I

’d never been involved with children with Down syndrome. The whole special needs community was a thankful mystery to me, and with three little children, a house to run, and a part-time online graphics job, my days were too full to think about it.

Unless I saw them.

Not long before this Friday-night birth, I’d been in the park with my kids. A group of children with Down syndrome came in with what I guessed was their teacher. My children were oblivious, but I wasn’t. Casting quick glances at them, I shuddered. They looked so… different.

“But they all have a mother who loves them,” I whispered. For me, it was a strange thought.

It was still strange, because I didn’t want to take my baby home. I couldn’t imagine loving this child the way I loved my other three.

On Shabbos morning, when the nurse brought the baby to be fed, I tried. It was an exercise in frustration, since he couldn’t seem to understand what he had to do. Every few seconds, his mouth would go slack, and his slanted eyes would close with exhaustion. There was no bond, only anguish as I tried to feed him, and I finally gave up.

It was a relief when my baby left the room, but the blankness of the moment was soon filled by another worry.

“Yanky, what are we going to tell our parents?” My parents were very old school, and from a community where most babies born with special needs were placed in foster care. I knew they would be devastated by the news. Yanky’s parents were more laid back, and would probably be less shocked.

“The truth,” my husband said grimly. “It won’t be easy, but they might as well get used to their new grandchild.”

I stared at him.

“I’m not taking the baby home,” I said flatly.  We weren’t going to turn into that family, the one with a special child. I was too young. This wasn’t in the script. No one in my family had a child with special needs, and I wasn’t going to be the trailblazer.

“But, Raizy —” my gentle, kind husband was looking at me with horror. It made me want to cry again. But out of the confused tangle of thoughts and feelings and postpartum hormones, I knew with iron certainty — no. This child wasn’t coming home with me.

E

ven the longest, tensest Shabbos ends eventually.

With the darkness and a hasty Havdalah, we started getting phone calls.

“Raizy! Mazel Tov! What did you have, a boy or a girl? Very nice, now you have two of each. So, who does he look like?” my father roared jovially over the phone.

Like nobody. He looks like nobody. I didn’t say it, just mumbled something.

“I wish we could come,” my mother gushed. “But tonight, Tante Esther’s Shloimy is making a siyum. We’ll be there tomorrow — after I pick up some adorable outfits!”

Don’t bother, I wanted to tell her, but I could barely croak out an audible goodbye.

“Why didn’t you tell them?” my husband asked when I finally turned off the phone and stared blankly at the screen.

“I can’t,” I told him. “You’re going to.”

He did. I couldn’t listen to the conversations, so I told him to call from the hallway, the lobby — anywhere but in the room. When he came back, white-faced and with his jaw clenched, I felt sick.

It didn’t help when my parents walked into my room on Sunday afternoon, somber and — in my mother’s case — red-eyed. They were too quiet. It hit me suddenly — they didn’t know what to say. Proper and reserved, this wasn’t a scenario they’d ever faced before. They could probably handle meeting the King of England with aplomb, but my devastation was something they didn’t know how to face.

The quiet was overwhelming. I needed them, but they didn’t know what to do. They stared at me, and I started crying. “I can’t do this, I really can’t!” I cried, feeling the hysteria take over.

My father’s face crumpled, and he abruptly left the room. My mother held my hand, and I could feel her tremble.

In a few minutes, my father was back.

“I made an appointment for you,” he said, straightforward. “A local organization. They’ll help you place the baby in a nice foster home. Tomorrow. The faster it’s taken care of, the better.”

My husband looked stricken, but I nodded.

“I’ll go.”

And that was how I found myself, three days after birth, thrust into a too-tight dress and a tired-looking sheitel in a brown-and-grey office, signing reams and reams of papers.

“We’ll find a family for him,” the lady on the other side of the desk told me. She’d clearly said it many times before, and her smile was mechanical. But so was I. My hand just kept signing papers, and I gave her a meaningless smile in return before I left.

It was strange, though. I thought I’d feel a surge of relief.

Instead, I felt empty.

MY

mother wasn’t sure what to say to me about the baby I was giving away, but she knew how to pamper a kimpeturin. She insisted that we move into her house, and she kept the kids happy and me well-supplied with a stream of delicacies. The baby was still in the hospital, now in the NICU, because they wanted to monitor another problem, a slight heart issue we also hadn’t noticed in the ultrasounds.

