I

got home shortly after 7 a.m. — the drive was always quicker in the early morning. Although I’d been up all night, I usually get a new surge of adrenaline in the morning — enough energy to get the kids dressed, give them breakfast, pack their bags, and get them out to child care, before I go to sleep. On a good morning, I get home even before they wake up.

Today, when I let myself in, though, I saw the lights on in the living room. Tzvi appeared in the doorway, in rumpled clothing, like he hadn’t slept all night.

“What’s going on?” I asked, alarmed.

He gestured to the couch. I peeked in; Yoni was lying there, eyes at half mast, moaning slightly.

“Oh, no! Yons! What’s wrong, sweetie?” I dropped my bag and rushed over. Yoni didn’t respond. Alarm bells started blaring. I turned back to Tzvi. “What happened?”

He shrugged and spread his hands out. “I don’t really know. He was really cranky in the evening, kept crying about a stomachache. I didn’t go to night seder, I canceled the babysitter because I didn’t want to leave him… he threw up twice. I thought he would feel better, but honestly, neither of us slept much last night.”

“Has he been drinking? Is he dehydrated?” Yoni’s skin was pale and clammy, and he had a fever. When I tried to take him in my arms, he cried out in sudden pain.

“I tried to give him something to drink, he didn’t want.” Tzvi showed me Yoni’s full bottle.

“His fever is high. And his stomach…” the pieces fell into place. “I think it’s appendicitis. We need to get him to the hospital now!” My voice rose a little, and my breath caught in my throat as I took in how very lethargic my son was. “Let’s hope we’ve caught it in time….”

Tzvi froze. “Are you serious? I thought it was a stomach bug — I didn’t want to disturb you at work—”

I was already grabbing my bag and dialing Hatzalah. “It doesn’t matter. It’s not your fault, it’s hard to catch this, but we need to get him to the hospital right now.”

Three minutes later, Hatzalah was there, asking rapid-fire questions even as they transferred Yoni onto a stretcher and into the ambulance. Tzvi still looked shell-shocked.

“I’ll go. You take Batsheva to the babysitter, and join me in the hospital. I’ll call you as soon as he’s been seen, okay?”

Tzvi recovered. “Yes, of course. I’ll get Batsheva ready to go, and I’ll join you as soon as possible.”

A

nd just like that, I was back at the hospital. But this time, I wasn’t coming in calm and collected, ready for the night shift ahead. I was racing back in a rush of adrenaline and terrible fear, with a lethargic, almost unresponsive toddler in the ambulance beside me.

The ER was a blur. Yoni was transferred from ambulance stretcher to gurney, whisked off to triage, and I tried to calm down and answer the questions as clearly as possible. I was a nurse, I knew this, I did part of my training in the ER, but everything was different when it was your own son in critical condition.

The initial testing confirmed my fears: Yoni had a ruptured appendix and needed surgery as soon as possible.

They had just wheeled him in, and I had sunk down on a chair in the waiting area, when Tzvi showed up.

“How is he? What’s going on?”

I filled him in. Then I noticed the time. “Wait, how did you get here so fast? You dropped Batsheva off early?”

He shook his head. “I got her dressed and took her to my mother. She knows where the babysitter is. I had to be here….”

“Oh….” I said. I wouldn’t have chosen to spread the news of this crisis just yet, but it wasn’t like it was a whole secret or anything.

“So when will the surgery be over?” Tzvi asked.

“Probably under an hour.” I leaned back and closed my eyes, my sleepless night suddenly hitting, full force. “I just….”

“You rest,” Tzvi said. “Let me go see if the nurses have an update. I’ll wake you as soon as I know anything.”

P

eritonitis.

“It’s an infection caused by the ruptured appendix,” I explained to Tzvi, after the doctor had left us. “It’s a complication. They need to monitor it… so it doesn’t get worse, chas v’shalom.”

“So that’s why the doctor was talking about an extended hospital stay?” Tzvi shook his head. “Oy, I had no idea…”

“It wasn’t your fault, how could you have known?” I said. “Early appendicitis can really look like a stomach bug… it just gets worse very, very fast. Baruch Hashem, we did catch it, he’s had surgery, and they’re treating the infection.”

When we got in to see him, Yoni was just waking up. He was groggy and disoriented and didn’t say much.

“Mommy,” he whispered when he saw me, and then his eyes fluttered closed again.

I sat down and took his hand — the one that wasn’t attached to the IV. “Yons, I’m right here. I’m staying with you.”

