Why is My Toddler Davenning Mincha ?

 (Warning- This post is absolutely all over the place. I take stream of conscience writing to a whole new level of depravity. Watch out Holden Caulfield, I’m not intimidated by your teen angst). 

My husband took the baby to minyan.

I have a weird baby, in that she mostly behaves at minyan. People don’t take their babies to minyan. It’s not done. I know this. Babies don’t belong in shul. Countless posters on imamother have made this point . 

As I’ve mentioned, imamother is one of my main sources of information. Part of my field guide, if you will. 

So why is my baby at shul? And why is she so good at shul?  Better behaved than she is most other places, actually. Let me tell you a story. 

My baby, who is now definitely a toddler, as evidenced by some grade A+ toddling, was born at 37 weeks to the day. She has IUGR and was small for her gestational age. They were going to induce on the very day I went into labor naturally, because the placenta was deteriorating. This is one of the reasons I say I am bad at pregnancy.As a fun fact, I delivered at 6:13pm *motzei Shabbos- go ahead, tell me HaShem doesn’t send signs .

 Anyway, that, as it turns out, was the easy part. I was committed to nursing as much as possible. I have this thing where I become enraged at those “breast is best” people because, hello, not everyone can breastfeed, and babies still need to eat regardless, while at the same time being crazy about needing to breastfeed as much as possible. I am an enigma. 

Was my baby gaining the appropriate amount of weight? No. No, she was not.

Did I wake up every two hours to breastfeed her for the first four months of her life? Yes I did. 

Did she still stay under five pounds for a remarkably long period of time? 

Yes, again . 

Did I end up supplementing with baby formula? 

Yes, I did. 

Did I still wake up constantly? 

Also yes. 

Was I so sleep deprived that I started having hallucinations?

I will neither confirm nor deny this fact . 

Was I taking her  to the pediatrician multiple times a week?

Yes . 

Did I have any help? 

Yes. My husband took her to minyan. It was my time off.

(For those of you wondering what happened, I started exclusively pumping for a about a month and a half which helped my baby get up to a… I don’t want to say normal weight, but she was at least on the growth chart. Then we reintroduced nursing. My daughter is a perfectly healthy eighteen month old these days. Normal weight. I stopped nursing at ten months. Mostly due to working. I don’t want to talk about it**)

So my husband has always really liked taking the baby to minyan. And my baby, from her earliest days, has always behaved herself pretty well. She was quiet in the baby carrier until about a year . This is all heresay, because I don’t go to minyan , but apparently at that point she got too rambunctious and he no longer takes her to shacharis. Which is fair. That’s a very long time to sit still and be quiet. I, myself, cannot sit still an entire shacharis. I am better at being quiet, though. Also, I am toilet trained. 

When I say I had no help, I want to be clear about something. Postpartum was really, really hard. My husband and I were pretty much on our own. Maybe because of our family situations. Maybe because of Covid. Maybe because of our community was geared towards students and singles, not families. It’s no one’s fault . But it was awful. We also made the decision to take parental leave in shifts. The benefit of that was because of my teaching schedule, I didn’t need childcare for my baby until she was nine months old. The drawback of that was my husband was working full time and leaving me alone with the baby while I was not feeling my best and severely sleep deprived. Amazingly, I did not suffer from PPD but my sleep deprivation was so bad it became its own health risk. We thought it was a brilliant idea at the time. It turned out to not be. Maybe if my baby had been larger, we could’ve gotten away with it. Maybe with a normal postpartum recovery it would’ve been ok. It was really, really not ok. 

I did not mean for this post to turn into a vent about my postpartum experience. Maybe at this point it’s just because Im feeling nervous. I’m into my third trimester of pregnancy number two now, and certain things are feeling far too familiar. Hopefully we manage the whole postpartum period better this time. I’m actually not too optimistic. 

Anyway, if you see my husband at shul with the baby, this is both one of the more normal things he does,***and also something he does as a favor to me. My anemia symptoms are pretty brutal. I’m spending a lot of time these days lying down because of dizziness, headaches, and blurry vision. I’ve been tested for preeclampsia- it’s not preeclampsia. Just anemia.And my husband doesn’t want to miss minyan. Since we have a baby who can at least be happy and quiet for mincha, she often goes with her tatty to mincha. Yes it’s not done. But we do it. 

* there are 613 mitzvos. Coincidence? Sure…

** whenever I say I don’t want to talk about it, you can be sure I will talk about it at a later date. And at length. 

*** On Wednesday he wore a bright red Polynesian print polo shirt to our black hatter shul. I’m not blaming it on the Asperger’s. But I’m also not not blaming it on the Asperger’s. 

Is this lashon hara about my husband, you might be wondering. I don’t think so. You see, I actually think my husband is right. It shouldn’t matter at all how hideous the shirt he wears to minyan is, if he’s comfortable in it. It doesn’t say “no Polynesian prints” in the Torah.  ( I wish it did!) But it does matter. Which is why I dress very conservatively . Because people assume things about you from the  way you present yourself. And that’s a very hard concept for some people to understand. Especially if social subtleties are not your strong point. Like, for example, if you’re on the spectrum. And that’s why I’m wondering if he’d actually notice if several of his shirts were to mysteriously disappear.