It was soothing to be in my childhood home, and that helped me cope with the physical pain of my milk coming in with no baby to nurse. I wanted a baby to feed, but I wanted the baby I’d dreamed of for nine months, not the stranger in the NICU. My body wanted to nurture, but my mind said: not this baby.

Five days after the birth, I heard my mother talking to my brother over the phone.

“They’re trying to find a place for him.” Her voice carried through the silent house. “No one yet. But Raizy really doesn’t want to…she can’t do this to her family…What? Are you serious? Somebody just told you he and his wife want the baby? But why?” A long silence. “Oh, he works with you. They only have one daughter — oh, I see. So you told him, and he said he wants a boy and they can’t have any more. They really want him? We’ll call the organization. Such hashgachah!”

I was dazed. Somebody wanted my baby? I didn’t want him, but they did? I couldn’t understand them.

Everything was finalized before the bris. They were now officially my baby’s foster parents.

Enough people had aired their views about taking home a child with Down syndrome that my husband was finally on board with the plan, and we attended the bris as guests.

The new foster parents hosted a gala event, and I sat stiffly through the entire simchah. I didn’t want to be there, but everyone showed up, even the siblings who were usually too busy with work to attend simchos.

I hated every second of it. The smiles laced with anxiety. The mazel tovs that ended in question marks. I saw curious gawkers at every place setting, and judgment oozing from every word. They came, but I didn’t feel supported. In my sensitive, emotional state, all I felt was hurt.

The condolence calls didn’t help.

The one sister-in-law who hadn’t felt well enough to attend the bris decided to call me. “So, yeah, I heard,” she sighed heavily into the phone as if she’d just run a twenty-five-mile marathon. “Yeah. Yeah.” She couldn’t seem to get past that. Until she finally said, “But you have three other healthy children.”

I don’t remember what I answered, but I know I slammed the phone shut so hard I almost cracked it in half.

“Sure,” I yelled into the quiet. “Say ‘yeah, yeah’ like a broken record. Tell me I have other healthy kids. So, you have five healthy fingers, maybe cut off one, you still have the others!”

The rage made it hard to think, so I started to ignore the calls.

I

couldn’t ignore the time passing, the days blurring and going by, my other kids clamoring for Mommy’s attention, not Bubby’s. And I knew my husband wanted to go home.

It was a strange homecoming. No shakily crayoned signs on the door with a lopsided blue or pink Mazel Tov. Just the smell of neglect and the dead flowers I’d so carefully arranged on the table what felt like a thousand years ago.

And there was laundry to do, socks to match, a house to clean. It was almost a relief to be busy doing and doing and doing. But whenever I paused, sadness came. Reality was hitting: I ached for the baby I was supposed to have.

Every time my brother told me how happy his coworker was to have my baby, I froze.

“He showed me a picture of your baby this morning,” my brother said casually, and I didn’t know what to say. Shouldn’t I be happy his foster parents loved him?

But I wasn’t. Even three months later, I’d be wiping a dish when tears soaked the drying towel. In the middle of feeding my toddler, the pain of loss would make me blank out until she screamed for her supper. And at night, I couldn’t sleep. The half-doze was broken by nightmares of babies and emptiness.

After I woke up screaming from a dream I couldn’t remember, my husband was firm. “I’m going to ask Rabbi Licht for advice,” he informed me. “You’re not yourself. You’re always sad. We have to do something.”

I trusted our family Rav; he knew both of us and also understood our backgrounds and respective families – but I was surprised by his advice to my husband, which turned out to be a recommendation that I visit my baby at his foster home.

“If you see him happy and cared for, maybe you’ll feel better,” my husband said. “Rabbi Licht heard me when I told him that you don’t want to keep the baby, but knowing that he’s fine at his foster family might help you settle down.”

I

dressed carefully, painting on an armored shell of flawless makeup and the trendiest outfit I could manage.

When I arrived, I saw a sweet-looking, well-dressed woman, her smile framed by a sleek, blonde sheitel.

“Come see Hilly,” she said with a maternal air.

She was inviting me to look at my child.

And what was she calling him?

“Hilly?” I asked in what was supposed to be a neutral tone (but definitely wasn’t). She paused and smiled again.