Tzvi sat down more gingerly, averting his head from the IV line and beeping monitor. He couldn’t handle this stuff. “Is he sleeping? Maybe you should go home and get some sleep… You were up all night….”

“So were you,” I reminded him. “And I want to stay right here. Poor kid, in such pain all night long, and I wasn’t even there… let me stay with him for now. I don’t have a night shift tonight. You can take over then.”

T

ime passes differently in the hospital. Somehow, it crawls so slowly and whizzes by all at the same time. Minutes ticked on, Yoni seemed to be sleeping easier, I dozed off for a few minutes here and there, nurses came and went.

My phone buzzed just before 3 p.m. It was my mother-in-law.

“Avigail! I’m so glad I got through… is everything okay?” she sounded breathless. “Tzvi texted me that the surgery went well, but now I can’t get through to his phone, and I want to know if you need anything…. Can I bring you supper? Is Yoni okay? When’s he coming home? Do you need anything at the hospital…?”

“Ma, we’re good, it’s all okay,” I said, trying to inject a reassuring note into my exhausted voice. “I’m in the hospital with Yoni. Tzvi went home to rest, that’s probably why he’s not answering the phone. We’re okay, I have lots of food in the freezer.

“Thanks so much for taking care of Batsheva this morning,” I added, remembering that at the last minute.

“It’s nothing. The least I could do. Tell me, what else do you need? Who’s fetching Batsheva from the babysitter today? What can I do?”

Batsheva — oh, my. My brain was deserting me. I had to get through to Tzvi ASAP.

“I think we’re good, really, but thank you,” I told Ma hurriedly, and then ended the call. Thankfully, I got through to Tzvi just in time.

“Yeah, I’ll go get Batsheva now,” he said, a little blearily. “And then what? I’ll take off kollel, obviously, but how should we do this? I take Batsheva home and give her supper? When should I take over in the hospital?”

Supper. Batsheva. Bedtime. The night shift with Yoni….

My mind raced. I wished I had a notebook on hand. I thought best with pen and paper and lists.

“Let me think… okay, how about this. You can bring Batsheva home and give her supper — there’s food in the fridge. Then, if we could get one of your sisters to come over to babysit, you can come over here and switch off with me. I’ll go back home and be with Batsheva till the morning, and once I’ve dropped her off at the babysitter, I’ll come take over again at the hospital?”

“I think I lost you at the food in the fridge part, but I’m sure you’ve worked it all out.”

I smirked at the phone. He knew me; of course I had it all planned. I didn’t quite know how to function without super-planning. People sometimes didn’t understand it, they would ask me, And what about emergencies? Last minute changes? Something cropping up? But that was literally why I found being super organized so necessary. For times like this, when emergencies happened, it was so helpful to have a stock of meals in the freezer, a solid routine for the family, a clean and organized house so I could tell Tzvi where to find Batsheva’s socks or an extra blanket to bring for Yoni….

“My mother really wants to help, by the way,” Tzvi said. “She offered to take Batsheva for the next few days if we need her to. She offered to make suppers, Shabbos, anything.”

“That’s so sweet of her. We’re okay, though. I have a whole emergency stock of suppers and Shabbos food in the freezer.”

“Of course you do.” Tzvi shook his head, laughing. “Why would anyone have thought otherwise?”

WE

were going to be fine, I told myself as I drove from the hospital to my in-laws’ house. We would be fine, I assured my mother-in-law. We’d figure it out, taking turns in the hospital, Tzvi might have to miss a little kollel to be with Yoni so I could rest or take hospital shifts, but we could do it, we’d be fine.

I kept up the assurances all the way until the next morning.

“Not to worry or anything,” Tzvi started, so of course, my mind went into overdrive worry mode. “The doctors are a bit worried… something about the intestines. They had him take a scan or something? I think they’re going to speak to us when you come in.”

Oh. Oh. Not more complications….

According to the doctor, the situation wasn’t dangerous, just more serious, and Yoni’s recovery period — and hospitalization — would take longer than anticipated. He would need IV fluids and nutrition, monitoring, and the doctors were switching up some of his medications to try to resolve the issue.

It was good, it would all be fine… except that for the foreseeable future, one of us would need to be with Yoni around the clock — and I had a job, and a baby at home.

How were we going to manage this all?

“My mother can take Batsheva,” Tzvi suggested again. “She’s really happy to help. And she has my sisters to help her.”

