Mayim Rabim

If you read this post and this post, you know that I am now using two forms of birth control, and that I don't always remember to use both. This time I forgot the pill -- for three days! -- and I didn't realize it until I spontaneously started bleeding.

To be fair to myself, I didn't just "forget" for three consecutive days. I take several medications, and I usually put them, along with the BC, in a one-week pill holder. It's a good system, but you do have to remember to put all the pills in at the beginning of the week. And, as I've mentioned, I'm an idiot.

I know, I know. Don't be so hard on yourself, Ruchama! But I went to the mikvah less than a week ago. And I hate that this is my fault.

I came across a comment on beyondbt (a blog for and by "returnees" to observant Judaism) that I found very very disturbing.

as a bt in progress, i just have to say that it’s so hard to fit in sometimes. bt’s do things differently but honestly. we try so hard, and when the ffb community snickers because we might not know as much, it can be a major turn-off.

years ago, i had a horrible experience at a mikvah, where a mikvah lady yelled, yes, yelled, at me because i was having trouble with the bracha. i had only gone to mikvah a few times at that point, and it was still new to me, and i was still getting used to the whole ritual, and because of that one episode, i actually stopped going, and then gradually stopped practicing for many years. it wasn’t until recently that i came back to odoxy.

what the ffb community needs to do, instead of snickering and criticizing, is to give support (yes, i realize that many odox communities are very supportive) and constantly remind themselves that there are jews out here who struggle just to remember the things that most ffb’s learned in kindergarden.

This poor woman actually stopped using the mikvah and practicing T"H and all other mitzvot because a mikvah attendant criticized her for having trouble with the brocha? Instead of helping her? As familiar with the "basic brocha on a mitzvah" (asher kidishanu...) as many of us are, it's generally posted on the wall (in many mikva'ot) for a reason!!!! It's easy to trip up on the words, especially if you can't see the poster without glasses or contacts, or to just blank for a moment, since after all, you're standing there naked, feeling exposed and vulnerable in the water, which I would assume isn't the most comfortable situation for most of us! How dare she!?! (The attendant, not the woman using the mikvah)

Okay, I'll stop steaming out my ears now, and I'll jump down from my soapbox in just another minute, but as I said, I was deeply disturbed by this woman's comment. Before I end, I just want to say, please, please, please, anyone who is in the position of being an attendant, make it easier, not harder! And for G-d's sake (literally), don't yell or intimidate, or laugh or poke fun at someone using the mikvah. We don't want to drive her away from the mitzvah entirely!

It's been a long time. I just today had the werewithall to look at the sight. TH and Mikvah have been so far out of my line of sight for so long I couldn't wrap my head around it.

BH things have been good. And I've been able to see a few(!) positive aspects of not going to the mikvah. I don't miss the counting, I don't miss the bedikahs, I don't miss the last minute before shkiah bedikas, I don't miss tracking down a Rov. I have discovered the joy (and impracticality) of a pedicure with polish! and sparkles! And I don't feel it's frivoulous because I don't have to worry about taking it off in a few weeks!

But of course, now, I've begun dating. And I've begun to think about the idea of being with a man again and the idea of keeping TH again. And while I still miss the idea of going to the mikvah, in some ways it seems ephemeral - hard to nail down, hard to imagine - kind of like when I was single and when I was a kallah. There is an unknown charachter to it - what will it be like to keep TH with someone else? It was intimate, me, my (ex) husband, and the mikvah lady (and occasionally the rov), and that was it. (Okay so that last sentence sounds like Menage a Trois, but you know what I mean).

IMYH I will someday meet my bashert (it should be soon), but what will it mean to keep TH with someone other than my ex? What I mean is that is was something special and intimate between us, how will that dynamic change with a new husband? I get the sense that the first time may feel like I am violating some sacred vow or connection.

For a guy I can't stand. Weird ain't it?

For those who haven't been keeping up, I'm on two forms of birth control now: a low-dose pill and a diaphragm. This is because a medication that I'm taking compromises the effectiveness of the pill. It's just as well that I have backup, because I can be a bit of a scatterbrain. Case in point: Last month, when I came back from the mikvah, I forgot to use the diaphragm.

I tried not to worry too much, since I did have some protection from the pill. I didn't tell my husband, so as not to make him unnecessarily anxious. All the same, I was hoping that my period would come on the early side and reassure me. Usually, it comes on Monday or Tuesday. By Wednesday, I began to get nervous and told my husband.

All the next day I was worried and confused. I knew that we couldn't afford a child and that if I was pregnant I'd have to go off my meds, which might have done some harm already. But the maternal urge is very strong in some women, and I couldn't help feeling a wave of irrational excitement when I thought about having a baby. I browsed the web, reading up on signs of early preganancy and health tips for preganant women. I speculated on whether our apartment was big enough for a young child. And I worried about the lack of responsibility that I'd exhibited in various areas of life in the recent past. Could I get my career back on track? Could I care for an infant? Could I possibly do both at once?

When I didn't menstruate by Thursday morning, I went to the drug store to buy a home pregnancy test. It was too early to get the 99% accuracy that the tests advertise, but Husband and I figured that we might as well have a little bit more information by Shavuot. False positives are very rare even at early stages, and if my reading was negative, at least we'd know that the odds were on our side.

I took the test and set a timer for two minutes, the amount of time it takes to yield a result. My whole body was tingling. I closed my eyes, not sure what I was hoping for. When I opened them, I saw a blue minus sign on the strip. The tingling stopped and my breathing returned to normal. Between the pill and the strip, the odds of my being pregnant were now quite low.

I took another test this morning and got the same result. This didn't surprise me. It isn't uncommon to miss a period when taking horemonal birth control; I've missed one before myself. But this was the first time that I really, seriously thought that I might be pregnant. It's a great relief to know that I'm not, but the irrational part of me that was excited before is now a little bit sad.

Ah, well. I guess this makes up for the month when I had to go to the mikvah twice.

This haunting feeling that something was missing lay over me the whole week. The first inkling that something was strange was when I realized I had a chance of getting that elusive day 5 hefsek! Okay, so maybe it was only day 5 (and not 6) if you don't count the spotting on day 0, but I've always counted this way, and still never gotten a day 5 hefsek taharah before. So I tried anyway, and surprise number two was that it worked!

There was a bit of anxiety over where I'd be going to mikvah (That's a story in itself, which I may post about eventually!) when half way through the week dh uncovered the notice from the local mikvah that it would be closed for repairs.

And that was when I realized. I was perhaps anxious about the hoops I jumped through to figure out how to obtain an appointment (actually making the appointment was the easy part, it was figuring out who to talk to that led me in circles!). I was maybe nervous about the longer drive and timing it so that I arrived on-time. (I can do early and I can do late, but promptness has often been about as elusive for me as that day 5 hefsek.) I was somewhat apprehensive about visiting a mikvah I'd never been to before. But I wasn't the least bit scared.

Now, some of you may be thinking, okay, Desde, this is what, your third post about not being scared of the water? We hear you, you're not scared anymore, get over it, okay? But please understand, being scared of the water has colored my entire life, even before I was observant. It took on additional importance when I first decided that I would be living an Orthodox lifestyle and learned about the mikvah's prominent role in that lifestyle. It gave me panic attacks when I became engaged and started Kallah classes.

It hung over me each time I made a hefsek taharah and started counting the days until my next mikvah visit. I tried not to think about what I was counting toward, trying to instead focus on the reunion with my husband. Each month was a balance of putting off making that appointment so I wouldn't have to think about it, and making it early enough that I didn't have the additional fact of not yet having an appointment to panic about. I forced myself to make the trip to the mikvah. I did my preparations, (actually, I'm surprised that I've never been obsessive-compulsive about the preparations, so that at least I had no excuse besides my fear for not calling myself "ready") and took an extra few minutes to compose myself, searching for something else I hadn't checked, but finding nothing, before calling for the attendant. I then had to compose myself again in the water before each dunk, gathering my courage each time. My fear was so very REAL and so very PRESENT, a constant companion.

I hesitate to say I miss it, but I definitely notice its absence. So I counted the days, without any fear. I (mostly) prepared at home, without any fear. I drove to the mikvah, without any fear. I finished up my preparations there, without any fear. I called for the attendant, made small talk while she checked my hands and feet and picked three million hairs off my back, without any fear. I entered the water, without any fear. I took a moment to compose myself before each dunk... to daven for myself, and others, not to gather courage. And it was a much shallower mikvah than I am used to, so I had to make an extra effort to get all the way under, but I did it without any fear. I did it all without any fear.

And while once I was afraid (ha!) that my mitzvah was somehow diminished through the lack of fear, this time I exulted in my lack of fear. Like a cancer patient in (permanent!) remission who will always be a "survivor," I have survived and surmounted my fear, and while it no longer follows me, it haunts me by its absence, and adds an extra dimension to my observance.

I went to my gyn today and we're going to try me on an extended cycle. I think this is my long-term dream fulfilled. When I first started getting my period I dreamt of designing (and building) a machine that could suck out all the ickyness and let me get on with my active lifestyle. When I added t'h to the mix (it's been almost a year!), my husband wasn't so upset by the constant interruption but I was still dreaming of this mystical machine. I'm sure this will help us get through those last little bumps too... He actually made a niddah joke last night (I had extended this cycle because I just couldn't handle another period *so soon* he hadn't really cared one way or the other. His joke suprised and made me smile). I'm excited. I have a pile of literature to read up on and some questions to double check on the nishmat website. Yay!

I knew it was, on paper at least, the right thing to do. Touch with an erva is forbidden. I was a nidda, and therefore an erva to my beloved fiancée. Every hug, every hand-holding- assur at least derabanan, possibly deoraita. But one magic dip and- not even a derabanan.

We’d stopped being shomer negiah three months into our courtship, with firm agreements as to “this far and no further.” I knew we would never transgress an issur karet, and aside from the terminology of issur and heter, we were both totally committed to not having sex before we got married. Going to the mikva seemed out of the question for us.

For one, it would put me in the awkward position of living out an urban legend, the frum single girl at the mikva. I thought casually about buying a twenty-dollar ring to match my engagement ring, throwing on a scarf and heading out to the suburbs. Or going to the heimish mikva, not all the women who go there wear wedding bands anyway.

I grew up in a very intellectually open household. Knowledge of mikva and sex and holiness was as accessible as the English books on Nidda I devoured as a teen and later in college from the original sources. I knew how to do a bedika, could have told you what was and wasn’t a hatzitza according to who and why. I wanted to go. It would have been so easy. Hafifa at home, clip my nails short, untangle my hair, hide it under a hat- inconspicuous enough in wintertime- pumice scrub on my heels and elbows, scabs carefully peeled away, nail polish meticulously removed.

We decided to go through with it. I sat with him and hugged him one last time. We were going to be shomer negiah through my next period and I’d count 7 clean. Then I’d prep and we’d make the trip out together. He’d be waiting for me outside, I wouldn’t be alone. We were both glowing with the excitement of choosing goodness, righteousness, and purity.

I cut up an old white t-shirt. Inspected the cloths. Made a hefsek on day 7. Bedikot, bedikot, and more bedikot. They hurt a bit, (more than I expected really, I’d used tampons before), even though the cloth was soft and thin.

I got back from work early, about to get in the bath and soak. It had been a cold, grey, unfriendly day and I certainly needed a hug and an its-all-going-to-be-ok more than an unknown trip to a place of utter nakedness where my flimsy disguise could be pulled aside at any moment. Something in the way I’d done my nails, some innocent remark I would let slip- anything could tip the mikva lady off that I wasn’t your standard scarf-wearing-but-modern housewife. I hated more than anything this Sabbatean inversion, this lie necessary to become pure. Sometimes, something just feels weird or wrong, even if it is intellectually honest or a better option halakhically.

I called him and let him know that we weren’t going to the mikva that night. I explained to him that even if he came with me, I would still be utterly alone and exposed, and I didn’t think I could bear it. He understood.

~ Bat Planya

Bat Planya is a very ordinary observant girl in her twenties who reads more than
she should. She lives in a major metropolitan area and has had dreams about mikvaot. She is very into sociology and halakha, although she sometimes struggles with both.

I have a confession to make: I show my questionable bedikot to my father. As I alluded to in my comment to this post, my father is my Local Orthodox Rabbi. Throughout my life I have asked him questions that run the full gamut of Halakha. Why should this change once I got married and had a few more questions?

To be sure, it wasn’t so simple. I remember the first time I had a question. My husband’s Rabbi does not leave near us, so we decided that it would be most convenient to show it to my father who lives in our neighborhood. I walked into my parents' house with my bedikah cloth in my jacket pocket and went straight to my mother.

Me: “Um, Mom? I have a niddah question. Well, it’s actually not so much a question as it is a cloth. Do you think it would be weird if I showed to Abba?”

Mom: “No! He looks at these all the time. It is just a color on a white background to him. It’s no big deal.”

So off I went to show my father. He took it from me, asked me what part of my Shiva Nekiim it was from, and opened the front door to look at it in the light. He squinted, changed angles and squinted again, then pronounced “No good.” (This is the only time he has told me a bedikah is bad, by the way.)

And so our Rabbi-Questioner relationship was further cemented. I will admit it was awkward. And I will further admit that it has not gotten less awkward over the years. Yet, I am happy with our arrangement.

For one, you cannot beat the convenience. We live five minutes apart. I know where to reach him at all times, and he will pick up my calls even when he won’t answer yours. I will never go through the experience of dropping off a bedikah cloth through the mail slot only to find out that the Rabbi is on vacation for three weeks. My father was once away and I had cloth that needed to be looked at, so my husband brought it to another local Rabbi. It took him 2 ½ days to get back to me! He had no idea whether or not I was waiting to go to the mikvah. I cannot imagine going through that on a semi-regular basis.

More importantly, I have proven to myself that I am committed to Taharat ha-Mishpacha as a halakhic entity. Though I understand that it is difficult for any woman to become accustomed to showing her bodily secretions to a strange man, most would admit that there is an added discomfort in showing it to one’s father. Yet, by showing my bedikah cloths to my father I have shown myself that no matter how I may personally feel about it, Halakha is Halakha and to a large extent exists separately from my daily fears and anxieties. It is this great abstract body where the average person cannot distinguish between brown and red and all of that has absolutely nothing to do with your daughter’s sex life. It emphasizes for me that not only am I committed to this particular detail, I am committed to the entire enterprise of Taharat ha-Mishpacha, and by extension, the rest of Halakha as well. And besides, once you’ve shown a bedikah to your father you can show it to anyone.

To confirm the night I visit the mikveh I now need only look out the window. If it is raining then I probably have a mikveh night. Ok, this is a bit tongue-in-cheek, but I just find it highly amusing. I end up taking 3 preperation showers/baths: A bath at home, a shower on my walk to the mikveh, and another shower there. The good news is that it stops raining long enough for me to walk back home. :)

On a serious note, I am having some problems with my calendar. I liked the vertical format I had used in the past and created my current one by hand. It's nice and all, but I'm still looking for the perfect calendar which will integrate discretely with my daily one so that I don't forget my Hefsek Taharah or the bedikot, especially with daylight savings time. Does anyone know if Hebrew calendars exist (preprinted) for various ringed-binder systems? That might help me out. I'm thinking of something with stickers or fill-in-the-circule, but not sure what. Any advice is welcome.

I approached my first after-baby mikvah appointment with trepidation. No, nothing to do with my husband, my feelings had everything to do with the mikvah itself. It had been on the order of 11 months since my last visit, when I had suddenly realized that I wasn't actually afraid of the water anymore. And I worried that I had imagined it, that maybe I was actually still afraid of putting my head under the water. In fact, I wasn't sure if I was more worried about still being afraid, or of having no fear.

As I walked down the steps, I knew that I was not still wary of the water, that I felt no fear at all. The attendant, someone I knew socially but had not seen at the mikvah before, was completely unaware that I had ever been afraid of the water, and I felt no compulsion to enlighten her. I skipped my usual shpiel completely. No explaining that I was terrified of putting my head under, no mention that I had a heter for only one Kosher tevilah, and that having that heter made it possible for me to get the three, et al. No, I simply told her that I dip 3 times, making the bracha after the first dip. Out of habit, I had brought a washcloth with me, so I gave it to her to hold until I would use it to cover my head during the brocha. (Still not sure how I feel about the need for that, but I've fallen into the habit, as I said.)

I composed myself before each dip, formulating my prayers each time, (I can't think while under the water) then pulled myself under by the handrail, letting go before resurfacing.

"Kosher"
"Kosher"
"Kosher"

And then I came out of the mikvah, got dressed, paid her, and went home to my husband.

And yet, was that it? While I don't claim to have felt that deep connection to other women, past, present and future, who have used and will use the mikvah, I've always felt something after, stronger somehow, empowered by the knowledge that I had once again conquered my fear, and the security of knowing that my mitzvah observance was pure: Obviously, I was doing this only because I believe it to be a G-d given commandment. Without that, you wouldn't have gotten me into the building! But this time I hadn't had my fear to overcome. Was my mitzvah somehow lessened by this lack of fear, by not having this huge wall to climb over? When we don't worship idols because we don't have a Yetzer Hara (evil urge) for worshiping idols, are we stronger or weaker than those who felt the pull to worship idols and overcame it?

I don't have all the answers, obviously, but in the days that followed, I realized that I did feel different. Not stronger, as in the past, but somehow lighter. Like a heavy weight I hadn't even known I was carrying was lifted off my shoulders. And I realized that perhaps Becky was right when she suggested that the removal of my fear was my "reward" for fulling the mitzvah in spite of my phobia, and a sign that I no longer needed this fear. And I think that my future mikvah visits won't be less of a mitzvah for me: All those past visits will accompany me, and remain a part of me. I will remember them each time, and I will give praise to G-d for removing my fear... and using the mikvah, like every mitzvah we do, will continue to bring me closer to him.

