Mother instinct

First what I did when I got pregnant was to subscribe to all those mother-to-be magazines and internet portals so I could receive all the updates about baby's development and all.

First thing what I did after Ezra was born - I unsubscribed from all those mentioned above.

Have you read all they write?

Some publications definitely say that every baby is unique and has individual milestone, but most of them demand so much from babies and their parents.

What's annoyed me most:

1) Sleeping.
Baby should sleep millions of hours, start to sleep through the day from two or three months old.
This is unrealistic. At least it was/is for us.
Baby needs to wake up several times a night to be nursed and soothed by mum especially at this tender age of two-three months. I remember Ezra slept cutely till 1am and then woke up wanting me to nurse him and cuddle. Then I would put him back to his bed until 4-5 am when he woke up for second time and then he'd stay with me till morning.

1.2) Sleeptraining.
All right, it might be that I have failed in that many times. I got a book from friend who actually sleep trained her baby for good. Her baby would go to bed at 6 and slept until 6 in the morning without problem, then napped three times a day for an hour each nap. It never worked with Ezra though. I would put him to sleep at 6 and he wouldn't sleep till 7-7:30; as for naps, it was terrible for all of us, he'd also nap three times a day, but not more than 15-20 minutes or he could've not napped at all.
Again, babies are different and you can't measure all of them similarly.

2) Eating.
Again, most babies eat every three hours, but Ezra would get hungry every two, sometimes 1,5 hours, nursed for couple of minutes and let go. We had his colicky to blame, but he still remains not very good eater.

3) Last but not least, mothers' extra weight.
Pushing and shoving before our face all the photos of the celebrities, or as I call lately, people of cheap and shallow, how fast have they lost their weight and look fabulous, while average mums look aged, tired and fat.
They probably forget that those mums have army of babysitters, nannies, cleaning people and thousands of assistants. Most of them don't breastfeed, don't wake up at night, don't change diapers and I am sure, they don't have to do household stuff besides the baby like most of us, normal and natural women, do.
So it is a big shame to depress new mums about their weight showing the photos of the slim actresses who had given birth just the other day and look fresh like cucumbers, like Georgian saying goes.

Now you know why you shouldn't listen to anyone but your own inner voice and mother instincts which are never wrong. As time goes by and my baby grows older, I realize that my instincts get really stronger and I almost never fail to feel what my baby, my family and I need.

Girlfriends

By Meir Levin

Translation by Shaul Gorgel

Immediately upon my arrival into Israel and to my utter astonishment, I got a job as a chess coach in several Israeli schools. In one of them, pupils were quite grown-up. About chess they couldn't care less. There was a boy in the class who spoke Russian. He helped me interprete myself into Hebrew when necessary. However, much to my discomfiture, the headmaster would walk in wearing shorts, not to mention her rather low neckline...

In the other, things were more complicated. The kids were small and dutifully out of control. As soon as they filed into a class room, they would pair off and beat each other up. One of the girls was really extraordinary as she would smash her boy counterpart's face against her knee. When I finally managed with some effort to rescue the little brat from her hands, he broke to me: "This ain't no Russia! I'm calling the police". So I had to come up with all kinds of ploys. Buy them chewing gum. Lie to them that I was going to teach them how to play chess and then we'd all together go to America. At first, they believed me, but soon enough I had to make up new fairy tales.

One girl started nudgering me saying that my fellow teacher Gregory gave out choveret (periodicals) to the girls and that she wanted them too. I didn't know what choveret is. On the break, Gregory explained to me that he'd received old and disused chess periodicals and gave them to the kids. Those were happy, although not for long. I stayed in the school for as long as two months. Then, they sacked me, and I was actually very glad they did. They had really bled me white. And I lacked imagination either.

Soon, Aryeh Rosenberg, the man who got me that job, rung up inquiring if I was receiving the periodical of the Israeli Chess Federation. I said I wasn't. Aryeh gave me the number to call. I gathered courage and called. I must say that even if I have some command of Hebrew, it is exclusively thanks to the nerve that I have. From my first days here, I boldly went to work in the Israeli school. I was speaking Hebrew with everyone not bothering whether I was understood or not. The yeshiva staff complained I was asking them questions in an incrypted language.

So, this time round too, I dialled up and started off upbeat:

- Aryeh Rosenberg paid up. Everybody got chaverot (girlfriends) and they're using them, and I haven't got any.

No reply came.

- I can't go on without them, - I went on to make a point of just how bad it was for me without them and how much I needed them. Suddenly I heard my wife and daughter giggling. Realising I was saying something wrong, I pulled myself together quickly: "Sorry. I made a mistake, I need chaverim (mates).

Such a rapid overturn in my sexual tastes totally drove the woman at the other end into indignation:

- This is not a brothel! This is Chess Federation, mind you! Now, what do you want?

- A magazine, - I said in Russian.

- Tell me the address. We'll send you one.

Choveret I got. I prepared for the competition on behalf of the Elitzur chess society. I took the second place. Job offers from Israeli secular schools were flowing in. But by that time, I already feared "headmasters in shorts". I didn't want something funny rubbing off on me. I said no. Soon I got a job offer in a Russian language religious girl school, where I have been working since. I'm fine there.