I didn’t want my baby staying out of the house, even by her grandmother.

“She’s so little, she needs her mother,” I said. “Maybe if I try to switch some of my shifts to the day… and you can do the nights in the hospital, I can be with Batsheva… and then on the days that I’m not working, I’ll be with Yoni… and….”

Tzvi shook his head. “Avigail, listen to me. You want to do everything — you always do — but it’s not going to work. Neither of us can be in three places at once. We have Batsheva there, Yoni here, and you have your job…. We’re going to need some help, and my family really wants to be there for us.”

I didn’t answer. He was right, and I didn’t want him to be. I didn’t like taking help. I liked managing on my own, taking care of the kids with their regular routines and structures. But there wasn’t a choice anymore.

My mother-in-law was delighted to take Batsheva from child care each day.

“The girls will be so excited,” she gushed. “You know how much they love your kids. We’ll take good care of her. If you need to leave her overnight, it’s also fine.”

“One of us should be home most nights,” I said, “unless I can’t change my night shifts to days. We’ll take turns with Yoni and the other one will sleep at home. But thanks for offering.”

The next time Yoni fell asleep while I was sitting with him, I typed up a list for my mother-in-law — what time Batsheva came home, ate, bathed, got ready for bed. I wrote up a list of foods she liked and didn’t like, when to put her to sleep if they ended up keeping her later in the evening, the fact that she always slept on her back, with her blanket and her pacifier….

My mother-in-law laughed when I dropped the list off, along with a neat bag with a few changes of clothing, a pack of diapers, wipes, two spare pacifiers, and Batsheva’s bib.

“Only you would put this together with everything you have going on,” she said, with a chuckle. “You know, we could also go buy a pack of diapers and figure things out if we needed another outfit….”

“Of course, but I just wanted to make things easier for you,” I said.

It wasn’t just that. I also wanted things easier for us — Batsheva having her regular routines would mean that her schedule would stay predictable, she would sleep well at night, we could keep her with us as much as possible, while still having one of us with Yoni all the time. If everything else was turned upside down, at least this should stay stable, predictable, and solid — for Batsheva and for us.

Y

oni’s recovery was two steps forward, one step back. He began feeling better after a couple of days; the doctors began introducing drink, then soft food back into his diet, but then he developed an infection that set things back. It was overwhelming, even though I’d taken a couple of days off work and switched some shifts so I could work during the day and be there for Yoni overnight. It meant there were days when I went from Yoni’s bedside to a full-day shift, and returned 12 hours later so that Tzvi could go home for Batsheva.

“Are you sure you can manage?” Tzvi asked in concern one evening. “It’s your second night in a row, and you worked an entire day on your feet.”

My brain was screaming with exhaustion, but I told him I’d be fine. “I need to be with Yoni a little. Tomorrow I’m going home for Shabbos, and you’re doing the whole 25 hours. I’ll manage, I’ll sleep on the chair or whatever.”

As if. Is it even possible to sleep on those uncomfortable hospital chairs?

My mother-in-law showed up the next morning at the hospital with a huge bouquet of balloons and bags of Shabbos treats and nosh, which I promptly hid away — Yoni couldn’t eat that stuff, and Tzvi wouldn’t touch it if Yoni was watching

“Batsheva is so, so adorable,” my mother-in-law said, laughing. “The girls just love her. They literally refuse to put her to sleep because they want to show her off to their friends.”

Wait, what? I hoped that they were keeping to my laboriously crafted baby schedule. Was that why Batsheva had been so tired and cranky recently?

“That’s sweet,” I said carefully. “But you know, Batsheva gets reaaaalllly cranky when she’s overtired.”

My mother-in-law looked surprised. “Overtired? She seems fine to me. We keep her so busy, she should be out like a light when you take her home.”

She winked.

I didn’t smile back. Babies don’t need to have busy days to sleep well. They need calm, gentle, consistent bedtime routines. They need to be fed and bathed and put to sleep in a normal way, at a normal time.

“We’ll take care of her bedtime routine, don’t worry,” my mother-in-law assured me, when she saw that this was actually more serious.

Famous last words.

T

en days in, the doctors were starting to talk about discharge, and Yoni was not having it.

“Did you hear that, Yons? The doctor said you might be able to come home before Shabbos!” I told him.

“Noooo! I want to go home now! Want to go home nowwwww!”