Okay, so they told me, but I wasn't paying attention. Or maybe I just didn't have the information I could use to process what they told me. I was too busy getting annoyed about doing bedikot, and going to the mikvah, and covering my hair. When I was given a talk about the dangers of emotional distance during harchakot, or when my kallah teacher said, "I know you think it will be just like being shomer negiah now, but it's different when you have that intimacy and then it's taken away," I sort of acknowledged what they said but didn't really process it. How could I? I didn't have all the information. I didn't have the slightest idea what intimacy was.

Well, everything else went better than expected. My first visit to the mikvah was pleasant. Covering my hair turned out to be, while not something I'm thrilled with, not half as uncomfortable or annoying as my mind had built it up to be. I got married, and hugged my husband (husband!) for the first time in the yichud room. And partly because we had agreed we needed time to ease into things, and partly because of our comic cluelessness over how exactly to go about said things, I didn't become a niddah until we had been married for nearly a week. Despite the sheer exhaustion of sheva brachot, it was one of the best weeks of my life. In fact, when I did become a niddah, there was almost a sense of "it's about time" - like life had to become normal again, and this was the first step. I pulled the beds apart and went to shower without a second thought except, "I should probably review the harchakot again."

And then, the first night of the first niddah period of my marriage, I cried myself to sleep. At first I didn't even know why I was crying, but I couldn't hold back the tears.

My misery lasted for about four days before I started feeling normal again, but they were among the most unhappy days of my life – even though I had just gotten married a week ago, even though the week before had been one of the happiest weeks of my life. Then it got better, and I started feeling normal again. I thought maybe it was just the first time, because it was such a shock, because the method of becoming a niddah the first time is so discongruous. (Not a real word, I know, but it’s the best word I can come up with.) About a month later I became a niddah again, and for the first day and a half everything was fine. We were visiting my family, and I was distracted. The misery didn’t start until the car ride home.

I am now a niddah for the third time in my life, and even worse than the pain (crying myself to sleep, check; being ridiculously emotional about other things in my life, check) is the thought of going through this periodically for the next 30 years or so. I can’t do it. I’ve been through a lot in my life, and I think I’m a strong person; but all those problems, no matter how insoluble they seemed, were at least understood. This time, I have no idea what’s happening to me. Why do I feel this way? It’s not like my husband pays less attention to me when I’m a niddah; in fact, he spends a lot of time trying to make me feel better even though he has no understanding of what I’m going through. (And how could he, when even I don’t know what’s going on with me?) I feel like I miss him, but he’s right here.

I need help. I need help in understanding what I feel and how, and – if possible – finding ways to make this less intense, to make me feel better. I know from talking to my friends that there are some women who find niddah nothing more than a mild annoyance, but I know from reading this site that there women who find it as hard as I do (and thank goodness for this site, by the way). So it is here that I turn for help. Does anyone have any wisdom to offer me? Advice? Suggestions? Anything? Please?

- Jamie

Jamie is a recently-married woman in her late 20s. She is Orthodox, and fully committed even if not fully convinced.

I feel burned. I was so excited when I heard about this blog. I loved the mikvah. I loved going, I loved prepping, I loved knowing I was maintaining a mitzvah that goes back so long. My heart stops when I read about mikva’ot found at Masada or buried under buildings in Europe or hidden away cisterns in S’fat. The stories that we’ve all heard about Russian women chipping through the ice in frigid temperatures so they can immerse gives me goosebumps. The danger women put themselves in to immerse during inquisitions, progroms, the Holocaust just astounds me. Would I be as strong as they, I often wondered.

I even liked the wait. The first week of “freedom” – not having to respond to pressure from my husband, not having to feel bad if I wasn’t in the mood, enjoying the space in the bed and the shyness of covering up. The second week of anticipation, building to frustration and annoyance. Isn’t it mikvah night, yet?! Then of course, there’s the actual mikvah night. Full of expectation, nervousness, anxiety, but regardless of how we – ahem – observed the night, finally being able to fall asleep in each other’s arms again. Bliss. I couldn’t wait to write about all that, and share my enthusiasm and maybe, possibly, even get someone else to start observing taharat ha’mishpacha.

Now I just find it annoying and painful. Yet another month in a long, unbroken chain of months of going to the mikvah. A long, unbroken chain that will keep going and going and going until menopause hits. Everything is compounded. I’m dealing with mild depression as a result of the infertility treatments not working, which is pounded into my head each month when I get my period, and then when I get to the mikvah: “YOU’RE NOT PREGNANT. YOU NEVER WILL BE. And you’ll have to do all of this again next month. And again. And again.” So I get more depressed. And because, while I’m niddah, I can’t get any hugs or other physical comfort from my husband, I get more depressed. Then comes the mikvah, and well, you get the idea.

So it makes it very hard to be enthusiastic about mikvah. And very hard to write about it. I had no idea so much time had passed since my last post. I made a commitment to post a certain amount and I have not been able to live up to that. And I didn’t want to be a stick-in-the-mud, only writing “boo hoo, poor me” posts, but that’s all I’m feeling lately. So if y’all will just bear with me, I might not have the most upbeat posts, but I’ll at least try to do better about posting at all.

It’s funny how we mark time as we pass through the different parts of our lives.

As children, we mark time by our birthdays. I’m five and a quarter. Six and a half. Seven and three-quarters. I’ll be sixteen next month. Two more months until I can drive. One more week until I can drink (legally).

As single adult women, we mark time by how long we’ve been single. Gosh, I’m graduating high school/seminary/college, how much longer until I meet the guy? I’m not getting any younger. This is the age my mother got married at. This is the age my sister got married at. My friends are all married, why aren’t I. Two more years and I’ll be an old maid.

And as married women, we learn to count time by the mikvah. Five days until I can try for a hefsek. Seven days of bedikas. What time is the rov answering shaylas? Two hours of preparation time. How many weeks until I’m in niddah again? I’m pregnant – eight months off from the mikvah! A beautiful baby – but six weeks away from my husband.

* * *

Today I got my period. For the second time since the Get. It wasn’t as bad as I thought it would be. The first time my period came, it was on yom tov morning, it caught me off-guard, and I cried on and off the whole day. I cried most of that night. The futility of my reproductive organs hit me full-force.

I have struggled most of my adult life with irregular periods, long periods, lack of ovulation and menstruation, and infertility. My first child was born through medical assistance. G-d somehow decided I now merited fertility, and promptly made me pregnant (surprise!) less than a year after my first child was born. After my second child’s birth G-d then decided he would bless me with even better fertility – regular ovulation. With great sadness (because I was nervous to take the chance of having another baby in such a troubled marriage), I started using a diaphragm for birth control after my second child’s birth. And does G-d have a sense of humor? Of course he does. Not only was I ovulating, buy my cycle became much, much shorter than it had been for all my adult life. From 38 days to 31 days. Here I am, more fertile than I have ever been in my entire life, and I can’t get pregnant. The loss felt huge, enormous, overwhelming.

And here I am, divorced (!), extremely fertile, and unable to bring neshamas down from atzilus to asiyah*.

* * *

The first cycle after the Get, I caught myself still counting, habitually. Okay today is the first day of my period, I can try to make hefsek on Wednesday, which means if everything goes right I’ll toivel next Wednesday, but more than likely Friday, how will I make arrangements for Friday night? And then I caught myself. No more bedikas, no more counting, no more “Kosher, Kosher, Kosher.” No one to put perfume on for. No one to come home to. No one to announce to, “I have toiveled myself.” No one to hug.

It was very sad. Very sad, indeed.

This second cycle, I was expecting my period – I knew it would appear any day, my breasts are tender (also a gift from Hashem after the birth of my second child. Hey, thanks G-d.), I have looked at the calendar. My fingernails and toenails are getting long; I usually let them grow until I have to toivel. It still catches me off guard, but not more than usual. The feeling of loss has lessened greatly, mostly because I’m too busy with life to think about it too deeply. I have prepared mentally for the worst (that I will not merit to get remarried and hence not have more children), but am hoping for the best (that within the next year or two I will merit an amazing husband who will want to have more children and be able to support them).

In the interim, I am stuck between the potential and the actual. Between heaven and earth.

*Atzilus – world of “Emanation,” highest of the Four Worlds, connected with etzel, i.e. nearest to the Source of creation, the Ein Sof, hence still in a state of Infinity.
Asiyah – fourth of the Four Worlds, generally translated by “Action.”…Asiyah should be understood as the final stage in the creative process.

At first I was apprehensive about my approaching labor. After all, childbirth would render me niddah, forcing a separation from my husband. After 9 months of being tahor, I dreaded once again being niddah.

But then as the contractions grew more intense, and I shifted into real labor, my focus shifted as well. Shifted and narrowed. I was forced to concentrate on each contraction as it washed over me, and I no longer wanted to prolong labor. My husband's presence in the delivery room was
important to me, but he sort of faded into the background. After all, he could offer me nothing in the way of physical support, being forbidden to touch me once labor began in earnest. But his emotional support was important to me, and very real. I needed him there: If he had been absent, I would have felt the wrongness, but since he was there, it was just part of the bigger picture, part of the harmony of the universe.

And then suddenly the baby was here, (wasn't there supposed to be a pushing stage? I think I missed it!) and being niddah meant nothing at all. I was exhilarated and exhausted, and between the baby nursing and the other kids climbing on me, the better see their new sister, I think if one more person touched me I would have screamed!

And my body is so tired, tired from pregnancy and tired from delivery. I do need time to recover before resuming my physical relationship with my husband. At first the harchakot seemed a bit silly, since I wasn't up for much more than cuddling anyway! But I remembered that he hadn't just gone through childbirth, and so they were mainly for him. And after a week or two, I needed them too, as I began to long for his touch once more, however much my body is not yet recovered.

While I "miss" the physical side of our relationship, I remember that my husband truly is my best friend, and we can relate on so many different levels. In fact, we have to remember to stop talking late into the night so that we can both get the sleep we need!

And I realize again the beauty of this arrangement, that not only gives me time to rest and recover, and helps us to develop the other aspects of our relationship, but also insures that our physical intimacy will resume, without any mixed signals, without each side wondering if
the other is "ready" yet. At some point I'll tell him I've made an appointment for the mikvah, and when I go, we'll both be on the same page, and (more than) ready for our reunion.

(I wrote this some time ago, but had to put it down and today was the first I was able to come back to it - please forgive me if the tenses are off.)

Last night I did the hardest thing I've ever done in my life. I went to the mikvah knowing I wasn't going to be using it for a long time.

I went to the mikvah knowing that when I came home I was going to ask for a get.

It's a long time coming in my marriage and I have been trying, doing, changing, and very much turning a blind eye for most of the years of my marriage. But when Rabbonim, Rebbetzins, therapists, and friends all tell you it's time, it's over and it's okay, then it really is okay.

I wasn't sure how I was going to react or be able to do it, and so I asked my best friend to call one of the mikvah ladies (we'll call her R) whom I consider a friend (outside the mikvah) and ask her to come to the mikvah and be my mikvah lady. "Just tell her I need a friend tonight," I said. Mercifully, R said she would be at the mikvah for the first hour, and that she would be happy to help me however I needed.

I splurged and got a manicure and pedicure, because I thought, hey, when am I going to be able to afford this again and when am I going to need these again?

I went to the mikvah and got in the tub. And I talked to Hashem. And I asked for help and strength and wisdom. And I did my prep. Surprisingly, I am usually very madayick (strict) about my preparations, and this time I wasn't. Okay, so maybe that shouldn't be a surprise, but to me it was.

As I lay there in the water, flossing my teeth, Hashem gave me words of strength to repeat to myself. I prepped as fast as I could, so that I wouldn't miss the opportunity to toivel with R. The only other option that night was the tactless Israeli lady because the head mikvah lady (who is a sweet and gentle bubbie) was out of town at a simcha. I didn't think I would be able to do it with Mrs. Tactless (she's the one I wrote about here).

Usually when I prep, I leave my teeth brushing for last because I always call for the mikvah lady first and then brush while waiting for her. Today I didn't want to take the chance. I hurried through my teeth and buzzed for the mikvah lady.

Surprise, surprise, she wasn't there yet. SO GLAD I rushed! I went back over my teeth while waiting. And I waited. And waited. And waited. 30 minutes after I originally buzzed, I buzzed again. I didn't want to take any chances with him "going to sleep because I'm tired." She had just arrived and there were a bunch of ladies ahead of me. Gam tzu L'tova!

So I waited some more and then R finally knocked on my door. I opened the door and she smiled at me. Then she took me into the mikvah room and put her hands on my face and said, "Can you please tell me what's going on shayna maideleh?"

And with that I burst into tears and spilled the whole thing out to her. "I don't think I can do this. This is SO hard R." I said to her. We spoke for about 10 minutes while she encouraged me. She asked me if I had spoken to the Rov about toiveling in light of the situation. I told her I had and he had told me I needed to toivel in case my husband tried to force himself on me sexually(although I doubted he would and he didn't). And plus, I wanted some comfort from him and a hug if you can believe it.

She encouraged me some more. She checked my fingernails and toe nails and I went down to the mikvah. A few times I turned to go back up because I felt like I couldnt' do it. And finally I got to the bottom of the steps and with tears running down my checks I immersed. I broke through the water and covered my head and said the brocha, my voice cracking.

And then I davened. I davened that Hashem should either heal my marriage or show me the right way. I davened that Hashem should help my husband to heal and do the right thing by our children. I davened that Hashem should help me heal from this. I davened that Hashem should help me have strength. And I davened that Hashem should only give me Ohr Ein Sof (Infinite light) and revealed good.

Then I dunked the rest of the times. I came out and R gave me a big hug and said, "You can do this. You're a strong woman. Yasher Koach." I tied my robe around me, put my glasses on and she touched me again, saying it was a segulah (for what I'm not exactly sure as I wasn't getting pregnant that night). She led me back to my room and wished me well. I got dressed and buzzed to the attendant that I was ready to go. She let me out, I washed my hands, had some popcorn, and decided to walk home instead of taking a car service.

I walked out into the hot, muggy night, and I felt truly, for the first time in all my years in using the mikvah, that I had somehow gained that elusive feeling of rebirth and renewal. I felt a new woman, powerful and strong. I went home and told him I wanted a get. I didn't falter or stumble, I didn't cry, I stayed strong. And he said he would give it to me. And I was a new woman.

..Moshiach, of course. But along the way, also awaiting the end of pregnancy and the birth of a new baby. And as the birth neared, I found myself with very mixed feelings.

As the days of non-productive contractions dragged on, (this often happens when you've had a lot of babies, as I have) I found my focus was not on this new life I would (with G-d's help) merit to bring into the world within the next week or so, but on the fact that childbirth would leave me niddah. And all I wanted was for my husband to hold me and never let go.

As he put it, the baby will need me more than he will for a little while, and I'll need the space and time to recover from the trauma to my body (and let's face it, childbirth is traumatic to a woman's body.)

And yet I feel so silly and shallow, because becoming niddah is my focus, and shouldn't I instead be joyfully anticipating the birth of my baby?

It will be hard, though. Hard to not reach for him as he passes by, hard to remember not to pass things to him (after all, it's been 9 months since we had to worry about such things), hard to not be able to hand him the baby. We've done this before, many times, and we'll adjust, settle into the "new" old routine, have somewhere safe to put the baby for passing in most rooms of the house, even remember to put something on the table between us... and although it will be longer than the 2 weeks of a standard cycle, this too shall pass, and mikvah night will eventually come. Somehow knowing all that doesn't make it any easier!

For me, PMS is not pre-menstrual, or post-menstrual (as it used to for me) but now pre-mikveh.

After I get my period ceases for the cycle, I generally get moody : very cranky, irritable, snappish, headaches, total horror to be around. I don't think it's a iron thing.. I've tested fine. Anyway, it generally ends about a week after I stop bleeding. Now, that time frame has different meaning for me and my husband.

Now my husband has something tangible to use to guage my mood swings. Side benefit ? He now is looking forward to mikveh night! This past time *he* wrote it in his calendar and then reminded me of it (since I hadn't added it to my civil/daily) calendar yet. He was quite excited. We still a bit unsure of remembering kisses and things are now ok after I came back but our entire relationship in this time-period has improved greatly. :)

So the last time I went to mikvah, I had an epiphany. The mikvah attendant was new to me (well, new as an attendant, I had met her socially before) so I launched into my usualy spiel about being afraid of the water, and having a heter to only get one Kosher tevilah, but always trying for three anyway, and how having the heter had helped me not need to use it... (For the history of my fear of the water and mikvah use in spite of it, see here, here, and here.)

And while I was talking, I changed the beginning to "When I first started using the mikvah, I was afraid of the water, so..." Half way through, I heard what I had said, and realized that I was not afraid! I hadn't even noticed exactly when the fear disappeared. I'm still not sure I wouldn't be afraid in another setting, were I to try putting my head under water at the beach, for example, instead of for the mitzvah of mikvah. But it didn't matter.

I wasn't afraid!

Naturally, the mikvah lady invited me to come back during the week in a bathing suit and "practice." "It's great that you aren't afraid," she said, "But you should be comfortable." Why everyone always jumps to try to get me there in a bathing suit, I have no idea. I didn't even know where my bathing suits had been packed away, or if they even still fit, not having used them in 10 years or so. (I since found them, just so I would know where they were, but haven't tried them on.) But I wasn't interested, then, or ever. What I really wanted to do was go home and savor the realization that I wasn't afraid!

So that's what I did.

Why is it that when I put on white underwear and start counting I become a walking disaster area? (the same happens when I wear white tops or bottoms too, but I stopped doing that).