“Yes. I know his name is Chaim Hillel, but I’ve always thought Hilly is a cute nickname.”

Hilly? I gave him such a nice name, and she was calling him that? I swallowed my outrage as she led me toward a bassinet in the corner of the living room.

Proudly, she handed him to me. “And Hilly is wearing a new outfit. Isn’t it adorable?”

It wasn’t the word I would have used. The turquoise two-piece was hideous.

“You can bring him down to the basement so you can have some privacy,” she suggested kindly. I nodded and took Chaim (not Hilly!) downstairs. The light was fluorescent and harsh, and I was suddenly bone-tired. I sat on the white leather couch and looked at my baby.

He looked back at me out of those blue, slanted eyes and waved one of his hands. His skin was soft. I knew he was my baby, flesh of my flesh. But I felt so distant, so unconnected. I was a visitor, and that woman upstairs who thought a turquoise two-piece was cute was the one who took care of him and held him and fed him.

I couldn’t do this.

I rushed upstairs, gave my baby back to his startled foster mother, and rushed out the door. I needed to get away and leave behind all these feelings.

So I did.

But the tears came with me the whole way home.

T

he couch in our living room became my everything — my bed, my table, my chair, my spot to sit and be sad. As the months passed, I felt stronger physically, but I also felt more tired and hopeless, like I was wading through each day. Overwhelming, intense, consuming sadness followed me everywhere. The only thing keeping me from disappearing completely into the black hole of despair was my toddler.

I kept her at home, needed her home, needed to make her bottles and wheel her outside in a stroller so I still felt like a mother. But while I looked carefree when I was outside, the weight of the role was crushing.

Chaim had been born six months ago, but things weren’t improving.

I thought I knew pain.

I’d had stitches when I sliced my finger to the bone on one unforgettably hectic Erev Shabbos. I suffered from occasional migraines. I’d given birth four times without any pain relief.

But I never knew how much emotional pain could hurt physically. The pain of missing my child was so searing it left me breathless.

It was unbearable.

One day, I was sitting on the couch when the sadness hit suddenly. One minute I was admiring a Magnatiles tower, the next I was sobbing my heart out, my chest aching, tears soaking the patient couch cushions.

“Mommy, why you crying?” my toddler asked, her face wrinkled in a pout.

“Because…” Why was I crying? And then the words ripped themselves out of my mouth. “Because I don’t have a baby!”

She looked at me. Touched my wet cheek.

“I your baby,” she said, as if willing me to smile again. I tried, but I couldn’t stop crying.

And that was when I knew: this wasn’t okay. I wasn’t okay. Giving up my child was worse than taking him home.

“I

want him back,” I said abruptly as soon as my husband set foot in the house. He paused, halfway out of his coat. He didn’t have to ask what I was talking about. He knew.

He’d watched a vibrant, competent wife turn into a sodden lump on the couch. But he’d also heard the same messages over and over, from men in shul, from chavrusas, from meddling relatives: “How can you have the baby in your house? You can’t look after a child with so many needs and still have a functional home.”

“Raizy, you’re not thinking with your head,” he said gently. “Can you really handle having Chaim at home? You were so against bringing the baby back. I’m afraid this might be a whim, that you’ll uproot him from his comfortable home with his foster parents, and then you won’t want him anymore. It wouldn’t be fair for him, his foster family, or our family. And Rabbi Licht was worried that because of your initial feelings toward the baby, you might not be able to care for him properly. I daven that one day Hashem will give us other children, and that might make you feel better.”

I took a deep breath, trying to sort through my thoughts and feelings and see past the pain. “Find someone else who did it,” I said. “Find a family who’s given up their child. Ask the husband if his wife ever got over sending her child away. If he says his wife is fine, maybe this is just a phase. Maybe everyone is right. But I want to know. And then I want to talk to Rabbi Licht.”

“One of my chavrusas told me about a friend of his who had a boy with Down’s syndrome thirteen years ago, and they gave him up for adoption almost right away. The mother hasn’t seen her child since.” Yanky paused. “You know what? I’ll find the man’s number and see if I can reach him now. It’s not late.”

He paced as the phone rang. I found my fingers lodged firmly in my mouth — an old nail-biting habit coming back to haunt me in my distress.

