What could be wrong with my perfect twins?

Lam’natzeiach mizmor L’David...

I

awoke with a start, a dull ache in my back. I blinked. Where was I again?

I looked down at the hospital bracelet around my wrist and then out the window at the hills and stone buildings. Right. I was in Israel, and I had just given birth to twins — a boy and a girl — several hours before.

I should be elated, I thought. But something didn’t feel right.

Born at 36 weeks, the twins were preemies. My son, who had been the bigger, stronger one all along, was taken to the nursery at 2.9 kilos; my daughter, a whole kilo less than her brother, was sent to the pagiyah — as they called the NICU in Shaare Zedek hospital.

I had held them each for a few minutes before they were whisked away. When my daughter had been handed to me, bundled up in a blanket, I gasped. She had the most adorable, angelic face with ribbon lips, a perfect chiseled chin, and a button nose. A certain calmness exuded from her.

“She’s gorgeous,” I breathed. The nurses nodded eagerly and chorused their agreement before pulling her away. The next thing I knew I was brought to a different room where I fell asleep. When I awoke several hours later, I felt empty. With my other births, I had spent the hours afterward cuddling and bonding with my newborn.

“I want to see my babies,” I insisted when the nurse came into the room.

“The boy needs to stay in the nursery. His oxygen saturation isn’t what it should be,” she replied. “And the girl is in the pagiyah. I can ask someone to bring you there by wheelchair.”

I had a feeling my son’s oxygen was just fine, and he just needed his mother. I went to the nursery and sat with him for 30 minutes. Less than an hour after I got back to my room,  they wheeled him in.

“His oxygen saturation stabilized,” the nurse said. I smiled. A mother always knows.

Then it was time to go to the pagiyah. A sinking feeling crept into my heart. My other children at home had been born at around eight pounds, healthy and strong. This little girl was less than five pounds. At birth, she had let out a little squeak instead of a cry. She seemed more like a doll than a person.

When I was sitting in the pagiyah, cradling her in my arms, the sinking feeling only intensified. Her limbs fell to her sides like a rag doll. I assured myself that it was probably because she was a low-weight preemie, and she’d be back in shape in no time. If there was a real issue, they would have told me by now, I rationalized. After all, that’s what would have happened in Cleveland, where my other children were born. We’d been in Israel only three months, and I didn’t stop to think that perhaps things worked differently here.