Happy New Year! (from Pittsburgh)

My previous post was written around the Hebrew New Year, and after quite a while here I am, writing again, as the Gregorian New Year is approaching. Re-reading my previous post I realized that I didn't yet say that the baby we're expecting will be a third girl. Well, that isn't really surprising, is it? What else can we make?! ;-) As far as I'm concerned, anyway, girls are the best thing to have!

Anat is ambitious to get a lot done before giving birth (due early February), thus our lives have been pretty hectic recently. She is working frantically on multiple projects and papers, to the extent that it's sometimes hard to believe she's pregnant. All that in addition to attending a couple of conferences in Canada and Texas, not to mention the extensive traveling we went through in the past few months.

We spent a perfect long weekend in New-York city, enjoying the fantastic hospitality of our friend Itsik and his family and tasting a lot of the Big Apple. Shortly afterwards we spent a wonderful Thanksgiving vacation with our friends Yael & Yaniv and their kids in Bloomington, Indiana. Each of these two destinations entails 7-8 hour drive in each direction, which went as smoothly as a long drive can. Our tolerance for long drives has definitely improved. I'll refrain from providing detailed accounts of these two vacations, due to complaints about the length of my postings ;-)

Generally speaking, in the past several months we've been doing many things that won't be as accessible with a newborn, such as going out (with or without the girls), going to concerts etc. There is no doubt - our lives are going to change drastically in going back to having a baby. Noga and Hadas are sooooo big by now, such that for extended periods of time they're totally self-sufficient. For example, it's not uncommon for them to wake up on a weekend morning, get breakfast and entertain themselves for a long while, allowing both of us to sleep very late. Such luxuries, obviously, will soon be gone… However, laying my hands on Anat's enormous basketball- shaped belly and feeling my third daughter kicking and dancing is an instant reminder of the joys expecting us. In addition, Noga and Hadas are utterly excited about their future sister. Well, I'm not sure Hadas fully understands the implications, but their attitude is definitely positive.

Talking about the girls, they are really amazingly huge. Hadas is intrigued by numbers and by opposites, which are recently her favorite bed time entertainment. Cuddling her and smelling her addicting after-bath freshness, we cover long-short, high-low, wide- narrow and the like. It's fascinating to observe the way she is learning things, and especially (that wasn't there when Noga was her age) the influence of her bilingualism. For example, answering the question "which number comes after 20" is instant in English, but much slower in Hebrew. On the other hand, her command of opposites is much better in Hebrew than in English. What a complex system… Noga is thriving at school and really loves it. As an anecdote, when as part of her homework she was requested to list the things she's thankful for, "school" was at the top of the list... It's really great seeing her enjoying her daily activities so much! Just like her Mom she is quickly becoming a book worm, and she's reading a LOT, including full-length books, such as "Little House on the Prairie".

I could fill pages telling about how cute they are, how they both lend themselves gleefully to kisses, hugs and cuddling. Or elaborate about our small daily traditions, such as each family member telling over dinner about their day's highlights. But I'll only say what's probably most important - both of them are very happy girls the vast majority of the time, a fact that naturally makes our lives bright!

It might be a good idea to tell more about the pregnancy and the planned labor. Both Noga and Hadas were born in a hospital ("Beylinson"), leaving us with very bad feelings about the way birth is handled and managed in a hospital. I'll spare you the details, and will only say that after Hadas' birth we decided that if at all possible, we'd prefer our next child *not* to be born in a hospital. That's why we were so happy to discover that Pittsburgh has an alternative institution, called the "midwife center". There is tons of fascinating information about midwifery, but in a nutshell, this means that the person helping the woman give birth is not a medical doctor, but a nurse midwife. The birth itself is bound to be natural (no Epidural). Nurse midwives undergo special graduate education and receive state certification (at least in Pennsylvania). In addition to the labor itself, all the prenatal care is performed by midwives rather than by doctors, in a setting which is anything but a hospital. I probably cannot say anything definite until after the birth, but at least so far it's hard to convey how different an experience this has been for us!

The differences are felt in every tiny detail - the atmosphere at the center, the welcoming design of the place and most importantly - their basic attitude of sharing information with the pregnant woman and her spouse, ultimately leaving all the choices and final decisions up to us. Don't get me wrong - the midwife center is a respectable professional institution, that has existed for more than 20 years and whose services are covered by every major health insurance provider. The key point, in my opinion, is that midwifery views pregnancy and labor as natural processes rather than a necessarily medical procedure. That is, as long as they progress normally. If a medical need is discovered during prenatal care or develops during labor, then the birth will take place in a nearby hospital. But only then.

Weather-wise, this winter is fairly strange and surprising. After a very chilly start back in October, the temperatures went drastically upwards. It's still very cold in Israeli terms, most of the time not much warmer than 0 degrees Celsius, but in Pittsburgh terms this isn't a winter. Let alone the almost total absence of snow - we had only one mild snow so far, making us more or less even with Jerusalem ;-) I guess that this global warming thing, which we all conveniently ignore in our daily routines, is here and is tangible. While we're at it, in http://tonykaron.com/2006/11/18/marx-and-fukuyama-were-wrong-its-the-environment-stupid/ you can find a very interesting article about the issue, with the first part giving scary information about potential scenarios.

Happy New Year!
Giora