When Yanky got hold of the man, I couldn’t bear to listen to the conversation. What if he said his wife was fine and I’d have to endure this sorrow for endless days and weeks and months?

A hundred years later, Yanky found me biting my nails and pretending to clean up the kitchen. “What… what did he say?” I asked, my voice squeaking.

“She never got over it,” Yanky said, his voice soft. “And her husband says she has a lot of physical problems that he thinks come from her sadness. She doesn’t want her child, but she wants him.”

I knew exactly how she felt.

“I need Chaim. I want him home. Please, let’s go see the Rav.”

R

abbi Licht listened. Handed me the entire box of tissues from his desk as I sobbed my heart out in the spare room he called his office, the sefarim-lined shelves silently watching me grieve.

“I’m worried that if we suddenly take Chaim back and Raizy feels like she can’t cope, she’ll insist on giving him away again. And that’s not fair to anyone here,” Yanky said when I couldn’t utter another word. “I think we should take this slowly.”

“What do you think?” Rabbi Licht asked me gently.

“I want Chaim back, but I also understand why I need to prove it.” I took a deep breath. “What does the Rav think about taking my baby back?”

The Rav smiled. “A mother loves her child, that’s the way Hashem made the world. You always loved your child, it just took time for you to realize.” He looked at us. “It’s not easy to have a child with special needs, but the rewards are tremendous. If you take him back, you will love this child in a way that no one else will be able to understand. You will think about him night and day. You will fight for him to have the best of everything. And he will be your comfort and your strength. And I can tell you that you will see much brachah when he is in your home. I’ve seen many other parents in this situation.”

“But can we take it one step at a time?” Yanky asked.

“Yes,” Rabbi Licht agreed. “And be kind to the family that loves your son. For months, they’ve given him everything.”

Leaving Rabbi Licht’s office, I felt the weight of anguish and indecision melt away.

We decided to bring Chaim home just for Shabbos, and worked with his foster parents to arrange a good week. I didn’t tell anyone in our family, but my neighbors knew. They saw us pull up in the car, proudly carrying Chaim in his new, adorable outfit into the house.

At seven months, Chaim had grown so much that I almost didn’t recognize him. His eyes were still different, and his tongue sometimes stuck out, but he also looked… cute. His cheeks were silk, and his tiny hands sported a delightful dimple at each knuckle. When he waved his hands and gurgled, the kids were all enchanted.

Over Shabbos, I realized what a calm, easy baby he was. My older three had been hard and colicky, and their first years played out against a backdrop of endless circuits of the kitchen-living room-dining room and high-pitched wails that could cut through glass. Chaim was always smiling, cooing, and content to stay where we put him.

Friday night, I proudly wrapped Chaim in a snug, light blue knit blanket and strapped him into the expensive new stroller we’d bought for the occasion. I walked over to the only neighbor I wanted to see. Ever since Chaim’s birth, instead of intrusive questions or pretending I’d never had a baby, she kept showing up. Week after week, a small, fresh kugel was deposited on my doorstep, a token of her silent care for my situation. She never said anything, and she never needed to. The kugel said it all.

Tonight I wanted to show her Chaim, tell her what the kugels meant to me, and finally say the thank you I’d never been able to tell her.

IT

was a beautiful Shabbos, but as the Havdalah candle went out with a hiss in the puddle of crimson wine, I felt the sadness descend. It was time to bring him back. He only stirred briefly when I transferred him from the crib he’s been sleeping in to his car seat for the ride back to his foster parents.

“Next time you come home,” I whispered to my sleeping son, “you’re never going to leave.”

Chaim’s foster parents were devastated at our decision. They weren’t just doing this for the generous monthly government stipend they received — they genuinely loved him and wanted to keep him. My husband said they looked broken as they handed over a cardboard box filled with all Chaim’s little outfits and toys.

My heart went out to his foster mother. She’d been the one to soothe him as a newborn, to watch his first milestones, and she felt like he was hers. I understood her, knew that I owed her a debt of gratitude. I sent them a gift and a heartfelt note — I wanted them to feel appreciated for all they had done.

When my husband finally walked up the steps carrying Chaim, I raced out the door. I thought I’d cry, but I didn’t. Instead, I found myself laughing, kissing his chubby cheeks over and over, delighting in his gummy smile.

