A 28-Year-Old Mom of 6 Kids

So many women in my neighborhood have given birth recently, our community chesed organization is having difficulty filling all the requests for post-partum meals.

So today I brought a meal to one of those families. I’d read on the meal request that this mother just had her 6th child. But when the mother opened the door, I did a double take. How could somebody so young possibly have so many children?

Usually, when I bring meals to families with a newborn baby, the father opens the door, or the mother opens the door and I tell her “Mazal tov! Everything is parve, made in halavi pots” and that’s the end of our interaction.

But this friendly, glowing young mother was in the mood to talk. And that was how I ended up hearing her story, about how she had gotten pregnant right away after getting married at 19. And how after that she had had children in close succession, which is how she became a mother of 6 at the tender age of 28.

She talked about how fortunate she felt, what a privilege it is to be raising so many children. But she said over and over, “Hashem has given me koach to take care of each child, I just hope He will give me the koach I need for this baby too…”

After speaking with her, I was struck that it is NOT NORMAL for a 28-year-old woman to have 6 children.

My friend just came back from a trip with her family in northern Norway, and she reported that over the 2 weeks she was there she saw maybe 5 babies, maybe 15 children. When she entered a store with her children, people stared. Not only, she felt, in surprise over their unusual dress, but also surprised just to see children. Not one. Not two. Three children! Three!

And this is not only the case in northern Norway, the birth rate in many industrialized countries is now under 1.5 children per family.

Meeting that wonderful mother today reminded me that if you are the mother of more than 1.5 children, then you aren’t normal. So be gentle to yourself. Take care of yourself. Be compassionate to yourself. Get as much help as you can. Because even if all of your neighbors and all of your friends and all of your sisters and sisters-in-law are raising families like yours, you are not normal. None of you are.

You are EXTRAORDINARY!