It was a two-year-old tantrum in its fullest glory, exacerbated by the pain he was in and what he’d been through the past week and a half. Tzvi had just arrived — come to relieve me for the night shift — and for a moment, we both just stood there, dumbfounded.

“Yoni, sweetie,” I tried, but he flailed his arms, pushing me away.

“Yoni, come, should we go to the lounge for a few minutes?”

A nurse poked her head in. “Everything okay there?”

I felt terrible. People were trying to rest, Yoni was in pain and frustrated, and I felt totally helpless.

By the time the two of us were able to calm him down, it was late. Very late. I checked my phone, my mother-in-law hadn’t even checked in. I guess Batsheva was sleeping and once she fell asleep, she usually went through the night, no problem. I’d be able to transfer her to the car seat and then to her crib, hopefully with just a small amount of resettling to do. She wouldn’t know how late I’d come to pick her up.

There was traffic on the way home, but I didn’t mind the drive in the dark. It was grounding, quiet. Hopefully Yoni would be home soon. Hopefully things would get back to normal. He would still need a lot of attention and care, but we could do this, we’d figure things out. At least Batsheva wouldn’t have to go through a whole upheaval for this, at least we were able to maintain some semblance of normalcy for her—

Or not.

When I entered my in-laws’ house, the first thing I saw was Batsheva, sitting in a high chair in the middle of the kitchen, happily squishing pieces of chocolate cake and hurling them onto the floor.

Chocolate cake?

“Yeah, she was refusing to eat supper, and we finally got her to eat because we gave her cake between bites,” my sister-in-law Chaya said. “She’s got real character, that kid!”

She’s got character? She’s a baby, for goodness’ sake. And I never gave cake to babies — it was totally not necessary, and just cultivated unhealthy eating habits. But even if I ignored that—

“It’s so late,” I said, and my voice came out tight, accusing. “How come she isn’t sleeping?”

My mother-in-law bustled into the kitchen. “Oh, hi, Avigail! How’s Yoni doing? We’re all thinking of him. The little darling has been great, haven’t you, sweetie?”

I didn’t answer.

My mother-in-law glanced at the time, and understanding dawned. “Oh, you wanted her sleeping, right? So we did try, but she literally screamed. I think she was hungry, she didn’t eat supper… so we took her out to feed or something. She ate now — what was it, some soup, right, Chaya?”

“Yeah. And cake.” My sister-in-law giggled, and I tried not to grit my teeth.

“Anyway, sorry she’s a bit dirty. I could bathe her now if you want, so you don’t have to do it when you get home…”

I did not want. I did not want at all.

But I also didn’t want to get home after 10 p.m. with a miserable baby who needed a bath, then to be settled, probably still hungry after being stuffed with sugary carbs in place of a proper meal. I couldn’t imagine she’d settle before midnight, and then tomorrow morning would either have her oversleep and have our entire schedule messed up, or I’d have to wake her before she’d slept enough and have the babysitter comment on how tired she’s been recently, and please could I make sure she’s in routine because if she’s off schedule, she doesn’t eat or nap well, and it just made things harder at the day care…

And maybe my mother-in-law thought it was a one-off. But how many times could you do these one-off things before a carefully structured routine was just totally destroyed? And how was I supposed to juggle everything I needed to juggle if my baby wasn’t sleeping or eating or napping like I’d so carefully trained her to do?

If I could tell my mother-in-law one thing it would be: You want to help us out, but this help is making things harder for me, not easier.

Mirel

There’s an energy in the air the last half hour before licht bentshen. It’s the time when everyone suddenly realizes that the clock is ticking, and whatever they still need to get done, needs to get done now.

I came downstairs to find Estie pulling a tray of brownies out of the oven, Chaya wearing an oversized sweatshirt and cleaning the table, and Meir ripping open packages of tissues.

For a long time, I’d tried to do the chatzos thing, being ready for Shabbos by midday, until I’d learned that for me and my family, at this stage of our lives, being ready five minutes before candlelighting was heroic, too.

“Bathroom’s free, any of you still need to shower?”

“Me!” Meir abandoned the tissues and zipped up the stairs. I called one of the younger ones in to continue where he’d left off.

The front door opened.

“Hi, Ma, everyone!” Tzvi called.

My oldest son and his family were moving in for Shabbos, and while a couple of years ago, that would have been a cause for great alarm and pressure to get everything perfect for the brand-new daughter-in-law, it’s been long enough that Avigail gets welcomed right into the chaos, no apologies allowed.

Not that my daughter-in-law is anything other than the height of impeccable, organized perfection.