I look at ink and I'm covered. I look at a knife and I have a nasty cut. I get bruises everywhere (well, I do that all the time anyway). I get blisters all over my feet. My feet decide to peel everywhere.

It's as if all this stuff *knows* I'm preparing to go to mikveh and wants to make my life difficult.

At my most recent mikveh dip, my feet decided to be nice and stopped peeling, the blisters didn't pop (until after I got home) ... but the few days right before ... I was covered from head to toe in various pigments and cuts.

I am lucky that I've recently had this very nice mikveh lady who is gentle and kind about loose skin and nails. I've gotten lucky and by the time of mikveh I get all the ink and things off.

But it is an interesting phenomenon. Maybe it goes along with all my lost socks...

Before my wedding, I took an extra birth control pill each day for three days. I needed to put off my period for about twenty-four extra hours to be in the safe zone. As luck would have it, I got it the next evening.

It wasn't until a year later that I realized what the implications of this timing were: each year, for the next five years (provided that I remained on birth control), my wedding anniversary would fall during my period. For my first anniversary, I decided to repeat what I'd done for my wedding, taking an extra pill each day for three days. I did it even though the extra pills make me sick to my stomach, because of some silly notion that on your anniversary, you're supposed to have sex.

This year, for my second anniversary, I let it go. Insetad of lingerie, I put on a dress. We went to a nice restaurant, then came home and relaxed. It got me thinking: frum women (who aren't always pregnant) must face this sort of situation pretty often. Nearly half the time (as opposed to my 1/4), the "special occasion" sex touted by secular culture is out of the question. You have to come up with different kinds of presents, different kinds of celebrations. Some might say that's better than always being able to have sex; it gets you to focus on other aspects of your relationship. Still, it must be frustrating.

On the other hand, frum couples get something that secular folks don't: a "special occasion" for sex every month. Maybe that's better than birthdays and anniversaries. You can't have everything...

Unbe-freaking-lievable. My hefsek tahara from DAY SEVEN was no good.

I suppose I should consider myself lucky the one from Day Eight was ok, right? I mean, they could have gone on being red forever. And all the people who helped make it happen: my husband who made the phone calls and drove me over to the rabbi's, the rabbi who made time to see me at 11 PM on a Saturday night, my agent, the Academy, you know, all of that. I am certainly grateful: I do thank all those people.

But I'm also ticked off. This after I got to mikvah a day late last month, and then my cycle ended abruptly on Day 26, leaving me only about 10 days to be with my husband. And the upcoming month is probably our last chance to be together for a good long time, because from what I hear, sex pretty much goes out the window once you're doing IVF. I had a lot riding this month on getting to mikvah as early as possible.

Maybe it was the progesterone I was taking after my last treatment? I don't know. I've been told your period can be heavier afterward, because the progesterone's function is to support your uterine lining building up, so the result is there's more lining to shed than usual. But I'm not sure heavier is supposed to translate into longer. And it's not like this doesn't happen sometimes on a completely unmedicated cycle, too. In fact this period was a lot like the one on Pesach - I chalked that one up to my polyp, but the polyp has been removed.

I don't know what the lesson is supposed to be: learning that it's not under my control? I would think that lesson has been pretty well hammered in through years of infertility. I don't think there is a lesson here, only a challenge. A series of challenges. And right now the challenge is: keeping a lid on my blood pressure.

One Friday night, the subject came up at our table. One of our guests had served as a rabbi for a number of years, and his experiences working with congregants had led him to a particular perspective on the role of the mikvah attendant. He told us that before he had smicha ("ordination"), he was sometimes called upon to assist in various lifecycle ceremonies. At weddings and bar mitsvahs, he said, he always made a point of the fact that he was not yet a rabbi, and that if the family involved needed rabbinic guidance, they should turn to someone else. At funerals, however, he made no such point, and even went so far as to call himself "rabbi." He explained to us that people coping with a relative's death are very vulnerable, and they need the illusion of authority. His feeling was that the mikvah lady plays a similar role, presenting the illusion of authority to women in a vulnerable position. By comporting herself in an authoritative manner, she allows them to feel that they are performing the mitsvah correctly, with the sanction of someone who knows the rules.

My feelings on this asessment are mixed. It is logical, but is it accurate? For my own part, I'm much happier to be helped by one of the assistant mikvah ladies, who don't always seem sure of themselves, than by the head attendent, who has an air of authority -- the assistants make me feel like my sense of vulnerability is shared. In theory, this could be because I'm less concerned about the halachic side of tevilah than other mikvah-goers, but the impression I've gotten from previous discussions of this subject is that my feelings are shared.

It has ocurred to me that observant women today may be too educated to need or want the sort of false authority that their foremothers required. The reality, however, may be more complicated. Perhaps our needs are so different that there is no such thing as a one-size-fits-all mikvah lady. This would mean that no matter how an attendant conducts herself, she will make some women uncomfortable or unhappy.

Unfortunate if true. What do you think?

I was moved by a comment made by "visiting" over here.

I'm repeating her comment here so I can expand on it:

When I got married I was on birth control. When I got off, for the next year, I had a 24 day cycle. I feel this has deep ramifications for the turbulence that I am feeling in my marriage, even now, five years later. I got used to sleeping alone, I got used to not having DH to hold on to or support me physically. I also have a hard time transitioning from famine to flood (as another poster has mentioned.) I harbor resentment toward T"H in general. I harbor resentment toward my DH, when of course it is not his fault.

I ovulated regularly and of course could not get to the mikvah in time. So when I wanted to have sex I was not permitted. With me working and DH working, there were months when we were together once or twice. And of course there is the embarrassment of the mikvah lady looking at you like "weren't you just here?"

For some people, T"H seems to be a beautiful thing. But I wonder if they are just telling themselves that? To me it is not.

Ouch. This woman is obviously still hurting, 5 years later! and I feel for her. I don't think I would have put up with a 24 day cycle for a whole year! But maybe she didn't know there were other (chemical) options to delay ovulation? Maybe she wasn't working with a Rav who knew that and could have directed her to ask her doctor some very important questions? Or maybe she was, and it still took a year to get everything "under control."

But what I really wanted to address was that she grew to resent the halacha, to resent T"H. This pains me the most. Maybe I'm just blessed with a "pollyanna" personality, but I try to see the benefit in even the hard times. Maybe getting used to sleeping alone could be a good thing? Maybe being able to survive without constant physical support from your husband could be a good thing? Maybe you were supposed to take the time to work on the other aspects of your relationship? Maybe you were supposed to... oh, who knows.

As for people finding deep meaning and beauty in their observance of T"H, psychologically, "just telling themselves that" can and often does lead to actually believing it. And if finding that meaning and beauty makes it easier, than that too is only for the good.

No one ever said it was easy to be an Observant Jew. It's much easier today than it ever was... beautiful assortments of head coverings, a plethora of assorted prepackaged Kosher food available, jobs that don't require violating the Shabbos, shuls and mikvahs in practically every sizeable community... but easier isn't easy. We all agree that T"H is hard. And that we don't do it for the benefits, but that they do exist. But if you grow to resent the halacha, well, then you make it that much harder on yourself! I don't resent having to eat Kosher food, although sometimes it would be much easier to not bother. And I don't resent T"H, even when it means I sometimes can't have the physical contact I crave... because it's the way things are, and resenting it would only make me feel worse. Instead I seek to beautify the mitzvos, which in a way makes them easier to do.

I feel like I'm rambling here... did any of this make any sense?

Well. That was a first, and hopefully a last.

I had to miss mikvah night in order to make a shiva call.

We actually got home before the mikvah closed, but only by about half an hour. If I had run straight from the car to the mikvah, I think they might still have felt compelled to let me in.

But I remembered learning that if you haven't been able to start preparing before dark, it's especially important to take a full hour to prepare thoroughly, because there might be an added temptation to rush. It didn't seem right to impose on the mikvah staff to stay late when summer hours are already so late, and especially not this month, when there was no issue of fertility for us.

But I was also not sure it was right to give up when there was a remote chance I could be with my husband that night. I compromised and ran a bath while we tried to call the mikvah. The line was busy until 1 minute before closing time. When I got through, the attendant said they were closed.

I was lucky in that, as I said, it was not an issue of fertility this month. And I was lucky too, although very sad, that there was not a doubt in my mind where I was meant to be that night: at the shiva house, not at the mikvah.

But it was still a little antsy, sitting out the evening, wondering if we would somehow get home in time after all. And even after I knew that wasn't going to happen, and let it go -- it was hard to take seriously the fact that harchakot had to remain in place until tomorrow night. Why can't we just sleep in the same bed tonight? Look, I counted my seven days. I made my last bedikah. I'm an hour away from tehorah.

Except not.

It made me realize that for all I've gotten used to T"H, even found meaning in it, maybe there's some element of it that I still don't buy. Tehorah status normally coincides with my visit to the mikvah, so I've never had to tease the two things apart. I apparently take mikvah night seriously enough to obsess about it. But on a visceral level, do I feel any different after I get out of the water than I did before I got in? Do I really believe that dip in the water is what makes me transformed?

It's still a mystery.

All my menstruating life, I've had irregular periods. I've gone as long as 8 months without a period (I wasn't ovulating), but generally I fall in the 35-45 day range. In fact, over most of my married life, I've had a 33-38 day cycle averaging about 35 days long. Even after my pregnancies I reverted back to my predictable irregular/long cycle.

I have gotten use to it; it has it's pluses and minuses.

Plus - I only get my period about 9 times a year. I have a long Tahor time. I have trouble remembering the harchokas because of it. I usually feel free to not have to worry about is my period coming? Do I need to wear a black skirt just in case?

Minus - I only ovulate about 9 times a year. I have a lesser chance of getting pregnant because I'm ovulating less. Right now, while on birth control, this is not such a big deal.

So I made peace with the whole long/irregular cycle deal a long time ago. G-d and I made a deal - he'll let me have those babies (even with an infertility issue) and I won't complain about not ovulating so much.

But G-d is screwing with the deal now. The last 3 months my cycle has come the day after my benoni or chodesh. That's right. I've got a flipping 30 day cycle now. This is not okay G-d. This is definitely a violation of our deal.

I am not used to this. I've never had a cycle this short in my life. I feel like I barely got home from the mikvah and boom, I'm niddah again. How do people deal with this? Or people with 28 day cycles who can never seem to make hefsek until the seventh day (or later)?

I don't want to try and mess with "nature", I'm taking enough meds as it is, but I would like to try and figure out a way to make my period longer again. I've been menstruating the same way for 15+ years and this is a big change for me.

This is a long overdue post about an experience which I alluded to in my comment to Shifra's post here.

I too had gynecological surgery, which I was told would not make me a niddah even if I had spotting (which I did, but only on the day of and very minimal.) The surgery took place during my shiva nekiim, and five days after I was able to go to the mikvah (I did have to convince my doctor to let me go.) It was strange; I didn't bathe beforehand and some of my stitches were still visible, though they were not a problem. The stranger part, though was that there was no possiblity for sex, and I had been instructed to abstain for another week and a half.

While I am sure this is an interesting experiment for any couple who is observant of both the abstinence and the harchakot of TM, this was particularly interesting for me because of my issues with coming home from the mikvah. I have come to understand that the source of my tension at that time is the sudden change from one extreme to the next. A relationship that does not have even minor physical contact is suddenly transformed into a sexual one, and I don't think I handle the transition well. I blame this more on my own natural desires than on pressure from my husband (there is none) or on the halakhic "suggestion" to have sex on mikvah night. My body screams one thing and the little voice in my head that tells me it's fine to take it slow is overpowered.

The night I went to the mikvah the week of my surgery was different. For one thing, there was no possibility of sex, so I had no internal conflict. Also, I was still weak and sore from the procedure, I probably would not have wanted intercourse even if I had been allowed. With no hormones raging and no preconceived idea of where the night was headed I was actually able to enjoy the entire experience. For the first time I really appreciated the mikvah. I was not madly dashing to get home, and the mikvah itself was rejuvenating after my experience that week. Once I got home I had the time to appreciate the small gestures and the loving touches that don't necessarily lead anywhere (or definitely won't.) While I do appreciate these on some level usually, the feelings were much stronger after a two week separation. I was in an in-between place, and I was willing to take advantage of it at that moment.

I don't think I would wish for that experience again (even without the surgery part.) The next week and a half was filled with the same kind of longing that I experience during niddah, and that much longing is too much for one woman. What I can say is that this experience put the usual mikvah nights into perspective, and has helped to make it the kind of experience that I really want.

Okay, so I’ll put it right out there: sorry I haven’t posted. It hasn’t been a good month. Our first attempt at IVF failed, in spite of everything looking good and going well. So my mind was on things other than t’h and mikvah.

But now my mind is on t’h and mikvah because I got my period and am now faced with going back to the mikvah. I have to say, I didn’t really get what other infertile women were saying about the difficulties of facing the mikvah. On an intellectual level, yes, I got it. But now I understand. I so don’t want to face the mikvah again. And again. And again.

But it’s much warmer now. Maybe we’ll try the beach again.

I do have to say that I am extremely grateful, b"h, that my period came a few days after we got our negative results. It gave me and my husband a few blessed days of being able to hold and comfort each other. The hugs were a blessing.

Does anyone else have this phenomenon? When I come home from the mikvah, I'm STARVING. Ravishing hungry. I frequently eat a huge dinner of steak, mashed potatoes, spinach, etc. when I come home from the mikvah.

My theory is that there is some psychological connection between the chlorinated water of the mikvah and my childhood associations with swimming pools (also chlorinated water). There's something about swimming that makes me hungry - aren't your kids always hungry after swimming?

Does this happen to anyone else? Because maybe I'm just a bit mental with the mental associations.

My goodness, look at all the rebukes to this old request for an online niddah posek! Four in a row, with increasingly admonitory tone. It just goes to show you, I think, that many men have no idea how uncomfortable asking questions can be for a woman.

Yes, we do what we need to do for the sake of keeping the halacha, and yes, the rabbis are only in this l'sheym shamayim (for the sake of Heaven), and ok, in the end we get over it and it's fine. But it's not like it comes naturally! There's no need to lecture us about it.

It took a little while for others to pipe up that an online system for asking niddah questions already existed. It has one of the limitations the naysayers pointed out, namely, a stain does have to be physically seen by someone. But the concept on the whole is quite workable, the value should be obvious to anyone browsing the site, and there was no need to scoff so much.

And it's no coincidence it was created with female consultants, not male. Presumably, many of the same women who are uncomfortable asking a rabbi face to face, would also be more comfortable asking a woman than a man. Whoever came up with the concept, clearly gets it.

Besides, even if such a thing didn't exist, I think they've misunderstood as well as misjudged the question. It's one thing if you know your rabbi in a rabbi-congregant sort of way; it's another altogether if you socialize with him regularly. Or how about if you've married into his family? I wouldn't want to send someone my underwear and then have dinner with him that evening. There are certainly arguments for going to someone you don't know quite that well.

Grrrrr. I assume they meant well, but it ticks me off.

The following is my own unofficial translation of a Hebrew article to which Out of Step Jew linked recently (see "Contributions From Other Sites").

Oppression of Women by Women
or How I Almost Became a Mikvah Attendant:
The overbearing supervision of some mikvah attendants turns mikvah visits into humiliating experiences for women. One woman's personal testimony, which is somewhat funny and very sad.

I'm not the type of person to relate my experiences at the mikvah, or even in less intimate places, but I have to get this off my chest. Here's what happened: I found a nice mikvah. I rang the bell and waited, happily (because there was no line and because in ten minutes I'd be going home) to be called to immerse. I was called. A very nice attendant, smiling, signaled me to hold out my hand. A warning light went on: she was one of those, from the old mikvahs, the ones I'd run away from, where they check to make sure you've cut your fingernails and don't have any specks on your body or loose hairs clinging to your back. I held out my hands, like a first grade student holding out his hands to be checked for cleanliness. The attendant gently passed her finger over a suspicious finger of mine, but she decided to let it pass. Afterward she checked my face, proceeded to my hair, and remarked with a smile that it was short, so surely there was no reason to suspect any loose or hanging hair. I decided to subject myself to the pressure. (Why didn't I say anything? I have a response. I thought of it later, when I was dressed. It's easier to think when you're dressed.) Did she intend to continue checking my entire body? Apparently not. Instead of checking my body, she gave me a pop quiz. The nice, smiling mikvah attendant asked: had I done a hefsek tahara? I answered that I had, only so that she would let me in the water. But she persisted: when? At this point I was seriously nervous. I blanked: what is a hefsek tahara, when the flow of blood stops, or the final self-examination on the seventh day? I gambled on the seventh day. (Why didn't I ask her what it was? I have a response. I thought of it later, when I was dressed. It's easier to think when you're dressed.) I said: this morning. The smile on her face disappeared, and an expression of shock mixed with censure took its place: today?! I understood that the answer I'd given was incorrect. Make a mistake, try again. Like a child trying to guess the answer on an oral exam. What the hell is eight times four? Twenty four, right? Maybe thirty six? If only they'd leave me alone! Finally I said, yesterday morning. The shock on her face increased. Yesterday morning?! I realized that I was stuck, that I wouldn't get into the water, that there was a chance she might send me to the principal, to the religious court, to the chief rabbinate (and that wouldn't be pleasant, I still wasn't dressed, a towel hanging from my body -- how embarrassing). Or maybe, at that point, in the depths of my miserable soul, some consciousness was kindled, some tiny spark of self-esteem, a glimmer of awareness that I wasn't actually taking an exam, and even if I was -- why shouldn't I ask the teacher to give me some hint, even if it meant they would deduct a few points! So I asked: wait, what is a hefsek tahara, is it the end of the flow, or the self-examination at the end of the seven clean days? And the smiling teacher/ supervisor answered with a question: when did your flow end? That kind of question I could answer, without doubt. I straightened up and responded: seven days ago. This almost satisfied her, but then she remembered my previous lie, and asked: wait, then couldn't you have come here last night? My self-esteem was almost entirely restored and I responded, lamely: no, I couldn't have. Somehow, this satisfied her and I made it to the finish line, to the edge of the warm waters.