It was my husband who had tears in his eyes.

“It’s the first time I’ve heard you laugh like that since Chaim was born,” he said.

With the flexibility of children, my kids accepted that Chaim had been away for a while, but was now back with us, and they embraced their new little brother (besides for some jealous pokes and prods from my toddler, Miri).

That Friday, as I was preparing for Shabbos, I placed Chaim in his crib with a few toys and settled my three older ones nearby with some crayons and paper. The house was peaceful as I fried onions, checked the soup, and marinated the chicken. Peppers, cucumbers, tomatoes — I was slicing deftly, full of renewed energy, when I suddenly heard crying coming from the other room.

“Who’s bothering Miri?” I yelled.

“It’s not Miri,” Yossi called back. “It’s Chaim.”

Chaim. He said it so naturally.

But I felt the sudden tears. I’d never heard Chaim cry, didn’t even recognize his call of distress.

But now I could. I snuggled him against my shoulder, and Chaim stopped crying, clasping his chubby arms around my neck. Cooking for Shabbos wasn’t easy with a baby clinging to me like a limpet, but when Yanky came home, I refused to let him take the baby. Chaim didn’t want me to put him down, and I didn’t want to let him go.

That night, I walked through the bedrooms, straightening blankets, brought Yossi yet another drink, and stopped at Chaim’s crib. Watched the rise and fall of his tiny chest. The flutter of his eyelashes. The soft sound of his breathing.

I knew there was a long road ahead. I knew he needed therapy, and lots of it. I knew that raising him was going to be challenging. But I also felt like the world had snapped into focus. All the anguish that had bled my heart dry was gone. Every time I held him and cared for him, he felt more familiar, more mine.

And I finally felt whole.

H

aving Chaim home was what I wanted, but as Rabbi Licht had warned us, that didn’t mean it was a smooth ride into the sunset. The pain of separation was gone, but now came the reality of knowing he was different from all the cousins and neighbors his age. Parents are naturally competitive — comparing teeth, milestones, first words — it’s just how mothers are wired. And Chaim was always behind.

We had to teach him everything. It was fascinating in its own way, because he couldn’t learn things independently. We had to walk him through each step, showing him cause and effect with methodical patience. When he dropped his rattle, he didn’t look down for it. We would show him that dropping things meant “falling,” and he finally picked up the concept.

Even when my other babies were young, they naturally put pressure on their feet, instinctively preparing to stand. Chaim didn’t do that until well over a year old. Every time I held a regular baby afterward, I’d think: Do you realize this child is doing exactly what he needs to do without anyone guiding him?

Teaching him was genuinely enjoyable, but coordinating the parade of therapists he needed nearly broke me. They swept in and out of my house on their own schedules, doing whatever they deemed necessary, then disappearing until next time. Finding good therapists, ensuring I was home at precisely the right moments, managing the constant flow — it was utterly exhausting.

The hardest part was the isolation. I couldn’t tell my parents how difficult things were sometimes, because I didn’t want them to know I was struggling. There was always that unspoken accusation — mostly in my own mind — that this was my choice, my decision to bring him home, so I wasn’t “allowed” to feel overwhelmed.

Therapy. Medications. And yes, he eventually needed heart surgery, although it wasn’t “serious.” But seeing your child dwarfed by a hospital bed and scratchy blue pillows with tubes and wires and beeping machines that look like the alien apparatus of a spaceship is always “serious.

I took it one day at a time, one week, one month, another year.

And watched Chaim blossom.

IT

took my parents a surprisingly short time to get used to Chaim. At first they weren’t sure what to do with him or how to treat him.

Chaim showed them how. He spoke far earlier than the typical child with Down syndrome, mastering skills most of these children don’t until years later. His sense of humor mirrored my father’s, and with his impish grin, he always shared his wit with us.

When my parents visited one day, Chaim rushed over to my father, who was sitting on the couch. Grasping my father’s legs triumphantly, he grinned and said, “I have him!” He did. Neither of my parents could resist his glowing smiles, his joy, his artless love. And a few years later, when Chaim started learning alef beis, there was no one prouder than his Zaidy.

“Come Chaim, let’s learn a little,” he said every time he came over — before he greeted me, before he hugged the other kids. I watched them sitting at the table, Chaim carefully reading each letter. My father’s arm on his shoulder, his gray beard touching Chaim’s blond hair. The sweet little-boy treble and deep baritone mingling over the words in his kriah booklet.

