Mayim Rabim

Growing up I was always the one with the positive attitude. I used to go around the house saying “If you think you can you can, if you think you can’t you can’t.” Well I now have 4 failed inseminations and a surgery under my belt and my head wants to officially start saying “I can’t.”

I told myself this wouldn’t be easy. I told myself that Hashem chose me for this trial because I’m strong, but after every failure I loose a little bit of strength and it becomes harder to keep that positive attitude. I now find myself wanting to cry but actually not being able to. It’s as if I’ve stepped into zombie mode and am going on with my life leaving my head way behind me. My body is happily getting new prescriptions and setting up appointments while my head is saying, what is happening, why are we doing this again, why does it never work?

I have to keep going, I know it will work some day… it has to. I’m davening more, saying more tehillim, I want to show Hashem how much I want him to give me a neshama to nurture… I can’t say I can’t… I just can’t.

A visitor to our site wanted to ask us the following... please post your replies so we can possibly help her with her situation!

Mindela writes:

I am a young widow. I originally thought that it would be improper for me to go to the Mikva after he died because it seems like an announcement that I am available. Now that a few months have passed, I wonder if going to the Mikva again, one last time would be a carthartic thing to do. Perhaps I'd reconnect with my husband in a new spiritual dimension. What is proscribed halacha? I welcome all comments.

Ok, I’m probably just blowing this whole thing out of proportion, but it has come to my attention that a man passing through our town wants to make use of the mikvah in the morning before davening. While I think this is a very admirable thing for any man to do (I mean would you want to dip every day?) I can’t help but feel a little selfish/protective of our little mikvah.

Since we only have one mikvah for everything (women, dishes & men) it’s well known around our town that men should bring their own towels and we strongly suggest that they shower before dipping. But a traveler would not know that practice and since it is during the Nine Days my mind is drawing up little images of him not showering at all during this time and considering his daily dip sort of like his refresher... and all I can say is “eww.” That’s the mikvah we have to dip in too.

I asked my husband to tell him to shower and bring his own towel, but he said that it was not his place to do that, and I agree with him. It’s not his place or mine to tell a stranger what to do, but part of me wants to draw up a big sign that says “Please shower before entering” and run over and post it on the mikvah.

Am I just being a bit too mental? A bit too overprotective? How am I going to get these silly images out of my head before I have to go to the mikvah next week?

Confusion... so often I find myself completely comfortable in all my thoughts on Taharat Hamishpacha only to find myself totally and utterly bewildered the next month.

My current niddah is the first cycle I've had since my surgery 2 months ago. Everything was going fine and my husband was actually really excited that I was able to start a cycle on my own (seriously, I think it might have been the first time ever recorded where a husband literally jumped up and down for joy at the announcement that his wife got her period), then it came to the 5th day and time to do the first inspection. Only I was still bleeding, and not just trickle blood, bright red blood. I thought this probably was normal because it had been a while since my uterus had emptied out. So the next day I tried for a hefsek and got one clean. I put in the moch and then had to run to the store to get ingredients to start challah before it got too late. Maybe it was the irritation from running around, but I ended up having a shailah on my moch dachuk. So I set it out to send to our Rav. The next day the morning bedikah was fine, which was a relief. But that night my evening bedikah looked a little odd, so I set it out as a shailah too and started to get nervous.

You see, every shailah I ever send into my Rav always comes back no good. The only time I have ever gotten a positive result was when I sent it to a Rav in another city one month when my Rav was not in town.

Sure enough my Rav told my husband that both bedikahs were no good. At that point I already had another shailah to send in, which (if negative) would push my mikvah day back to day 15, not day 12. Since this might be the first time ever in my life that I might actually ovulate on my own, being three days late is very upsetting. I started thinking that perhaps the reason all of a sudden I'm having so many questionable bedikahs was because of my surgery. Perhaps what I was seeing was residue not necessarily from the uterus. I expressed my concerns to my Rav before sending in the last bedikah. He said he would look at the next shailah and then if it is still negative he was going to send all three to anther Rav with more experience in women with surgical issues. It was negative, so he sent them away.

Relief, right? Wrong. Yesterday I sent an e-mail to my Rav saying that today was the original day that I was supposed to go to the mikvah and I am eagerly waiting to hear what the other Rav has to say. He wrote back saying that he is sorry if I had my hopes up, but his decision that the bedikahs are no good still stands, he is waiting to hear back from the other Rav on the basis of a diagnosis if something else is wrong. Diagnosis???? I thought I was getting a second opinion. The last bedikah did not look like blood to me so I was hoping to at least be able to go to the mikvah tomorrow night (only two days late) instead of Shabbos (three days late).

Maybe this is the result of the frustration of going through so much infertility treatments, but it is really difficult to take no on shailahs when so much is at stake, especially if they actually look promising. Is it this frustration that is blinding me into being upset, or should I be worried that every shailah is always negative?

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...

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?