Big Sister is Watching
I entered the water, and I wanted to stay there, for the life of me, to drown myself from all the humiliation, from all the misery of the situation, and from my own misery. Why hadn't I said to her calmly: excuse me, I want to immerse, and I have no interest in answering these questions, I'm competent in Jewish law and observe it, and that's why I'm here. I'd be happy to talk to you when I'm dressed, whenever we have the time. Instead, I lied like a little girl! I got nervous, I didn't know the answer, I lied twice, and then I had to lie again in order to complete the picture. Why had I allowed her to humiliate me? Why had I taken part in the act? Why did she have to know whether and when I'd done a hefsek tahara? Her authoritative position in combination with her clothing, in contrast to my position as customer/ guest/ beneficiary in combination with my lack of clothing immediately made me an actress with a script that I would not have have allowed myself to be afflicted with under any other circumstances. If I came to the mikvah, presumably I wanted to immerse, presumably I needed to immerse. And what if the attendant had discovered that I hadn't counted seven clean days, would she have sent me home with a note to my parents and a copy for the Master of the Universe? Is this what they teach in the course for mikvah attendants? Is there any other commandment that the authority is so involved in making sure I fulfill properly, to the point of pedantry? Why don't deputies from the religious authorities come to my home from time to time to see what I'm cooking for the Sabbath, and how, and whether I finish all the preparation before the Sabbath begins? Why aren't there examinations of my meat and dairy pots? Why don't they help me avoid speaking badly of people, and prevent me from gossiping -- someone, some Big Brother -- each time I stumble (after all, I do stumble, and I do, after all, need help)?! Why don't they appoint an overseer in the synagogue to reprimand us when we, God forbid, chatter during prayers, or appear unfocused? After all these thoughts, all that was left for me to do was to dry myself off, feel sorry for myself, and be comforted by the fact that it would be another four weeks before the next time, and that at some point I intended to become pregnant again, and that in the more distant future I would be entirely free of this mix of emotions, this purification ritual. When I arrived at home, after being angry at the attendant and at myself and after laughing at the attendant and at myself, I suddenly cried out: I'm going to be a mikvah attendant. If you want to change something, it doesn't help to just complain. I'll be a different kind of attendant, I'll show that it's possible to do exactly what's necessary to help a woman, that I can ask each woman how she wants to be helped and not turn myself into an oppressor in the name of Jewish law and humiliate her. Later, I decided to sleep on it. I woke up in the morning and was no longer certain that I was such an idealist, that I would be able to join some women in the mikvah (since at this point I'm free of obligation for four weeks between immersions), and beyond that, I wasn't certain that I'd be able to be answerable to those women who did want me to examine them, or, worse than that -- I would scratch their bodies trying to locate any obstructions to immersion that remained on them. After all, there was a reason that I didn't choose to study medicine or the related fields, but rather, decided to involve myself in the spiritual realm, right?

Up to this point, I've related my experiences and feelings. Do I have something learned and reasoned to say, or am I just whining? Before I started writing, I said to myself -- if you're going to write something serious, and if you want people to pay serious attention to it, you have check: maybe this really is an exceptional area of Jewish law? Maybe there is some reason that, with regard to this issue, you aren't trusted, and they appoint overseers and examiners to make sure you're behaving properly?! Later, I thought it over and said to myself -- I don't care. Let them say that I don't really understand the subject of the purity of Israel, let them say that I'm making a mountain out of a molehill, let them say that, in the end, the nice mikvah attendant helped me fulfill the law, let them even say that it's an obligation and find proofs for it in the Torah. I'm not out looking for them.

I'm just not willing to take this. I'm not willing to have a woman oppress me, to oppress in the sense of acting as a helper from a position of inequality, under unfamiliar conditions and unnecessarily. I'm not willing to experience humiliation. Let me be clear: I want to immerse. It is a legal obligation and I want to fulfill it like the other commandments. It isn't clear to me why they have to add to my hardship. Why women think that when I'm naked, on the edge of the mikvah, that's the time to quiz me on my knowledge of Jewish law or my mode of religious observance. Why they think that after I've checked myself -- as Jewish law requires -- they have to check me again, in case they find something. After all, we're on our own, and there's no Big Sister to say "nu nu nu" and smile as a sign of approval. Or maybe this isn't something they think up on their own, but rather, something they teach them in preparation for the job? Then why is this what they teach them? And why don't they think a little for themselves and rebel or object, or at least temper this behavior a bit -- after all, they're dressed, they can think comfortably, weigh issues and make decisions. True, you could look at my formative experience and conclude: in the end, it's your problem that you got nervous and lied. The fact that you're a liar doesn't mean that world, or Jewish law, or the religious establishment has to change. Work on the way you respond to pressure, you could say, be mature. You could. But it seems to me that my little lies aren't only my problem. I go around lying or feeling sorry for myself or dreaming about being a mikvah attendant. Other women simply don't go. Everyone has her own struggles, but it seems to me that for most of us this is a struggle, and not exactly a religious experience, this mikvah. And if not -- then say so, after all, hardly anyone ever talks about it! And one more thing -- this is really what I think and feel, and I really want set this matter right in order to fulfill the commandment of immersion and not in order to mar it or to rebel. Really, I'm not lying about this (I'm dressed).

My husband directed me to this on the web today and it looks interesting. I wonder if he is 'threatening' to send me off for a week every cycle on a relaxing retreat? How I wish!

I found this a positive aspect of their break:

Each month, during their period, women leave for the Bashali.

Hazrat Gul, mother of one son, looks forward to her break from the
routine of housework.

"We make rice, chapattis, eat lots of food and sing all day," she
says. "It's fun because it's all girls and no men."

But, like many mikvehs, sadly it isn't all sparkley white tiles and luxurious baths...

Why in the world anyone would choose to follow all the intricacies of TH when it seems that they engender so many difficulties and inconveniences? What follows is, of course, my personal viewpoint, and I realize that others' views may differ. I do not intend to address here the extreme emotional anguish experienced by someone going through infertility or other special conditions. I believe some of the following may apply even then, but I leave it up to those
actually there to judge for themselves.

Many times on this site I have seen comments alluding to the difficulties involved in keeping Taharat Mishpacha and the suffering engendered by it. This may sound a bit strange to some of you, but I must admit I never really saw things this way. Sure, there are difficulties approximately equivalent to those of a shomer shabbos person who wishes he could go to the football game on Saturday. Or the average somewhat observant Jew who gets a terrible headache while fasting on Yom Kippur. So why do you continue to fast, if it causes you such suffering?

There are several possible answers to this question. One answer is that on the whole the benefits of living "the Torah way" out-weigh the difficulties. It's sort of like choosing schools – one has a nicer building, better teachers, and higher academic standard. But it's far away, has very high tuition, and has a crummy yard. If only you could choose the location of school A, the yard and tuition of School B, and the other features of School C, you'd be all set. But you can't. You're stuck. So you settle for School C despite its obvious drawbacks. But how could you send your kids there – isn't it really expensive? Sure, there's a price to pay, but Judaism is a package deal, and if we choose to accept it, we must accept it all.

The above "cost-benefit" approach, is one way of looking at things. However, it's not really the way I believe we were meant to view our mitzvah observance. Rather, we must realize that whatever challenges Hashem puts in our path, they are there for a reason, and try to accept them B'simcha (with happiness) even when on the surface they seem difficult. We can't possibly know what's best for everyone, yet we're smart enough to realize that if we did know the whole plan from beginning to end we might see things differently. Since we acknowledge that only Hashem is privy to all the details, we realize that only He can know what's truly in our best interests.

Back in the days when shomer Shabbos Jews in America were fired from their jobs every week for refusing to work on Saturdays, many of course reluctantly stopped observing Shabbos. Yet even among those families who demonstrated tremendous mesirus nefesh to continue observing Shabbos, only some succeeded in passing these observances on to the next generation. What distinguished these families from the others? Their attitude! There were those families who would come home every Friday with their notice from work, and moan and groan over how difficult it is to be a Jew and what tremendous sacrifices it requires. Others in equivalent situations would remark on what a tremendous zchus (privilege) it is to be doing Hashem's will despite the apparent hardships, acknowledge that Hashem really knows what's best for us, and proceed to observe Shabbos B'Simcha. It was the latter families who merited children and grandchildren who continued to observe mitzvos despite their inherent challenges.

So, where does this leave us? Obviously, none of us are perfect or have perfected our emunah and bitachon (faith and trust) to their utmost. And I see nothing wrong with discussing with others the hardships entailed in keeping TH if this helps us better to handle the challenges. However, in conjunction with the "gripes" we might be doing ourselves a favor if we continually remind ourselves of the unknown benefits as well, and leave the rest in Hashem's very competent hands...

~SYBA

SYBA is a thirtyish mother of several (kein yirbu). She is still getting over the culture shock of moving to the most uniformly Yeshivish city in the world just days after graduating from an Ivy League University...but she is very happy to be there...

Several of the discussions here lately have me thinking about when and why people believe it's proper to ask for heterim (leniencies) -- not just in matters of taharat hamishpacha, but birth control, and all the other things that come up in a relationship between husband and wife.

On the one hand, the fact that it's sometimes hard to keep the halacha -- sometimes very, very hard -- is sort of the point. It might seem wrong to onlookers that we follow halacha even when it denies what seem like basic human needs, even when it conflicts with what seems like basic human kindness. It might even seem wrong to us, sometimes. And yet, what would be the value of observing halacha only when it coincides with what you felt like doing anyway?

This is how I always thought of taharat hamishpacha. I knew it was going to be hard. I never thought of that as an excuse to ask for personal leniency; after all, it's hard for everyone.

But being married has drastically changed my perspective on this. Shalom bayit (peace in the home) is a powerful halachic factor in many decisions to grant leniency, and I think that's so for good reason. It's one thing to be hard on yourself. But being more strict than necessary on someone else -- that's a different story, isn't it.

The hard part, of course, is figuring out what's more than necessary. Should we be trying to keep every harchaka to the letter of the law, even if it takes a toll on our marriage? Or should we be asking for help much earlier than that? Personally, my threshhold for asking for leniency has moved up greatly now that what I do has the potential to make my husband unhappy. Even if it's not horribly unhappy, even if it's a level of unhappiness I might try to tolerate myself, I couldn't live with myself for inflicting that on him. It goes against everything I'm trying to do as his wife.

If you're reading this and thinking "oh, but even though it seems like you're hurting him, it's actually to his benefit, because you're helping him to keep the halacha in the ideal way," to me that all depends: on whether both of you want to keep taharat hamishpacha the same way. If you both want to shoulder the burden no matter how hard it gets, then you're helping each other towards a mutually valued goal. But if one of you wants a heter and the other doesn't -- to me being too devout to ask for the heter is no longer one helping the other. I can't reconcile an element of coercion with helping. At least not between me and my husband; we are not each other's parents, but equal partners.

Obviously this is a decision only a couple themselves can make. I'm certainly not telling anyone else what to do. Just laying out my thoughts in writing.

The other reason I think is a "right" reason for asking for a heter is when manageable sadness verges on clinical anxiety or depression. Mental health issues can be independent of halacha, of course, and they might need to be treated independently too, but I think it's clear that some aspects of the halachic lifestyle can contribute to them as well. I had my own experience with anxiety around mikvah preparations. Others might struggle with having children too close together, and so on.

It can be hard to know when you're not just having normal difficulty but slipping over the edge, but I think deep down, we know. And if we don't know, the loved ones around us do. If someone in your life is telling you that you need help, please, don't assume that you will not be religious enough if you ask for it -- whether it's with taharat hamishpacha, birth control, or anything else. (In this case I guess I feel strongly enough to be pushy!)

And keep in mind what I said above: even if you don't want to do this for yourself, please, think about what it might be doing to your husband to watch you suffer. And what a gift you'd be giving him if you could find a way to stop.

It finally happened. I got my tri-annual hair-buzzing. About three times a year, and at least always in the beginning of the summer. I buzz my hair off with men's clippers. Or rather, my husband does the buzzing. Now, I don't do it for minhag/historical reasons (that's another post) and I don't do it neccessarily for the mikvah. I do it mostly for tsnius and for comfort.

For some reason, the hair at the back of my neck grows at an abnormal rate. I have a shoulder length wig, and frequently, I find that my hair from the nape of my neck is sticking out from the cap by an inch or two. It's not cool because then I can't put my wig into a pony tail. And I have to say, wearing a wig is the equivalant of wearing a fur hat in the summer. And unless my hair is at basic-training length, I suffer from the heat.

So my husband buzzes my hair for me (when I'm not in niddah, and when he's not too tired when he gets home, and when the cleaning lady will be coming the next day). But I know that it's a big turn-off for him. He doesn't like to buzz my hair, but he does it because he knows how uncomfortable it can get in the summertime.

That's why planning a hair cut is so vital. I try to get it as close to niddah as possible, but can't be too close or I miss my window. But if I do it too soon after the mikvah, my husband isn't interested in relations - too weird for him.

So does it make it easier for the mikvah? Yes, because in my "real" life my hair is very, very curly. So keeping my hair short/buzzed makes mikvah a lot less stressful. I remember as a kallah obsessing over keeping my hair "unknotted" and kept combing and combing until the mikvah lady got to the room. Now I use a drop or two of baby shampoo and am ready to go hair-wise.

Does anyone else out there have things they do for comfort/mikvah prep that weird their husbands out?

I like to visit the Yoatzot website once or twice a week to read through the recently posted questions and answers. Today I came across this one regarding T"H and mourning, and read this bit about being in niddah when one partner is dying:

In the autobiography of Glueckel of Hameln (17th-18th c.), there is a moving account of her husband on his deathbed when she was in niddah. He tells her that they had observed the halacha all their married lives and shouldn't violate the harchakot now. They are united by their constant, unflagging mutual commitment to something beyond themselves, halacha.

Modern Orthodox Woman recently posted a link to an article in Science and Technology News discussing a study on Orthodox women and sexual satisfaction. According to the article,

Orthodox Jewish women are very sexually active in their marriages, but fewer than 75 percent are emotionally and physically satisfied, according to the results of a survey released May 5 at the annual American Psychiatric Association meeting in New York. . . .

The results were compared to a 1999 study published in the Journal of the American Medical Association, which found that 93 percent of American women from various denominations were physically satisfied, and almost 90 percent reported a high level of emotional satisfaction.

The remainder of the article discusses the results of the study from the perspectives of two "experts:" an Israeli professor who clearly has an axe to grind against Orthodoxy and an American professor whose research focuses on newly Orthodox women, a group that inevitably stresses the positive aspects of observance when questioned. Not the most objective sources imaginable.

Another failing of the article (or, more likely, the study) is the absence of any discussion of the possible impact of children on the women's responses. Women who strictly observe T"H are more likely than members of the general population to have many children beginning early in their marriages, and other studies have shown that child-bearing and -rearing can have negative effects on marital satisfaction as well as libido. Moreover, strictly Orthodox women who do not have children are frequently struggling with fertility issues, which can also interfere with marital satisfaction and make sex stressful.

All the same, the discrepency is substantial, and it seems likely that the periods of separation mandated by T"H have something to do with it. I would imagine that periodic avoidance of non-sexual touching (also not mentioned in the article) results in lowered emotional satisfaction for some women. It is also possible that the abrupt transition from no touching at all to a sexual relationship intereferes with some women's ability to enjoy sex, since women often take longer to "warm up" for intercourse than men do.

This is all conjecture, of course, and since I don't practice these laws strictly, my conjectures may be less accurate than some of yours. So, what do you think? Is this a real problem? If so, what might the underlying causes be, and what, if anything, can be done about it?

Here's another thing I didn't anticipate about mikvah night falling on Shabbos, three months in a row: not getting to stock up on bedikah cloths! I was down to the hard scratchy ones I had never even opened, once they started selling the "extra soft" kind. (I guess this is the equivalent of that pair of underwear you wouldn't be caught dead in, except you forgot to do the laundry again?)

Actually, with the heter I have to do only three bedikot (hefsek tahara, one on the first day, and one on the last) it's probably been an even longer time than I realize since I bought a new package. It ends up being more than three, because it takes me a few tries to get a clean hefsek tahara, but still.

This month mikvah night was, thankfully, on a Thursday. I came home with a package of the T-shirt cloths that I raised my eyebrows at a couple of years ago like a suspicious old lady. (What is this newfangled nonsense you want me to try? Are you sure they work?) And they are SO SOFT. They make my "extra soft" ones seem like a joke. Why was I denying myself, all this time?

Well, I know why. I've put off buying new ones until the last possible moment in the semi-unconscious hope that I wouldn't need to buy more. Because I'd be pregnant.

And psychologically, it's been worth it. But at this point, I have to, and I'm going to take my creature comforts and enjoy them. Actually, I'm considering upgrading my mikvah prep tools to really nice things too. Spa quality. I want to think happy thoughts when I take out that little bag.

It's time for some retail therapy.

If you affiliate with a modern Orthodox community (or ever have), you've probably heard of "tefilin dates." For the uninformed: these are occasions on which the gentleman brings his tefilin (phylacteries, if that helps) along on a date, because he does not plan to return before the time for the morning service, when Jewish law requires that he put them on.

I remember discussing this phenomenon with a friend early in my college years. She mentioned a night when she was unable to sleep because of a loud thumping noise coming from the dorm room above her. In the morning, when she went upstairs to complain, her neighbor's boyfriend was wrapped in tefilin, in the midst of prayer.