It was hard to swallow past the lump in my throat.

I appreciated the scene because not everyone reacted to Chaim with love and acceptance. There was the woman in the grocery store who came up to me and launched into a cautionary tale about a family she knew who had kept their child with Down syndrome and suffered for it.

“You’re making a mistake. That family’s parnassah hasn’t been good since,” she admonished. “And one of their children is off the derech.”

I was so stunned, my mind went blank. It wasn’t until she walked away that I thought of at least ten cutting responses I should have hurled right back in her insensitive face. I should have told her that if I was making a mistake, it was one Hashem wouldn’t hold against me.

Even sadder was the woman who approached me in the park. She looked strangely furtive as she pointed at Chaim and asked quietly, “Is he yours?”

“Yes,” I said.

Her face crumpled and she sagged against the park bench. “Then you’ll understand,” she said. “I once had a son…But everyone said it would be too hard for me… and I gave him away. I visit him every so often, but it’s not the same.” Her voice was stretched thin with regret.

“I also sent my son away at first,” I told her. I didn’t say anything else. But I reached out and held her hand. She gripped tight, so hard that it hurt. I didn’t move.

She cried, her shoulders shaking. It was a long time before she let go of my hand, wiped her eyes, and gave me a shaky smile.

She left without a word.

I never knew her name. Never saw her again. But I could feel the pressure of her fingers long after she’d left.

T

here was one person who couldn’t know about Chaim.

My mother’s mother, a European Holocaust survivor.

“It was different in her day,” my mother said not long after we brought Chaim home. “The attitude toward children with Down syndrome wasn’t positive then. I’m afraid Bubby won’t react well. It might upset her.”

“But we’re planning on visiting her tomorrow!” I protested.

“Just say he’s sleeping or something,” my mother said. “We need to spare Bubby, Raizy. I’m sure you understand.”

I did, all too well, and it hurt.

But I dutifully mumbled to Bubby that Chaim was sleeping when she requested to see my baby.

A few months later, my parents went on vacation, and a few families of cousins were gathering at Bubby’s house. Chaim was sleeping peacefully in his stroller, so I felt safe bringing him over. His naps were usually long and predictable.

Not that day. A piercing cry rang through Bubby’s living room as Chaim made his unhappiness known to everyone. I tried rocking him, sticking his pacifier in his mouth, and shushing him — to no avail. I had to take him out of his stroller, and I couldn’t hide him. I saw Bubby’s back stiffen. Her eyes widened slightly.

She motioned me over, and whispered in my ear, “Whose child is this?”

“He’s mine,” I told her.

She didn’t answer, just looked at me thoughtfully.

But later in the afternoon, after many of the cousins had left, she cornered me and said, “You should know that this” — pointing at my baby — “isn’t a punishment. One day, Moshiach is going to come, the veil will fall, and we’ll see the truth. We’ll see what these neshamos are.”

They didn’t let me show her my baby’s face, but she had seen him more clearly than anyone.

AS

Chaim grew, we taught him not just developmental skills but something more precious: the rhythm of our family life, how to be part of our household. To interact with his siblings. To share and take turns. To speak nicely. To act like a mensch.

Having him brought a profound sensitivity into the hearts of my children.

And Chaim made me see the world differently.

“What are the statistical chances of a twenty-seven-year-old having a child with Down syndrome?” I once asked my OB.

“About 1 in 1,100,” she said.

I was chosen. Hashem chose 1,099 mothers to give a perfectly “normal” child, and I was chosen to have Chaim. As the years passed, I began to feel privileged, honored, and trusted. It was as if I could hear Hashem saying, Here, you can have this child. Let’s see what you can do with him.

With Chaim, I don’t expect perfection, but as one therapist told me – “He will live up to your expectations.”

Those we have in abundance. That he’ll read fluently, both alef beis and the alphabet. That he’ll daven in shul with his father and brothers. That he’ll be able to swim and play ball with his friends. That he’ll have friends. That he’ll tie his shoes. Hopes and dreams, both big and small, mundane and magnificent. And every milestone, every small victory — every day — is the celebration of a lifetime.

(Originally featured in Family First, Issue 969)