“Thanks so much for having us,” she said now, holding out a container of salad, a tub of dressing, and a tray of elegant three-layer mousses. “Here’s the salad and dessert, want me to put them in the fridge?”

“Oh, look at those mousses. I don’t know how you have the time for them! And you work all those night shifts, too….”

“Just three a week,” Avigail said, shrugging off the compliment, as always. “I have time. And I love doing this. Besides, it’s such a treat for us to come for Shabbos! I didn’t have to cook at all. And the kids love it.”

The kids — two-year-old Yoni and baby Batsheva — peek out at me. They’re clean and bathed and dressed in adorable coordinating Shabbos outfits — cream knit, which Avigail somehow manages to keep clean.

“I don’t know how you do it,” I found myself telling her, more than once.

“It’s no secret,” she always replied. “I have a lot of systems and routines, I work really hard to put them in place and maintain them. It’s the only way I can get everything done.”

I always nodded, but honestly, I also wondered. Was it a personality thing, or would Avigail also change her tune once she had more kids, older ones, a household that never slept…? I never had the time or headspace to make “systems.”

But it was working for her, and that was great. Who was I to question what worked?

T

hat was my daughter-in-law in a nutshell. I love her, I think she’s amazing, but she’s always been a bit… different from the rest of the family. In a good way — she’s driven and motivated and runs her house and her schedule and her life so perfectly. But anyone who knows us Braunsteins knows we’re more likely to be described as relaxed, fun, and chill, than as intense and driven and organized.

It sometimes made me feel like there was nothing I could even do for my super capable daughter-in-law, who had everything in hand. While my married daughter was always excited if I called with a last-minute Shabbos invite or if I offered to drop off supper, Avigail always had everything prepared and responded with a polite “Oh, you’re so sweet, but I’m all set….”

(Yes, we’d learned the hard way to offer Shabbos invites two full weeks in advance.)

Which was why, when Tzvi called me one morning, sounding frantic and saying something about Yoni and emergency and hospital, I was obviously worried. But in a small way, I was kind of relieved that finally, this was a chance to be there for them.

“I’m coming over right now, tell me what I can do,” I said.

“Maybe I should come to you? And bring Batsheva… she goes to the babysitter, but only in a half hour — and I really want to get to the hospital….”

“Of course! Bring her over. We’ll be delighted,” I said.

WE

were relieved to hear that Yoni was out of surgery, and that it had gone as well as could be expected. But it would take a few days for him to recover, and in the meantime….

“Tell me what I can do,” I kept telling Tzvi and Avigail. “Suppers? Shabbos meals? Should I take care of Batsheva for you? Do a shift in the hospital with Yoni?”

Avigail, despite the evident exhaustion, tried to demur, even now. “We have suppers in the freezer… I think Tzvi and I will take turns with Yoni… it’s better for him if a parent is there.”

I tried. I showed up at the hospital with balloons and treats, and kept up the offers despite the inevitable rejections. And then — wonder of wonders — Avigail wanted to take me up on it.

There was some sort of complication, Yoni was going to have to be hospitalized a little longer, and with the baby’s schedule….

“Of course we’ll take care of Batsheva!” I said. “The girls will be overjoyed. She’s the cutest. It’s no problem, I can pick her up from the babysitter, we’ll watch her, whenever you get home is fine. If she stays overnight, it’s also fine, I have the Pack ’n Play.”

“Oh, one of us should be home most nights,” she said. “Unless I can’t change my night shifts to days, we’re going to try always have one of us sleep at home. It’s important to keep Batsheva in routine as much as possible… she should be with us.

“But thanks for offering,” she added sweetly.

W

hen Avigail came by to drop off some things of Batsheva’s, along with a list with details of her daily schedule, food preferences, bedtime routine, and all, I just laughed. It was so Avigail, so meticulous, the timing of naps and meals, the various foods she preferred, when to start bath time so that bedtime would be scheduled right….

“And here are more diapers, wipes, and a couple changes of clothing. If it’s cold in the evening, she can wear this sweater… or put an extra blanket when she goes to sleep….”

I patted her on the hand. “I’ve done this before, you know,” I said, laughingly.

Baruch Hashem, with ten children, I’d like to think I’ve earned my certificate in baby rearing.

Chaya and Estie, my teenage girls, were delighted to have baby Batsheva around — they’re crazy over her.

“Ma, can I take Batsheva with me to Sara’s house?” Chaya offered.