At the time, we both thought this was terribly hypocritical. Many years later, however, the subject came up again, and we had both changed our minds. Maybe we'd seen too many Orthodox boys turn away from religious observance in part or altogether after finding a transgression that they enjoyed too much to give up. Or maybe we were simply older and had had our own brushes with temptation. Either way, it now seemed to both of us that the very best thing a young, religious Jewish boy could do the morning after having premarital sex would be to wrap himself in tefilin and pray.

It seems to me that this issue isn't much different from the dilemma that faces observant women debating whether or not to use the mikvah before premarital sex. Psychologically, it's easier not to go. That way, you don't have to think too much about what you're doing, and later, you can pretend it never happened. Isn't it better, though (halachic particulars and divine retribution aside), to make the effort to bring Jewish observance into your life, even when things get complicated? Or, maybe, especially when they get complicated?

Michal mentioned getting pregnant after her worst mikvah experience and others had noticed a similar correlation.

Funny, for me it was the opposite... I tended to conceive after my most comfortable mikvah experiences. But then, for me, going to mikvah was always uncomfortable, since I needed to face the water.

Still, the years passed, and as I didn't spend them all pregnant, and didn't nurse clean for very long, there were multiple mikvah visits to get through. Every time I went, I dreaded it a little less, was a little more comfortable. One time the attendant even commented on it, on how much more comfortable I was than when I'd first started using that mikvah. But I still began each visit with an unfamiliar attendant by explaining my fear of the water and my heter for only one kosher tevilah, followed immediately by assuring her that I hadn't had to use the heter in a very long time. But I needed them to know, because each time I was to go under, there was a long pause as I gathered my courage, then pulled myself under by the handrail... and the last thing I needed was to feel rushed.

Oh, and I always face the mikvah attendant, because I need to know that someone is there if I don't come back up on my own. Again in a reversal of other's comments, it never occured to me to not face her!

Surgery is a pain, literally... and even more so when it has to do with female areas. You already have to get over the fact that doctors are involved in every aspect of your cycle when you go through infertility, but walking into a cold room and positioning yourself on the operating table (complete with stirrups I might add) you start to feel like you no longer have any "private" parts.

All this aside, I'm finding myself in a weird place after having this surgery. I confirmed with my doctor repeatedly (actually my husband did since I was still "out of it"), that absolutely no uterine blood was shed during my surgery. So the blood that I am seeing is from other areas, and is not blood that will make me a niddah. The doctor said no intimate contact until the next visit, so I am finding myself in the position of being "allowed" to my husband via taharat hamishpacha, but "forbidden via doctors."

I've had "non niddah" spotting from other procedures before, but never this strong or for this long... and they haven't forbidden relations until now. I guess I'm starting to see how the harchochos are supposed to help us. The first few nights my husband slept in a separate bed so he wouldn't jostle me, and last night he slept in the same bed with me. It was easier to resist wanting to hug and cuddle with him when he was not right there next to me. Even knowing that if he were to hug me and accidentally hit my suture area it would SMART (which it did) didn't keep me away.

Still, I sort of feel like I am living in a parallel universe for a little while. It's weird to change a maxi pad and then go off to hug my husband. It's reminding me a little of my first marriage (where I did not keep taharat hamishpacha), and I am deciding definitively that I like life with the practice — despite all the rules and hurdles — much better than my life without it. Maybe it's just me, but day-to-day life seems more spiritual that way.

I guess this experience is helping me to appreciate what I have, by comparing it to what it could be... so I hope that next time I actually am bleeding niddah, I won't be so bothered by having to be separate from him. We'll see...

This month when it was time for me to go to the mikvah, I couldn’t do it. Just couldn’t make the phone call. Not that I didn’t want to be with my husband, that wasn’t it at all. I just couldn’t face yet another month of making an appointment, going to that place, making small talk, having some relative stranger stand over me, declare me kosher, then pay money we don’t have because every stinkin’ penny we earn is going to fertility treatments.

So instead, I had the brilliant idea of going to the beach. I thought my husband and I could go, sit on the beach and watch the sun set, and when it was dark, I would go immerse. Of course that’s not what happened. Because there was no “appointment,” he felt no pressure to be timely, so we completely missed the sun setting. By the time we actually got to the beach, I was really frustrated and angry that my grandiose, romantic plans were shot. It was also quite dark, so I didn’t have the chance to pick a nice, secluded spot – I had to go where the path was. And I couldn’t tell if there were people on the beach, but figured if there were, they could probably tell that I was in the water, so I had to go in with all my clothes on, and take them off underwater. Then hope that they would float long enough for my husband to grab them before they sank to the bottom. He did bring a towel, and held that up. I should point out that with all the discussion about immersing at the beach instead of the mikvah, my husband didn’t pick up on the part about how he would have to get into the water, too! Once he stopped complaining about getting wet, I immersed, he said “kosher,” I said the bracha, he said “amen,” I immersed, he said, “okay.” I said, “what?” He said, “okay.” “Does that mean it was kosher?” “Oh, yeah, sorry – kosher.” sigh

The hard part was getting my sopping wet clothing back on underwater, while my hubby tried to help AND keep the towel up. That caused lots of giggling, and walking back to the parking lot across the beach holding hands was delightful. We even laughed over the fact that my husband forgot his wallet and the flashlight were in his pocket when he went into the water. I’m so glad we did that instead of going to the mikvah.

Except for one thing: Y’all do realize it was May, right? There’s not a single beach north of the Mason-Dixon line that is WARM this time of year…

I know going from tehorah to niddah (and back again) isn't fun or easy. It's why we are supposed to calculate onot, in anticipation of niddah. It's why we count clean days in anticipation of mikveh.

But I really wasn't prepared this month for my husband's reaction after I came home from mikveh.

We both had a difficult time with harchakot this past cycle. I was doing ok (some extreme physical pain made me really not want to be touched) but well, as the days wore on (5,6, shabbos) it was quite difficult.

Not to mention that the mikveh opened really late motzei shabbos. And I was a bit worried. Would they remember me? Would I have the same receptionist? Attendant? Would I remember to do everything? As it was late I convinced my husband to drive me to the mikveh.. there's a small patch I'm not to comfortable walking alone. He agreed and asked me how long it would take. I told him that all I had to do was shower and dip, I had already bathed as soon as shabbos finished. He agreed and brought along a nice thick book. We parked around the corner and down the block... I went in. I paid cash this time. I knew exactly what I needed, "a shower only please". I walked with a bit more confidence. I fit in how I felt, unlike last time (the "first" time). This time I was eager to reunite with my husband. This time I understood the look in others eyes. The anticipation, the unspoken stress. "Room 9" I was told... I went. Locked both doors successfully. Showered. Checked my feet. EEP! dry skin flaking everywhere. I fixed it the best I could (see extreme physical pain above. b"H I'm ok, it's just uncomfortable to bend). i called the attendant and hoped for the best. a very nice woman came. I apologized ahead of time for the flailing skin all over my feet. I could barely bend my leg for her to check it. She was very nice and gentle to me. She helped me to snip all the extra bits. We then went directly to the mikveh. She let me wear my glasses down so I wasn't too scared of the steps. Dunk. "kosher". Made the brachah successfully on my own. Omein. Dunk. "kosher". Ye'hi Ratzon. With help. Silly me forgot my glasses were right there on the step next to me. Oh well. Dunk. "kosher". With modesty I went back up the steps (she had the robe in front of her). A gentle warm touch. "How often have you been here?" she gently asked. "Twice". She smiled and wished me a gut voch and a pleasant evening. I left. Walking to the car I realized I forgot to leave a tip. Oops. Next time. We've decided we'll play this game for a year.

I got into the car and leant to kiss my husband and he responded by starting the car and getting out of the parking spot. No one would have seen us. I had been looking forward to that kiss for two weeks.

I hid my disappointment and we went home, stopping at the store for the next morning's breakfast. (not what *I* had been planning on, but whatever). Then we went home and he got ready for sleep.

I tried to snuggle with him but he sort of "threw off" my advances.

This happened more or less for the next two weeks. We advanced to hand holding, a wee bit of snuggling, and a bit of sex. Today I am niddah again. We were anticipating it but ...

But we still haven't fully resolved this er... not really his lack of his interest.. I think it's more an imbalance in timing? I think it also has to deal with some other areas of our lives (i.e. how I display my married status), but, well, his behavior surprised me.

In any case, I'm eagerly counting down to mikveh night again. It should be another motzei shabbos if my body continues to act on medicated clockwork.

We'll see what this cycle brings.

...that is the question. I was considering not going back to the mikvah, but have since thought better of it and I'll tell you why all of this has even crossed my mind.

The miscarriage was over three months ago now, so I have been un-pregnant longer than I was ever pregnant. In that time, my husband and I have been fighting like cats & dogs. Yes, we're getting help, but it is not working.

It occurred to me that I could simply just not go back to the mikvah. Not to punish him, you understand - that's not my style. It's just that in the past three months he has displayed much autocratic and separation-type behaviour and our marriage has been severely jeopardized. My reason for remaining in niddah was that I have deep misgivings about sleeping with a man who has, by leaps and bounds, suddenly become a stranger to me.

And then I started reading all about it. There are so many entries in our history and law about mikvah use and marriage, but what it all really comes down to is sex. Who gets to have it, under what circumstances and why. More importantly, who gets to control sex.

There is a story of how all the women in Maimonides' community a thousand years ago refused to return to the mikvah until they were treated better. Although their wives were all threatened with divorce, the men caved.

In Jewish law, we learn that if no marital relations take place, then a divorce is mandated. But what I wanted from my husband was not a divorce. I just want him back. I also had no desire to hurt him by remaining in niddah. It just felt like he wasn't so married to me anymore and nothing we do seems to help, so physical separation seemed ideal to me.

Then I began thinking about the positive aspects of mikvah, like its soul-cleansing, spirit-liberating power and I thought to myself: that's what I really want.

I need the mikvah to take away the following:
niddut, stress, fear, anxiety, pain, grief, and all the other things in daily life which leave a crust of schmutz over my heart.

I need the mikvah to grant the following:
open-heartedness, safety, purity, faith, trust, groundedness, and all the other things that are required to have a deep, intimate relationship with G-d and others, especially with my spouse.

So even though my inclination to withdraw is valid and only a method of protecting my most vulnerable parts, I recognize that I will reap more expansive benefits from continuing my mikvah practice. It will help heal me each month ever so slightly so that I am rejuvenated and can once engage in the fray that our marriage has become.

I am trying to pump myself up into going to the mikvah this weekend. Don't get me wrong, I can't wait to be able to hug my husband... but in our small town going to the mikvah is like walking into a public restroom, you don't enjoy being there, but you have to go.

For the past few months I have been reading all the posts on this site. A lot of them have evoked sympathy and a lot has evoked joy... all in all it is nice having people who are there and going through the same thing you do month after month. Especially the infertility postings, I share the same feelings of the women I read who have been going to the mikvah without pause since marriage. In a culture that regards this mitzvah as personal and discreet, it is hard having a doctor know your entire sexual schedule.

Still, the pain of infertility is only made greater when you see the other women in our community suffering through what is supposed to be the most magical moment of the mitzvah of Taharat Hamishpacha — the mikvah. I'm not going to downplay how much it hurts to go through the infertility process (those of you also going through it know how it is) but sometimes it is harder watching other people suffer than to go through your own pain. Let me explain...

When I read the posts of mikvahs with multiple rooms and marble floors and even a check-in desk up front and a waiting room I'm baffled. I've never been to another mikvah but my own, so I have no concept of what it is truly supposed to look like. Our mikvah consists of a narrow room, tucked into the front corner of our shul that has been divided into three sections: a bathroom, an entrance hallway, and the mikvah. We only have one mikvah in our town (in which the religious community is steadily growing) so the same mikvah is used to tovel women, men, and dishes. There is a filter that runs to supposedly clean and heat the mikvah, but you always have to skim away (or just ignore) the grime and styrophome bits that float at the top of the water. The bathtub is too gross to use, so we all bathe at home and most bring their own towels.

One time I came to the mikvah on a Sat night and it looked like it had just been used. There was water dripping all over the bathroom (in the shower, on the door handle, the sink, etc) and all the towel and bathmats were wet. When the mikvah lady arrived (we all basically use the same woman, she is a wonderful, wonderful blessing to our community) I asked her who used the mikvah before me and left it in such a state. She sighed, took my hand and said "no one." It seems as though the fan was broken again, and when the fan breaks the moisture from the mikvah showers the entire little room with condensation. At that point I realized where all the mold I saw and the mildew smell I always smelled came from. I saw that it hurt my mikvah lady to see me upset at the state of the room, so I quickly perked myself up and said to myself "the harder the toivel the bigger the mitzvah".... right? Except that I'm finding myself having to say it every month I go, it's become sort of a chant in my head "the harder the toivel the bigger the mitzvah, the harder the toivel the bigger the mitzvah, the harder the toivel the bigger the mitzvah."

Then I started looking around, it's not just me. I can see it in the faces of the other women who use the mikvah. When it's time to go they are not smiling, it has become a chore and many have said they wish they had a blindfold when they walked into the room, one woman trying to find humor the situation said she's happy she can't wear her contacts in the mikvah, it makes it easier. I've heard countless stories of women stepping on glass in the mikvah (left from dishes) and ruining their toivel and women arriving to find that the heater was broken again and having a toivel that literally took their breath away because of the cold. There is lots to say, the hot water in the entire room has been broken for a while, the lighting is very poor, etc etc.... but all these complaints could be looked past easily when you see the face of our wonderful mikvah lady who will take time out of any day, at any time of night to do whatever it takes to give you the best experience possible at our mikvah. Even if it means that she picks you up in her own car so your identity is kept a secret (the mikvah is right at the front of the shul next to the front door, so it is impossible to park and go in without someone seeing your car or you), she will do it for you.

The reason I am writing, what is actually my first post ever, is because last week I saw my mikvah lady loose her will to continue trying to make the unhappy women happy. You see we had a wedding last weekend, and the kallah needed to go mozei Shabbos. The mikvah lady arrived at the shul to ready the room (she wanted to dress it up a little with candles to mask the smell). She had been keeping in contact with me the whole night because she wanted me to toivel after the kallah as a segula for getting pregnant. I was at the store when my phone rang. "It's going to be a while" the voice on the other end of the phone said, "the mikvah is ice." She spent the next hour calling the kallah to calm her while she drained and tried to refill the mikvah with the waning hot tap. And then my mikvah lady did something that I had never heard her do before... she broke down and started crying right there in the mikvah. "It's not supposed to be like this, it's supposed to be nice your first time." I went in that night to follow the kallah (around midnight) hoping that at least the kallah would have ended up having a pleasant experience... I went in the water and I started shivering. "Did the water turn out OK?" the mikvah lady asked hopefully (she had not been there with the kallah, the kallah had a special friend with her), at that moment I felt a little wave of warmth in the water so I said "yeah, it's not too bad" and then I prayed that the kallah at least felt comfortable when she toiveled and did not have the chant the "harder the toivel the bigger the mitzvah" mantra on her first visit.

Since then our mikvah lady seems to have lost hope. She'll still offered to come and pick me up to take me this weekend, but I could tell there was something wrong in her voice. She now doesn't want to be there either. It's too painful for her too. Without the calming spirit of this mikvah lady where are we? What will happen to us?

I am beside myself. I don't know what to do. I know what we are going through is in no way as tough as what our ancestors did when they had to travel all night and break ice in a lake to toivel, but there has to be something out there that can keep the moral going until we find the way to get the money to build a new mikvah. Every day it is getting worse and worse and more women are deterred from wanting to go when they see where they are going. My brother-in-law came up to me one day last month after toiveling dishes "Does the mikvah always look like that?" he said, "because I've been talking to a friend who is thinking of taking up Taharat Hamishpacha, and I'm afraid to tell her to go there because I think it will push her in the other direction." "Yes, it always looks that way," I say, "I'm sorry, if you want me to talk to her, I can tell her how to get past it."

Is that what we all should do... just look past it all the time? How can we get the beauty out of the mitzvah if we feel dirtier than we ever do right after you walk in the door?

Please, I need help finding a way to give my mikvah lady hope, it is killing me to see her like this. There's hope right?

So, anyone else have mikvah nightmares?

Last night I had the most insane one, in which the mikvah was the bathtub in my house growing up, and the mikvah-, er, bath-room had an inordinate number of women passing in and out. I thought it was my turn, but the mikvah attendant said no, I had to wait. So I put my jeans back on (?? I don't wear jeans, and ouch, not wearing anything underneath!) and tried not to get anything dirty or messed up. Except I somehow got the impression I wasn't going to make my turn at all, so I gave up and put gel in my wet hair, and then when the mikvah lady called me I said oh no!! How am I going to wash this out on Shabbos?

I know, what?? Exactly.

When I have these the night before I go to mikvah, they're pretty easy to figure out. And usually they're made even more transparent by plot devices such as Blood Found Right Before Immersion. But this one is a week after. I should have at least another two weeks before mikvah anxiety hits.

Armchair psychologists, feel free to have at it. But know that if your translation involves Freudian symbolism I will laugh long and heartily.

For those of you in the New York area, Nishmat is hosting "Women’s Health and Halacha Day" this Sunday, May 15.

There's info here: http://www.yoatzot.org/healthday_LI.php

This is appropriate to Mayim Rabim:

Opening Session: “Scenes from a Jewish Marriage:
Taharat HaMishpacha from Chupah to Menopause".
Deena Zimmerman, M. D., Yoetzet Halacha

This intrigues me:

Infertility and the Orthodox Couple.
Matthew A. Cohen, M. D., Dassi Jacobson, Ph. D., Zamira Ostrowski, Yoetzet Halacha

Has anyone noticed that infertility is the hot topic among Jewish organizations these days?

