever place their imprint on who she is and becomes.
In the same way that the challenges in my own life have formed who I am.
I wouldn't have it any other way as far as my own life goes - I am who I am because of those experiences - but I also wish I could have protected myself from some of those difficult experiences, that certain times could've been easier.

I can only do so much to protect my child, my children.
That is one of the most difficult things to face as a parent.
A rabbi friend here said to us recently, "I never truly knew fear until I had children."

Tikva kicks inside me right now to tell me that it's okay.
That even though it's hard, sad, exhausting, it is right.
That she is ready to do her part if the three of us are ready to do ours.

Okay, Baby Girl, I'll do my part.
I am breathing, allowing myself to fall apart, to be held, to ask for help.
I am here for you, completely, all the way.
I am trusting in your journey, my journey, and our journey together as a family.
And I am praying, and crying, a lot.