“I’m giving her her bath,” Estie insists.

I laughed and agreed. They loved spoiling her, so did I. Yes, I gave her a chocolate rugele to sample — no it was not on Avigail’s list of nutritionally rich food items. So what? I’m Bubby, I’m allowed, right?

The first day, I tried to follow along with Avigail’s schedule. But honestly, it was impossible. Batsheva didn’t want to eat the blended carrot mush Avigail had sent in her bag — she wanted the meatballs that we were all eating. She got herself so dirty that we plunked her in the bath right after supper, instead of doing playtime first.

And then despite Avigail’s assurance that Batsheva was amazing about bedtime and would be out like a light if we followed the step-by-step routine… well, she wasn’t. She was awake, alert, and enthusiastic a good hour after I started with the gentle Shema-rocking, bottle, good night routine.

“Ma, why are you standing in the dark?” Meir asked me, coming past the lounge where I was trying to rock Batsheva to sleep.

“Avigail said that’s how Batsheva sleeps best,” I whispered back to him.

Batsheva gurgled.

“Sure looks like she’s sleeping,” he quipped.

He was right. It had been an hour, this was ridiculous. I abandoned ship.

“Girls, who wants to take Batsheva for a walk?”

She loved the walk. She didn’t go to sleep.

By day three, I’d figured out our own routine with Batsheva. My kids played with her until supper, then she ate with the rest of us — whatever we ate, or I made her oatmeal, which she loved… I fed her like I’d fed my own kids — go with the flow, find something they want, don’t get too stressed because then they just refuse everything.

“If they’re hungry, they’ll eat something,” my mother used to say, and I was all for that philosophy.

One day, when I visited Yoni in the hospital, Avigail mentioned something to me.

“You know, Batsheva gets really cranky during the day when she doesn’t sleep enough… and it’s hard to settle her when she’s kept up too late,” she told me.

I don’t think she meant for her tone to sound pointed, but it did.

She doesn’t mean it, I told myself. “We’re taking care of her,” I said, willing my voice to stay calm. “And we’ll try get her to sleep in good time, don’t worry.”

I wasn’t going to start an argument there in the hospital. But honestly? The baby wasn’t so happy, she missed her mother, and we could see that we had to be flexible. Forcing her to eat or sleep when she clearly wasn’t in the mood wasn’t working. If she wanted to eat late, or play for longer, or have an early nap and a late bath, was it really such a big deal? She wasn’t even one. And we were the ones taking care of her — it had to fit our family, our style, our way of working.

O

ne night, Avigail showed up later than usual. Not that we’d noticed — my house is bustling till all hours, my teens coming and going, and no one minded having one adorable niece on our hands for longer.

“I’m so sorry I’m late,” Avigail started, and I was just ready to brush it off, show her we were really happy to help, no eye on the time or anything, but then she saw Batsheva and her eyes widened.

“Um, you’re giving her cake? Did she eat supper?”

“Yes, ’cause we bribed her with cake between bites,” Chaya giggled. “She’s the cutest — right, munchkin? Knows what she wants and makes sure to get it.”

Avigail looked aghast. I know, I know, she preferred for her kids not to have sugary food, she didn’t like giving the baby unhealthy stuff like cake, I know about bedtime and schedules and all that.

“It’s so late, why isn’t she sleeping?” Avigail asked, tightly, and suddenly, I was annoyed.

We were doing everything we could for her. We took care of her baby every day, for hours, with no questions asked. She liked her rigid schedule, fine, but it didn’t work for us, and we were the ones on the ground. Maybe she could do three-hour bedtime routines and serve the baby a perfectly nutritious blend of carbs, protein, and vegetables each night. Here, in a busy household of kids, teens, and adults, we couldn’t.

We couldn’t have it perfectly silent at 7 p.m. Couldn’t do long extended bedtime routines or make Batsheva special foods and insist she eat it even when she was reaching for the chicken nuggets. It wasn’t working.

But couldn’t she see what we were doing? We were taking care of her, keeping her happy when, honestly, she often came to us cranky and miserable and calling for her mommy. We were doing her a favor — couldn’t she accept it gracefully and thank us, instead of harping on about what we weren’t doing “right”?

And why should anyone want to step in and help out if she was making it so difficult?

If I could tell Avigail one thing it would be: We want to be there for you and take care of your baby — but you’re making it too difficult for anyone to help you out.  

(Originally featured in Mishpacha, Issue 1049)