And this was just funny:

"Baby is available from 10:30 a.m. through 4:15 p.m."

Hmmm... for rent or purchase? ;)

primal waters of
soul stirring live drown the howls
from my empty womb

I think I have a better understanding now of Avigayil's (and other's) complaints about making the transition from tamei to tahor and tahor to tamei.

Ironically enough, what gave me this understanding had nothing to do with Taharat HaMishpacha. No, it was Pesach. (Passover) We spend however long running around getting ready for Pesach. The last two weeks especially are pretty intensive. Then there's Yontif, Chol HaMoed, more Yontif. (Holy days, intermediate days, more holy days.) Then poof it's over, and you're supposed to just put everything away as fast as you can, pull out your chametzdik (Non-Passover) pots, go shopping maybe, start eating "normal" food again, and everyone goes straight back to work or school as if we never had Pesach.

This year I couldn't deal. I sat there in my mostly empty kitchen, having just had a dish-washing, drying and putting away marathon. Everything was still covered in aluminum foil and/or contact paper. And I couldn't take out the chametzdik pots. My husband came home from the store (he took the day off to help me switch back... it would never have happened at all without him) and gently yelled at me for not making lunch yet. Then he reminded me that I had to switch the drip pans on the stovetop back too... so I guess it was a good thing I hadn't taken out my pots yet.

I forced myself to rip the taped X's off the closed off cabinets, to unfoil my stovetop... to find that pot and make the hotdogs for lunch. But I was crying inside. I wanted to scream, "No, we're doing Pesach for a whole month this time! It's too much preparation work for just a week!" In fact, I did say something of the sort, and they just laughed at me. Because it doesn't work that way.

The transition from tamei to tahor and tahor to tamei must feel the same for some people. It's too much, too fast. I don't know why this particular transition was so difficult for me this year. We've "made Pesach" and unmade Pesach for many years now. But now I understand a little, what it must be like. And I feel for you. It's tough. Avigayil is finding ways to make it easier. I hope others can learn to do the same.

Certain recent posts have reminded my how much there is to appreciate about my LOM. It's a well-maintained building, with a comfortable waiting room, luxurious preparation rooms, and mikvaot that are very clean and pleasantly heated. In the prep rooms, guidelines for performing breast self-exams hang on the walls, and piles of discrete business cards for the Shalom Task Force sit on the counters, belying the notion that Orthodox Jews don't care about the well being of women.

The attendants have good and bad days, like anyone else, but on the whole they are very considerate. I often come in slacks, with my hair uncovered, and I am treated as congenially as anyone else. On my first visit, I didn't clip my nails, because I wanted to get a manicure for my wedding. The attendant (aware of the fact that this was a matter of custom, not law) checked my hands, saw that they were clean, and let me right in. I dunked only once (the standard custom for Ashkenazi women being at least two dunks, usually more), and still she said nothing, simply smiling pleasantly and handing me my robe as I emerged from the water. Technically, I was tehorah. Why should she make me uncomfortable and possibly discourage me from coming back?

In spite of all this, I have often been uncomfortable at the mikvah, especially during my first year of marriage. A few times, I wore a long skirt and a hat in an effort to fit in (even though, logically, a mikvah is hardly the place to worry about modest dress). Once, I came home crying. I couldn't shake the feeling that I was a phony, a modern girl masquerading as a frummie, and that if the mikvah attendants knew what I was really like they wouldn't approve of me at all.

It's hard, being the type of person who has always wanted everyone's approval, to acknowledge that my concerns were probably legitimate: these women wouldn't "approve" of many aspects of my lifestyle, just as I would not "approve" of many aspects of theirs. That is precisely why it is so commendable that they treat me like a mensch. And that is why I have to keep reminding myself how indebted I am to the attendants, to the rabbi who oversees the mikvah, and to everyone else involved, for making it possible for me to observe this mitzvah with dignity and comfort.

One day, I may live in a neighborhood with a Mayyim Hayyim type mikvah, where I can go and "be myself," so to speak, halachic incongruities and all. For now, I have a perfectly adequate mikvah -- much better than adequate, in fact. Yes, indeed. It could be much worse.

I had such a hard time this month.

Most of the time consulting with rabbis is uncomfortable, but not overly so, right? The rabbis go out of their way to make it as painless as they can: you can drop off a bedikah cloth in an envelope, leave your phone number instead of a name, and never have to make face-to-face contact. When you talk to them on the phone, they make sure to respond seriously to your questions no matter how silly, to be matter-of-fact no matter how embarrassed you are. As much as such an invasive thing can be, it's usually a pleasure.

But then there are the encounters that leave you shaking and upset, the ones that make you never want to do this again. Sometimes it's extreme, like the rabbi who failed to recognize that I was developing an anxiety disorder about taharat hamishpacha, and instead got annoyed and abandoned me in the middle of mikvah night. Sometimes it's as trifling as a rabbi who presumes more than he knows, and tells you more than you asked.

As you already know, I was still bleeding bright red on Day 5. I had tried a hefsek tahara that morning, which was pronounced kosher by my own rabbi (much good that did me.) Of course I had to start over the next day. I think I made two hefseks, one in the morning and one in the afternoon; both still had some red in them. The next morning was Friday, Day 7, and we were going out of town for Yom Tov. I decided to wait as long as possible to increase the chances that I would have stopped bleeding by then. But I was seeing brown streaks when I wiped, and was getting increasingly nervous. The last thing I wanted to do was have a shaylah over Yom Tov, without having contacted anyone in advance that I could ask.

I psyched myself up to call the local rabbi when I got there. Wanting to impress upon him that I was probably going to miss my ovulation day if this kept up, I started by saying "This is the second or third day that I've been trying, and-" He interrupted, "Let me stop you right there.

If you've been trying for two or three days, the best thing is probably to stop. More bedikot are only going to irritate you and aggravate whatever's going on. Just wait until it stops."

Huh?

I knew what he was referring to; I have certainly irritated myself towards the end of shiva neki'im, what with doing so many bedikot, and for that reason (among others) I've been given a heter to do fewer of them. But that wasn't what was going on here at all. This wasn't a scratch, it was a period that just wasn't over yet. "I really think it's stopping," I said. "I'm only going to try once today. If it doesn't work, it doesn't work."

"Oh. In that case, if it's old blood that's coming out, the best thing to do is try a douche. Of course you're cutting it close, it's almost yom tov and you need to wait a couple of hours after douching before you make another hefsek..." I tuned the rest of this out because I was too busy thinking, Huh? and No way!!

First of all, running out to the store to find a douche right before Yom Tov, then figuring out how to use it for the first time? No thank you. But more importantly, there's a reason it would be my first time. Some rabbis recommend douching, but others (including my own rabbi) warn that you can disturb the chemical balance in the vagina. This part of the body is designed to clean itself, and it doesn't particularly like artificial cleansing. I'm sure other people have good luck with this method, but me, I haven't had a yeast infection or any other in all the time I've been married, and I'd just as soon leave well enough alone.

I tried to bring things back on track. "OK, but if I do try a hefsek and I have a shaylah, can I bring it to show you on Yom Tov?" He said yes. All right. Phew. That was all I wanted to know, you know?

I respect this rabbi's vast knowledge and his many years of experience very much. But I am not a newlywed or a child, and I know my own body better than someone who has never met me before. And yet it took a great deal of effort to remind myself of this, to resist the impulse to bow to his guidance and get off the phone. Why would it possibly be a good idea to cut someone off the very first time they talk to you, and assume you already know what they're talking about?

Things went from bad to worse the next day, when somehow "any time is good" turned into knocking on his door in vain every two hours all afternoon, finally culminating in just desperately waiting on his porch in the hopes that he was either out or asleep, and would have to come in/out of the house on his way to mincha. By the time I caught him I was in a complete state. Not to mention that this encounter had to be in person, given that there was no way for him to call me, and I somehow ended up touching his hand while trying to show him which was the hefsek and which was the first bedikah, and... did I mention ugh?

He was trying to be so nice. Even his wife was trying to be so nice. I don't mean to blame him; I suppose it was just a mismatch of personalities. And I'm sure he wasn't at his best on the phone, rushing around two hours before Yom Tov; it was kind of him even to speak to me then. But these things matter, and even for someone committed like me, they color my experience of taharat hamishpacha and how I feel about the whole month so much - I can only imagine what effect it would have on someone who was trying to decide whether she wanted to keep these laws.

So far the one good thing that's happened this month is that I remembered to make an appointment in advance for my Friday night tevilah. (My third time in a row! I learn slow, but I do learn!) But despite the rabbi pronouncing my hefsek kosher that day, I'm almost surely going to ovulate before mikvah; in fact, judging by my usual symptoms I bet it's happening tomorrow. And as you also already know, I find Friday night tevilot especially difficult.

Who was it who said the month of their worst mikvah experience, they got pregnant? I don't normally put stock in things like that. But if any of you can make that come true? I will GLADLY accept. :)

There is much talk of the benefits of Taharat ha-Mishpacha. It’s good for your marriage, it’s good for your sanity, it’s good for your cervix. Yet I personally have mixed feelings about approaching my observance in this way. The reasons for this are twofold: 1) To a certain extent (I think on my good days), I view myself as a halakhic purist who follows what has been commanded to her for its own sake, and 2) it just doesn’t seem work for me.

Don’t get me wrong; I accept that the powerful sexual feelings we feel for each other for a few days out of the month are the product of the enforced deprivation, and I can read any magazine while waiting in line at the supermarket and see that the relative ease of these feelings is something that I should appreciate. Yet I think it is precisely the intensity and range of emotions, the cycle of all-or-nothing, which bothers troubles me. Those that have been pregnant or nursed for a time can attest that though the passion is somewhat subdued it does not diminish entirely, and furthermore, this extended tehora state enables a couple to fall into a rhythm that is both comfortable and comforting. I like the knowing that someone will always be there for a hug or anything else. As a personal cost-benefit analysis, more exciting sex doesn’t measure up to falling asleep nestled in my husband’s arms every night.

But the decision is not mine to make. That leaves me with two choices: either I can accept that the ups and downs exist for a reason and try to convince myself that I and my marriage are better off this way, or I can embrace my inner legal formalist and just do it. At this point I have opted for the latter, and most of the time I view taharat ha-mishpacha as a partially divine, partially rabbinic halakhic construct. And besides, *wink wink* it’s not like I won’t enjoy the more excited state if I have to have it.

Each month it seems my husband and I take our level of observance of t'h one more step. Since my husband didn't take any classes, and relies on my knowledge, I'm constantly having to remind him of the "rules." Like not passing me things directly. And that gets tedious month after month to have to constantly remind him. And the touching thing. We decided initially that we were not going to have separate beds, mainly because we couldn't afford it, we don't have the room, and nobody deserves to sleep on our crappy futon for two weeks. So we'd just be really careful and sleep on our sides of the bed, and oops - if we're both sleeping on the same sheet, well, so be it.

But now that's also becoming tedious, because I have to constantly remind him that he's got to keep to his side of the bed, and no, it's not okay if your toes accidently brush mine. Okay, not tedious, more like erotic, and that's definitely not good. The weird thing is, these little touches aren't erotic to him. Aren't men the ones who are supposed to be weak and need all these fences for their protection? I thought continuing to share our bed was going to become difficult for him, and that would eventually force us into a two bed situation, but nope. He's quite happy with the status quo. I also thought he'd be happy if I gave up t'h all together, but it turns out that he actually likes it. Just the Torah-mandated 7 days and mikvah part, though. Ironically, it's all the other rules which prevent non-sexual contact, like hand-holding, that he doesn't like. And passing the salt, please.

But this month, we seem to be working harder on remembering not to pass things to each other. Or maybe we're just more aware that we do pass things to each other, when we shouldn't. Or maybe it's just bothering me more that we're not so machmir [strict adherence] with the "fences." Or maybe I'm just plain bothered.

I went back to the mikvah in the prescribed time after my last period. The period had been "normal", for me, which is what my doctor had asked me to look out for. If I had a normal period, she said, then I knew that my miscarriage the month earlier was complete & that it would be safe for my husband and I to start trying for another baby. An actual baby this time, not a spontaneous abortion. I couldn't imagine.

My feelings walk that line between eternal hope & utter faithlessness as I dial the mikvah attendant for the night of the week I need to go. She answers, treats me with total indifference, then hangs up. I am ovulating. I won't go to mikvah until the next night, so we will probably miss our opportunity to conceive again, just as we did each month of our marriage...except once.

I feel so blessed that I got the mikvah attendant that I did for the immersion I made two weeks after the miscarriage. She was so kind & sympathetic. But this other woman I'd had before. She made out like it was inconvenient to be there for me & that she was bored while I got ready. I'd done my preparation at home, but there's still a bit to complete at the mikvah & she was quite obviously bored. She didn't check me at all, so when I asked, "Aren't you going to check my hands (or anything else)?" she said, "I only check what people ask me to. I don't want to turn anybody off." I explained to her that I was fully mitzvah-observant & was comitted to taharat hamishpachah. I'm not sure she heard me.

I felt very conspicuous dunking under her supervision.

So I was on my way back now, second visit since losing the baby. I was 10 minutes late. "We'd said 7:15, yes?" she greeted me at the door. I apologized for being late. She told me another woman was coming at 7:45 who was being supervised by somebody else, & that we'd have to clear out before then. "I'm sure you will be ready to leave." she stated.

I relieved myself, washed, said Asher Yatzar, showered & rang for her in my little towel. Alone in the silent cold marble chamber.

When she retrieved me, she wasn't all business anymore. She stood me under the bright white heat-lamp while she checked my back, hands and feet. She was quite amiable and chatty, which was a total surprise. I accepted her sudden friendliness with only slight suspicion and responded accordingly. She hadn't brought me slippers, so I asked her to check the bottom of my feet. Somehow in the few feet between the preparation room and the steps to the mikvah, I had picked up all sorts of debris. "Oy!" she exclaimed, "You know, this wouldn't happen if they just put the slippers in the rooms, but they don't. They put them out of the way & then we forget to bring them to you & now look. It's a good thing you asked me to check." She left me next to the pool as she recounted all of this, returning with a damp wash cloth. She washed my feet for me right there, on the mat just above the water.

"Okay, now whenever you're ready." She turned away, as she does, leaving an outstretched hand for me to hang my towel on. There is no need to invade my privacy by watching me walk nude into the water.

"Okay." I said. I positioned myself, tried to focus & ground. "Be careful of your hands," she called out from behind me, "your arms are spread quite wide & you don't want to touch the sides." I swallowed my protestations, being very familiar with procedure & this particular mikvah, & thanked her.

I exhaled, shut my eyes & went under, the bubbling loud in my ears. Let go of everything. Divest. NIFTAR: release, separate, die...

She pronounced it kosher & passed me the humorous doily to cover my head. I crossed my arms around my own waist & squeezed tight. "Baruch Atah HASHEM, Elokeuinu Melech ha-olam, asher kideshanu bemitzvosov vitzivanu al ha-tevilah."
"Amen."

I placed the doily back up on the marble-tiled shelf & made my next immersion. Water cover & envelope me until there is no ME. Egoless: Ayn Anochiyut. Ayn Sof.

"Kosher."

Exhale. Relax. Disappear.
Empty me, please G-d: RAYKANUT!

"Kosher."

Transform my soul into a whisper.
A whisper among the myriad voices of Your Creation: LAV!

"Kosher...Pefect!"

Thanks to a comment, I've been reminded that I actually like observing t'h. I enjoy it. Really, I do.

First of all, I love having two hours to myself, free of interruptions. I get to soak in a tub, with a good book, candles, and a CLOSED BATHROOM DOOR. No one interrupts. If the phone rings, I pretend I can't hear it. I get to spend two hours on me, me, me. Okay, so part of that two hours is spent compulsively checking my body for loose hairs, but it's still me-time. I get to go to a spa-like setting (we have a great mikvah) with heated floors and soft, fluffy towels.

Then I immerse in (usually) toasty warm water. Some voice behind me declares me kosher. I'm kosher! Then, in the water, I have my time with G-d. I don't know if I can describe it well, but standing in the warm water, knowing I'm "kosher," the water lapping against me, the sound echoing off the walls of the room, and having G-d's attention - it's the most amazing moment for me.

Then I rush to get dressed and get out of there, but I usually wind up chatting with the mikvah attendant for a minute or two. After I leave, I head towards the parking lot, which contains my car, which contains my husband. Then I get the best kiss of the month. I get great kisses throughout our permitted time, but that first one always seems like the first time my husband ever kissed me.

Whatever happens when we get home, happens. Sometimes we just cuddle together on the couch and watch a movie. But there's two-plus weeks of holding hands, hugs, cuddling, and being able to enjoy something as simple as my husband pouring me a cup of coffee and handing it to me. And hugs. Did I mention hugs? ;)

Those are the immediate, tangible results. Then there are the moments when I'm reading a history book, and the author will be discussing a 1500-hundred-year-old mikvah that was discovered and I feel this unspeakable pride and connection to Judaism that I am practising the same mitzvah, more than a thousand years later. Or when a friend comments to me about something at the mikvah, and I have this unbelievable sense of connectedness to this woman, because we both share this special, holy act. Or when I read this blog and realize we all have similar issues and concerns, with a few tweaks here and there. But even the tweaks are shared.

And yes, there are times when t'h sucks. When you really, really need to be held and you can't be. When you have to rearrange ten different appointments because your mikvah night falls on a really inconvenient evening. But these things are all part of observing t'h.

I have read the stories of the hidden mikva'ot; people who risked their lives to maintain and hide the mikva'ot from the oppressor of the day. The people who risked their lives to use the mikvah. The women who cut holes in the ice in frozen lakes just so they could immerse. The lengths that people have gone to to ensure that this mitzvah would be observed. I am honoured to be carrying on that tradition. I am blessed to be able to fulfill this mitzvah. I am a better person for it.

So, I've been sick on and off for a while (I have fibromyalgia but that's a whole other issue), and this current bout of sickness causes me to cough almost uncontrollably for 20-30 minutes at a stretch. Say I've finally fallen asleep on the couch for a short nap after working two jobs, kallah class, and attempting to finalize this wedding. After about 10 minutes of sleep let's say I start coughing uncontrollably for at least 10 minutes. Now, let's imagine df (ignoring negiah issues) comes over and puts a warm hand on my (clothed, about 4 layers, it's winter still in NYC) back and gently rubs in an attempt to stop the coughing. It works quickly and well enough for me to down some cough syrup and fall back to a somewhat restful short nap before I head home.

Oh, minor detail, I'm niddah at this time.

How bad is that? I'm most obviously not the sexiest thing on the planet as I'm spluttering and coughing and oozing from every direction possible. It wasn't a life or death situation (actually excessive coughing does amazing things for the abs)... Neither of us thought about it. It wasn't until a day or so later later that I said "hmm.. I niddah, we probably shouldn't have done that". To which he agreed and we said oh well and we moved on.

Later we spoke more about it and both agreed that this was the best course of action for that point in time. It could've been a kitten curled up on my back for all I cared.. I just wanted my body to calm down enough to try to stop the coughing. That it was his hand, yes, I would be absurd to say it didn't mean anything, but at that point in time, quite honestly it didn't. In the future will we follow this same course of action? I can't say as I really don't know.

But I feel still a bit weird about it. I can't really say why or in which direction I feel weird.

In my earlier post, ipseq said that she'd like to discuss the unspoken pressure to have sex as the only (halachicly permissible) means of sexual release for the husband, even when the wife is not interested. I think it's an interesting discussion, so I'm opening up this post for it, but I feel the need to state that it's not the sort of pressure that I was talking about in my last essay. The undefined tension in the air isn't imposed by this feeling that I must be an outlet for my husband's sexual frustration. On the contrary, a large part of the tension is that I desire the physical and emotional closeness. Rather, that I want to have had that closeness, and to have had it recently or in the near future, but not now dammit I'm tired/cranky/busy. But, oops, I'm going to be niddah tomorrow/in three days/next week so we'd better get it in while we can.

Or on mikvah night...it's not that my husband is so horny that he can't keep his hands off of me, or that I feel that way about him, it's that we're "supposed to" have sex and enjoy it. Not only that, but it's "supposed to be" my special time, the time promised to me (implicitly) in my ketubah. And if I don't cash in my chips that night, then he can use the "I'm too tired" excuse for the whole rest of the week if he wants...by which point I may be too tired, or the specialness of being together again will have worn away.

So, anyway, pressure. Specifically pressure-induced-by-male-sexual-frustration. Talk about it, because ipseq wants to. Because I want to.

When I went to the mikvah over vacation this past month, I got into the car and kissed my husband. Just like that. No butterflies, no tension, and best of all, no fights.

My first thought was that it's a feng shui type of thing, and my house needs a makeover. Then I realized that I never had this post-mikvah anxiety before I had kids, and that school, internship, a house, toddler tantrums, and my husband's 16 hour work days (he usually has to rush home from work so that I can get to the mikvah in time) greatly hinders romantic feelings, and when we are forced to partially shut down those feelings for two weeks it becomes even more difficult for them to flow freely at an appointed time.

Going to the mikvah towards the end of a most needed and enjoyed vacation showed me that although at this point are many factors that conflict with a romantic relationship, underneath it all we still have it and that with enough forethought we can get it back. While I used to see mikvah night as a return to the physical, I think I will now approach it as Our Night to Shut Off the Rest of the World. Everybody needs to be in that place once in a while.

The first year of observing t'h I truly believe brought me and my husband closer. We were starting to get into that married couple rut of being too tired to be intimate. We didn't seem to be as excited in each other, and t'h brought that back for us. Always affectionate, not being able to hold hands or touch became sort of a game. Then we started trying to have children. Now, I need those hugs. I need the hand-holding. I need the cuddling. It's no longer a game. I'm in a limbo stage where I can't start treatment just yet (probably about two months), but, as my doctor said, I'm "old." Every month when I get my period, I feel like that's x many eggs closer to being depleted. What if those were my last good eggs and next month's will be worthless?

Now, I get worked up about going to the mikvah. Our fertility problems aren't mine. At least not yet. We haven't officially started any treatments yet, so we're assuming my systems are a "go". The stress of wondering if that's true is starting to wear on me, though. And that stress always rears its head at mikvah time.

I'm not a deep person, or particularly profound. I appreciate things for what they are, and don't go looking for the deeper meaning. As long as I know it all came from G-d, that's good enough for me. Oh, don't get me wrong - I enjoy discussion. I was excited about this blog, because I loved observing t'h, and participating in a spiritual ritual that's been observed by women for thousands of years. I get chills when I read about/see pictures of mikva'ot on Masada, or uncovered by archeologists at a tell dig. That amazes me. I was looking forward to writing about that, the highs of observing t'h, while recognizing the occasional temporary lows.

But these days it all makes me sad. Even though I know I can't start treatments for a few months, even though I know there's no chance of me getting pregnant, I get depressed when I get my period. And all I want is comfort - to be held - from my husband, during the one time when I can't have it.

This seems to be a common theme. Infertility and the mikvah. Sucks.

While married to the ex, my first pregnancy ended in miscarriage. For days and days the doctors went back and forth: blighted ovum, viable, heartbeat, no heartbeat, missed abortion, D&C, mexotrethate, and on. A half or dozen so internal ultrasounds later and it was over.

Miscarrying was painful but not emotionally wrenching. There was sadness at the loss of potential but somehow I never really “felt” pregnant.

Niddah didn’t seem like such big deal. For some reason that escapes me now, the ex and I started fighting bitterly. We discussed whether or not to try again when given the go-ahead. We wondered if we should split up there and then. We’d been in counseling since a month into the marriage and there’d been little improvement.

The crisis passed, my body emptied and then righted itself. I remember immersing and wondering which way things would go. My mother and both grandmothers had a long history of reproductive problems. I questioned if I’d take after them?

I became pregnant right after mikvah night. There was this feeling almost immediately: I just knew I was pregnant. It was totally different this time. Discounting scares and bumps along the way, I was blessed with a healthy child.

At a week old, the baby ended up back in the children’s hospital. The ex and I fought and fought. He threatened to take the baby away and never let me have access to the child. Those threats continued for the remainder of the marriage.

Fast forward a year and a half. Again, right around mikvah time, we finally called it quits. We never should have married. I know that now. But then we would never have had our amazing child. No need to continue that thought.

We filed for divorce. I wondered: do I still need to immerse? I won’t be having relations but I am still married. What do I do? I did nothing. I didn’t immerse. And, when you’re racking up thousands of dollars in legal bills, being threatened by said ex, fearing that you’re going to lose your child, wondering how you’ll get through the day, praying you’re going to have enough money to make it through the month…well, mikvah becomes a little less important.

Nearly two years after it began and just over five years from the first time I went to the mikvah, I received my civil divorce. One hurdle down. No surprise, the non-religious ex had been refusing to give a get. That was the threat during the entire divorce proceeding. And trust me, that was as real a threat as fearing the loss of my child.

B”H, I got my get on a rainy Friday afternoon. I became a free woman only an hour before Shabbat. I so wanted to mark the occasion. My child, my parents, who were visiting, and I attended Kabbalat Shabbat services. That helped. But what I really wanted to do was cleanse myself of the legalities, the screaming, the fears, the sleepless nights, the threats. I wanted to go to the mikvah.

Nope. There are no “approved” rituals for personalizing divorce. Yes, there is the get process. But that was awful. There you are, a woman, alone with a group of old bearded men. The ex told everyone there that he wanted to stay married and all sorts of hooey. The ex also stuck me with the entire tab for the get. Whatever. So, what do you do when…

In a small community I couldn’t go to the mikvah. I couldn’t or wouldn’t want to be in a position of having to explain my absence. I asked the Orthodox rav who performed my wedding. I asked a close relative, a Conservative rabbi. No go. Although I’ve been attending a Conservative shul for a couple of years now, I still go back to an Orthodox rabbi for mikvah and kashrut issues. He said no, so no.

The next time I went to the mikvah was just before I remarried. I was more excited to go this time than ever before and was lucky to be accompanied a friend who also was immersing that night. OK, I know it’s supposed to be private and all…but it was tremendously special nonetheless.

Obviously a lot has gone in only a few years. The point of this rambling essay was in a sense, less about my story and more about a gray area. It’s murky if you’re not Orthodox. It’s a big question mark if you want to acknowledge a loss or a transition with mikvah. There’s not the big “kosher” stamp of approval. Sure, I could go to a lake. But legitimacy is missing. Keeping mikvah as a Conservative Jew (or Conservadox) is like hearing Zero Mostel sing about a Fiddler on the Roof.

I’ve been doing a lot of reading lately (including an unpublished master’s thesis from someone at JTS on the intentions and uses of mikvah). I made the halachic decision. I’m not sure if I made the right decision. I still wish there would have been a way to clean myself of my marriage (or its end) in those rejuvenating waters.

I leave it out there for the other learned women on this forum to continue the discussion. I hope one day using mikvah to mark life transitions (in addition to those already accepted) in modern, culturally sensitive ways will be accepted in some way, shape or form. Or maybe I just defined Conservative Judaism.

I recently went to the mikvah - as in I was in niddah. My baby is basically sleeping through the night and so the nursing is not enough to keep my period away. I got what I thought was my period but it completely "dried up" within three days. So I counted five and seven and went to the mikvah.

I guess I will have to update my profile, because now I'm not "nursing clean" anymore. This makes me sad; sad on many levels.

It means my baby is growing up. It means that I could get pregnant again, although not really. I don't "do well" when I'm pregnant and it puts a great strain on my marriage. In fact, I would go as far to say that when I'm pregnant I'm a completely different woman - a hormonal, whacked out, emotional nutball.

So after I had this most recent baby, I went to the Rov.

And I asked for a heter.

It was perhaps the hardest thing I've ever asked a rov about. Maybe because it was so deeply personal, maybe because the last time I used birth control I didn't have to ask permission from another person, maybe it was because I would have to admit that I don't know if I can handle three babies under the age of four. It took a lot of tears and a lot of explaining that maybe my marriage would be at risk if I got pregnant again too soon, but in the end he gave me one for a certain amount of time.

Well, that time is up in a few months - and of course, now that I'm not nursing clean I need that heter more than ever. I am terrified that if I get pregnant again I will lose it completely.

I went to the Rov while I was in the seven clean days for a shailah on a stain, and while I was there I asked for an extension of the heter. He gave me another six months.

And so I went to the mikvah, the place from which all the brochas for children come from, and then went home and put in my diaphragm. And for the first time in my life, I went to the mikvah knowing that there was no way a child could result from it. It was a big let down and I felt like why was I even going? There was no way I was going to get pregnant!

It's then when I realized that in some small part of my mind I realized that one of the reasons I married my husband was so I could have children. He is just a means to an end - the goal of having children. Of course that's not the only reason why I married him. But now that goal is gone, at least for the immediate future.

And what's left?

The idea that my self worth is not directly proportional to the number of children I bear and raise. That and the real work - of developing a loving and emotionally healthy husband-wife relationship, a substantial parent-child relationship.

Am I going to feel like my life is futile unless I keep pumping out those babies?

I'm afraid.

I’m not a big fan of Vagina Monologue feminism (“the more we talk about our genitalia, the fewer women will be beaten and raped”). Separating public from private is part of being human, part of being civilized, part of being holy. Still – many of you will disagree with this, I’m sure – the concept of modesty can become oppressive, and it is often used to oppress women, in particular. Sometimes, I think that the emphasis on modesty with regard to T”H falls into this category.

At other times, I just think it’s an unnecessary nuisance. Like Desde, I don’t like lying, and I often feel that T”H is forcing me into a position of dishonesty. It’s hard to come up with plausible excuses for going out alone at night, and I can’t retroactively go grocery shopping if someone asks me where I’ve been once I’ve gotten home.

I appreciate that we all have different sensibilities, and I don’t begrudge Desde her right to keep her mikveh visits from her kids. My question is whether T”H must necessarily be regarded as such a private matter. Certainly, sex between husband and wife is private, but not everything related to sex is or can be. In the nineteen fifties, American women were expected to remain out of sight while they were visibly pregnant, pregnancy being a clear sign of having had sex. To my knowledge, Judaism never endorsed such an attitude toward pregnancy. Moreover, even in the fifties, Americans had public weddings, went on honeymoons, and were not generally ashamed of having children.

In many ways, observant Jews are actually more open about sex than other members of modern society. We congregate in the waiting rooms of mikvaot every month to be guided through a ritual that will allow us to resume relations with our spouses. We send rabbis our stained underwear, asking whether or not we can have sex at any given time. The Gemara is loaded with detailed discussions of sex and anatomy that would shock the uninitiated. With all this frankness, what harm would it do to say to a friend or acquaintance, “I can’t meet with you on Monday; I’m going to the mikveh”?

I just can't wrap my mind around some of the harchakot. I'm sure their origins are perfectly reasonable, but it's hardly a turn-on for me or my husband when he hands me the car keys or I put a plate of pasta down in front of his seat instead of four inches to the left. I know these things are supposed to serve as reminders of my niddah status, as red danger flags indicating that we're off-limits to each other. Ironically enough the reverse is usually true; we have no problem remembering not to kiss goodbye when leaving for work in the morning, but without fail it will be five minutes into dinner before one of us jumps up to put the "reminder" between us on the table. Shabbat can be a pain, because I hate grape juice and there's just no way for me to say Kiddush over wine and then share some of the cup with my husband. I can't imagine the trouble of not being able to pass a baby between us and I shudder to think of a situation where one of us is gravely ill when I am niddah. After all, it's not like I'm going to try to have sex with my husband when he's laid up in a hospital bed, so why wouldn't I be allowed to comfort him with a kiss on his cheek or a gentle squeeze of his hand?

Yet...we do it all anyway. Or, at least, we try to. The reminders on the table, a two-step passing process, no backrubs or hugs after a long and stressful day. In some ways, it makes being niddah easier. We don't have to debate and define our own categories of "sexual" and "non-sexual" because they have been set out for us. It's convenient and doesn't require much forethought.

But the stress piles up, and by about the halfway mark of each niddah phase my frustration starts to come out in conversation. My responses are sharper, my temper is shorter, and I begin to feel unattractive in every way possible. Which, of course, only upsets me further. It's not sexual frustration, exactly. It's a longing for human touch, for a literal shoulder to lean on. It's a desire for normality, for everyday life, for the moment when we can once again greet each other in public without an awkward step back (lest we forget ourselves and exchange a brief peck on the lips). It's not wanting to sit in an uncomfortable wooden chair when our friends kindly leave us two adjacent spots on the couch, and not wanting to explain to weekend hosts or hotel staff why we prefer the room with two twins over the one with the queen-sized bed. It's crying inside and out, and hiding it from the world and from each other, and oh how I hate hiding.

I had a miscarriage Rosh Chodesh Adar. Ironic, isn't it? The Jewish month of joy, the new moon, Ash Wednesday, Chinese New Year...any way you slice it, it was a big day.

I was at the end of my first trimester. The time when finally parents-to-be cautiously breathe a sigh of relief that the most fragile third of the pregnancy has been successfully navigated. The time when family & friends may be privileged to hear the good news of an immanent new baby Jew.

Instead of sharing this news with the excitement and awe that we had been looking forward to on that day, we buried our fetus, along with its placenta, under a sapling. The hopes for our first child crushed. We really wanted this baby. No ritual or name for this little one, yet its early departure left me with the status of a yoledet - a woman who has recently given birth - according to Jewish Law. Which means that if we ever manage to conceive another child & it is a boy, that my husband, who is of the Israelite class, will not be allowed to perform pidyon haben. This makes sense to me, as the "first born" is the one who opens the womb initially. And this child did just that. A blindingly painful 5 hours of contractions, nausea & chaos. But not really. I delivered the entire contents of my womb on my own, thank G-d, and the only medical advice I received was, "Don't stick anything inside you for two weeks".

Well, being an Orthodox couple, we knew that a yoledet bears a longer period of nidah from her husband than a woman who has only experienced her menses. There was no way we could be intimate again for at least the next two weeks anyway, on religious grounds. And to be honest, I was feeling very protective of myself "down there", so was in no hurry.

I needed time to grieve our loss, as did my husband. And to deal with this flow of blood that signals death. One of the reasons given for a woman to go to mikvah before she unites with her husband is that she is brought so close to death by her cycle. Whether it is the loss of an ovum or a stillbirth child, G-d forbid, she must ready herself for intimacy by counting a minimum amount of time after her blood & then returning to another womb of sorts.

The mikvah is like going home. Like both your Father and your Mother enveloping you - but not your Earthly parents, The Supernal Aba & Ema. G-d.

The blood never seemed to stop. I felt like I was dying, but I knew it was just my fears there there might be something wrong with me. I confided in my friend Ariellah, who said, "How do you know that this wasn't just a very high soul who visited you temporarily because it needed to do a last little bit of teshuvah? How do you know that this Being did not find joy in you while you held it within you?" I wept.

As my breasts & belly shrank, I brought confusion and anger into my davenen. I had said a special prayer, traditional to Medieval Italian Jewish women, to protect myself & my pregnancy from any disaster. It hadn't worked. There were no answers. I didn't know what to do with my agony or questions, so I gave them all to G-d.

I tried so hard to focus on the things I had to be thankful for each time I threw myself on the bed & cried. I was so disappointed. But my womb did its job, B"H, and I did not hemorrage, B"H, and I did not require a D&C, B"H, and I was never in any physical danger, B"H, and my doctor is not concerned about my body. She is only very sorry for me.

During the "white" days I dreaded the bedikat. I didn't want to see any blood because I wanted to feel like I was healing and yet seeing the wrong color would assure me that I could postpone intimacy, that I could remain cloistered in my private grief. I hated all the counting & all the rules, which I had never hated before, because I just wanted to be free and on my own and not have any externally applied boundaries to my process of letting go and coming around.

Mikvah night came, "finally". I was full of mixed feelings during my preparation, partly because I wasn't sure if I felt emotionally ready to share a bed with my husband quite yet, as wonderful and supportive as he had been during this difficult time. My body seemed ready, though, showing me that I was already ovulating again. Eager to risk another miscarriage, or possibly a living child.

I was extra scrupulous in the tub, as it would be Shabbos when I immersed. I had never done tevilah on Shabbos, so I checked with the mikvah lady ahead of time about what extra or different or special things I would need to do or be aware of during my prep & while in the water. She reminded me to floss before candle lighting and to be more careful about my hands and feet. She also asked me to tie my hair back with an elastic after I had combed everything out, as knots in hair could not be unsnarled after Shabbos and those disqualify the tevilah. She was very nice about it.

I arrived at the mikvah and she let me in happily. She was 8 months pregnant. I tried not to feel jealous. I don't want to put the ayin hara on her or her baby. We wished each other a Shabbat Shalom and she showed me into one of the changing rooms so I could undress. "Don't worry," she said with a smile, "it's really fast on Friday night, because there's nothing for you to do."

I came out into the light in my towel for her to check me over. She said I looked pretty, which was very sweet of her. Then we went into the mikvah room and I stood in front of the steps. Such a beautiful, sacred place where all my fears, my shortcomings, my veneers of Self, of Ego which cover my neshamah get washed away each cycle. A place I used to be so eager to visit and now, not so much. As she closed the door behind her I suddenly broke down in sobs.

"Aw, are you okay?" she asked as she came over with a sympathetic look on her face.
"No," I answered through my tears, "I'm here because I had a miscarriage, so I was just hoping that I would not have had to come back to the mikvah this early. I'm sorry - I didn't think I would do this."
She gave me a great big hug, her with her great big belly & me in my white cotton towel. She looked me in the eye reassuringly & told me that this was a new beginning. She was right. I thanked her for reminding me.

I gave her my towel and descended into the warm, healing waters. The soft swirling whisper they made as they surrounded me was comforting. Because it was Shabbos, I dunked one time "for my shower" that normally I would take when I arrived at the mikvah on a chol day. Then a second time as usual. she pronounced it kosher. So I reached for the cloth to put on my head, crossed my arms in front of me and said the berachah with very narrow focus. After her "ameyn", I went under three more times.

Once with the hope that G-d would heal my body and soul so that I would be ready and able to birth a living, surviving child one day, drowning my tears and washing them away.

"Kosher."

Once with the request that G-d would help my husband and me through our sadness and strengthen our marriage from this crisis.

"Kosher."

Then one final time that I be enabled to make myself and my work and the way I am in the world all one, doing G-d's will.

"Kosher."

May this be the will of the Holy one, HaKadosh baruch Hu.
A new beginning.
Yeysh mey-ayin.

After my first baby was born, it was a long time before I got to mikvah. (I was stupid, and didn't ask about my brown and then yellow bedikahs that were probably fine, for many reasons, including the fact that putting off going to mikvah, while not fair to my husband, was just fine with me! Getting those bedikahs to a Rav would have been complicated, but it could have been done. There's always the US Mail.) I wanted to have gone to mikvah, I just didn't want to go to mikvah...

But eventually I went. And when my period returned at 5 months post-partum, boy was I upset. Whatever happened to nursing clean! I was robbed! And no, he wasn't on solids yet! Since then I've spoken with a lot of women who've had similar experiences (usually, we all have children born really close together!). Okay, so I learned nursing wasn't adequate birth control for me. It didn't even save me from having to use the mikvah. Totally unfair! So I got pregnant again, fast. Another hiatus, truly earned.

But I couldn't do that forever. I mean, I like kids and all, but sooner or later, I had to come to terms with my fear of the water.

My fear of the water had earned me one thing: A heter. No, not special permission not to use the mikvah, no Orthodox Rav is going to say that! The attendant had asked on my behalf, and I was granted a heter to only get one Kosher tevilah. That's it. Not 3, not 9 or 7, as some have the custom to do, 1. (As in all things, this was my heter, not yours, ask your own Rav. The normal minimum is 2 without extenuating circumstances, one before and one after the brocha.)

This was the deal we made... one to get wet, don't worry if it's kosher or not. Make the brocha, dip again. I would make at least three tries, and then additional dips as necessary to get my 1 Kosher Tevilah, but I would no longer be trying for 3 times Kosher. One was enough, and I could get out!

The true turning point came one night when after 8 or nine tries, the attendant said, "I'm 98% sure that was Kosher," and let me out of the mikvah. Half way up the steps, I stopped. Could I really go home and say, "I'm 98% sure I'm tahor."? I turned to the attendant. "Should I go back in?" I asked. We agreed we would both be more comfortable if I did. And no, it wasn't one more try, but more like another 5! But by then, we were both sure it was 100% Kosher.

After that, it got easier. I was still uncomfortable in the water, still tried to "not think about it too much" during the sheva neki'im, but that was the one and only time I truly used my heter. After that, I was much more relaxed about my ability to get under, and I usually got my three Kosher tevilot, although we still agreed that after one, I could give up and declare myself done. I started every mikvah visit by telling the mikvah attendant of both my fear and my heter. Knowing I didn't "have to" gave me the strength to dip the additional times.

In comments to my previous post, My first time... I said I had always thought taking the mikvah lady up on her idea of "practicing" sometime in bathing suits (to get me more comfortable with the water) was a good idea, but had just never gotten around to it. In retrospect, that was a lie. Since I pride myself on being honest, here's the real reason I never accepted what seemed like a perfectly reasonable offer.

First, understand that we're talking about real fear here. I had a brief but traumatic experience as a child, where I was swallowed by a wave (on the beach). I've blocked out any actual memories of this event, but I can assume that for a moment there, I was completely engulfed by the water, and had no sensation of which way was up, no firm contact with the ground.

I'm plenty comfortable in a pool. (I've never since liked the beach.) At least before I realized mixed swimming was an issue, I'd happily put on a bathing suit and go "swimming," either meet a friend at the neighborhood pool, or join my sister in the hotel pool on vacations. I had two rules, though. Rule 1: I had to be holding onto something... either my feet firmly on the bottom, or my hands firmly on the side or on a handrail... I was slightly less comfortable holding onto a person, but that was also acceptable. Rule 2: No dunking me. My head must remain above the water at all times.

You can see how both of these rules are incompatible with the whole mikvah experience (especially the second one!). Just thinking about it sent me into panic mode and left me shaky. It was bad enough I was having trouble getting a kosher tevilah and needed to try many times when I had to go to mikvah. Obviously, meeting the mikvah lady at the mikvah in a bathing suit would entail my having to put my head under additional times, or what would be the point? I was perfectly comfortable in the water with my head out of it.

Simply put, I wasn't willing to submit myself to water torture for anything less than a divine commandment. Especially when I got pregnant so soon after marriage... I saw it as a gift, not just of the new life I was carrying, but the gift of not having to dunk myself for almost a year. I needed that hiatus, and I was darn well taking it!

I put off making a hefsek taharah as long as I could, but I finally did it. Partially I stalled because I wasn't supposed to see my future husband once I did it, and we had paperwork to take care of if we wanted to be married legally, not just halachically. Mostly it was because it started the count-down to going to mikvah. As it was, we wound up seeing each other anyway, to take care of that paperwork. Once I went to mikvah, though, we didn't even talk on the phone, except through intermediaries.

I was supposedly frum, but I was very new to everything, and I was far from home. The community had adopted me to a certain extent... made my bridal shower, made sure I had invitations for Shabbos meals, a place to stay the Shabbos before my Sunday wedding so I wouldn't be alone... but it occurred to no one to offer to accompany me to mikvah.

Yes, I was scared of the water, but I was determined to go anyway... I wanted to be married, and that was stronger (minimally) than my fear, but I had panic attacks and an adrenaline rush that left me weak and shaky every time i thought of my upcoming "trial by water." I was to be married on Sunday, and my kallah teacher decided I should go to mikvah Friday morning rather than Saturday night.... so my preparations wouldn't be rushed, and so my time in the mikvah wouldn't be rushed by knowing others were waiting. She told me to meet her at the mikvah, and that I could bring a friiend, but I didn't know who to ask... people are busy Friday morning. So I came alone.

When she met me there, there were three of us on the front steps. "Oh, good, you did bring some friends," she said. But they were there for the same reason. One of them was also getting married on Sunday, and her sister accompanied her. (They had arranged to meet a different shomeret there.) Still, it was nice to not feel completely alone, and I wished for my sister's company. As alien as my life style seems to her, she would have come and offered moral support... but she wasn't in town yet, and she was traveling with Nita, who would definitely not have been invited! So it was just as well.

I don't remember anymore how many times it took me to actually get my three kosher dunks. My long hair floated, so they offered me a hairnet. I found it hard to remember not to breathe under water, and choked as the chlorinated water burned the inside of my nose and mouth. I especially found it hard to get far enough under, as I felt that I was drowning as soon as the water closed over my head. And picking up my feet at the same time was another hardship, as I lost my connection with solid ground.

All I really remember is that, pale and shaking, I accomplished my objective: a kosher tevilah. Oh, I was still terrified of the water. I would still spend the sheva neki'im in subsequent months trying not to think about what exactly I was counting up to. But now I knew that scared or not, I could and would do it. In a way, it was empowering. And imagine what it meant to my husband: here I was, doing something that scared me to tears, all for him. (Well, that's how he saw it!)

Over the next few times, we (the shomerot and I) worked out some details to make it easier. I held onto the metal hand rail, as far down as I could reach, with one hand, held my nose with the other. Wore the hairnet so I wouldn't have to worry about stray floating hairs. Pulled myself down by the handrail, pulled my feet up as I let go of my nose, then broke the surface of the water. It still took me many tries before I heard the shomeret say "Kosher!" And everytime I met a "new" shomeret, I had to start by explaining that I was scared of the water. One time when I went to mikvah the shomeret said, "So get pregnant. Then you won't have to come for a while." "Fine," I said, through gritted teeth, "but I still have to get through this first!" (And yes, I did, in fact, conceive that night.)

So I got a hiatus, some needed time off. At least until after the baby was born...

The day I go to the mikva is probably the most exciting day of the month. I walk around the entire day grinning like I have a secret, dreamily imagining my husband and thinking about our reunion that will take place in only twelve hours… six hours… three hours…

As soon as I put my kids to bed I start my preparations. I try to get to the mikva with at a time when there won’t be much waiting so that I can get out as quickly as possible. I then speed home, going forty on residential streets, my heart beating with anticipation. Of course this looks like it’s going to be a wonderful evening.

Except when I walk through the door, everything changes. I become this tense, crazy, haphephobic monster. My husband tries to greet me with a kiss, and I duck. He’ll ask me an innocent question, something like “Do you want ice in your Diet Dr. Pepper?” and I start to scream and throw things. Eventually I ease my way back into things—first a poke, then a handshake, and we take it from there.

I am doing the best I can to understand why this happens. I know it isn’t my husband since I can think of nothing but being with him the entire time we are apart. The best I can come up with is that I find the cycle of together-apart-together-apart to be difficult to tolerate. The nature of our relationship is so different from one part of the cycle to the next, and I can’t just wiggle my nose and change into sexual Avigayil from just-a-good-friend Avigayil. Does anybody have any other insights? Advice?

I think I’ll get my proverbial “feet wet” with a mikvah story about a friend, rather than myself. I was still a single girl when a good friend told me this story.

She was in her 30s, after being frum for a number of years. She was married for over three years and had been told by a few infertility specialists that she and her husband could never get pregnant without medical assistance (funny how often you hear that). She had been given a heter to only make bedikahs on the first and last day of counting (I don’t recommend this practice unless you absolutely must). The trick to this is that you must remember to make that last bedikah; if you forget you have to start counting all over again. (Just a technical note, this is a complicated matter and you should consult with a Rov and a Kallah Teacher if you have such a heter/practice and if you experience what happens next.)

So here was my friend who had made only her first bedikah, and she and her husband went “out of town” to help friends who were running a Purim Party at a Jewish Old Age home. She was due to make her last bedikah that day and toivel that evening. As everything Jewish goes, the Purim party started late, ran late and they left back to Brooklyn late. Sure enough, they got stuck in traffic, and between the craziness of the day and the traffic she either forgot or couldn’t make the last bedikah before sunset. She called the Rov who told her, unfortunately because she had not made any bedikahs other than the first, she would have to start all over again – i.e. if she had made even one bedikah in the middle she could have started counting seven again from that middle bedikah. But now she would have to start over again.

Devastated and with great mesiras nefesh, she counted again, feeling that now this was a wasted cycle, and that by the time she got to the mikvah it would be too late to get pregnant. Gam tzu la tova she told herself. This time she made sure to make her bedikah on the last day. She went to the mikvah feeling sad and blue. She bathed and prepared herself for the mikvah. When she was ready she rang the desk, and in a few minutes one of the mikvah ladies came to take her to the mikvah. Now this is a busy mikvah with four or five mikvah ladies that split up the days of the week amongst them – you never know which mikvah lady you will get on any given day. The mikvah lady, who hadn’t seen my friend in some time said, “I haven’t seen you in such a long time! Do you get a mazel tov? Did you have a baby?” Now I’m sure the mikvah lady had the best of intentions, but this just pushed my friend over the edge.

She began to cry and couldn’t stop. She explained that no, she wasn’t pregnant yet. The mikvah lady apologized, but my friend couldn’t stop crying. As she told me, “I couldn’t tell if the water I immersed in was rain water or my own tears.” She toiveled, the mikvah lady apologized again, she got dressed and went home a broken woman.

Of course, I’m sure you figured out by now, that she had a beautiful baby nine months later; a child that has gone on to be a bright star – a smart, funny, and beautiful six year old – and the now the oldest of four with a fifth on the way.

I tell this story not because of the miracle or divine providence in her getting pregnant, but because of her mesiras nefesh to keep halacha and to remind everyone to watch what they say. The mikvah lady in question was oblivious to this person’s situation and made what she thought was a nice comment. It devastated my friend instead. But perhaps that devastation was the teshuva she needed to get pregnant. I don’t know. I just know that if it was me I would have probably hauled off and belted the mikvah lady.

Hello, my name is Tziva. I have to admit that the whole mikvah process is a mixed bag for me. I enjoy the results. The actual dunking I find a spiritual experience. The prep I dread, it is stressful and tiring. It brings out OCD tendancies in me. I could spend a whole day sloughing off dead skin, cleaning my belly button and ear ring holes and recutting fingernails until they hurt. By the time I leave for the mikvah I am exausted. I need to find a way to put some perspective into my preperations and maybe even a touch of spirituality.

I've gotten so much better about my obsessive/compulsive relationship with taharat hamishpacha. Partly thanks to my therapist, who convinced me that Gd would actually approve of my becoming less afraid of making a mistake. Partly thanks to our (second) rabbi, who finally - when all else failed - told me, "once you get home to your husband, don't ask any questions NO MATTER WHAT you notice." It still takes some effort on my part, though, to get through mikvah day without a knot of tension in my stomach.

I give myself twice as much time to get ready as it should normally take, both so that I'm not rushing around (because that physically feels like I'm nervous, even if I'm not), and so that later I won't be as likely to say to myself "How do you know you didn't miss that? After all, you were rushing around." I used to even put on soothing music during my bath, but I've gotten so I don't need to do that anymore. I still spend a long, long, long time on my nails, because ragged cuticles are the one thing I can't convince myself that I don't care about... and not surprisingly, they were almost always the thing I used to find after I got home. Or on the way home. Or even, agonizingly, on the way from the mikvah room back to my prep room. So if I know I've been completely thorough with them, I can more easily tell myself that anything I notice as I'm getting dressed must be new. I couldn't have missed it before.

But although I'm better able to sit through the anxiety when it does hit me, I'm still susceptible to it hitting in the first place. Friday nights and Yom Tov, as you can imagine, are the worst. What if I notice something tiny after candle lighting, when I can no longer do anything about it? Will I ask a shayla, with all the stress that would entail, or will I attempt to ignore it - tell myself I'm just obsessing - and instead be eaten up by guilt later? This last time, I davened Kabbalat Shabbat almost primarily as a way to keep myself from checking my hands. I figured Gd wouldn't mind me using Him a little. For a good cause.

All's well that ends well, I thought as I headed for the mikvah, or it's about to anyway. Only to find (as almost never happens, in my tiny neighborhood) that there was a line of people ahead of me. OK, maybe it does happen, but if it's a weeknight I can do something while I wait: I just keep going over my nails, or if even *I* get sick of that, I can read something from my backpack. This was Shabbos. There was nothing I was allowed to do; there was nothing I had brought with me. I sat in my robe, trying not to look at anything or touch anything, trying not to let even a stirring of nervousness begin.

Add that to the fact that - as much as I love and miss my husband - mikvah night has by now become synonymous, for me, with Yet Another Futile Effort to Conceive. And suddenly for a second I was Angela from My So Called Life, forced to wait for a room so she could reluctantly lose her virginity to Jordan Catalano.

"It was *exactly* like when I was waiting to get my flu shot, only I didn't even have a magazine to read."