Before I get started, happy belated Passover to all the Jewish members of the hive.  Despite my best intentions to post about preparing for Passover with a baby in tow, the hustle of holiday prep and travel got away with me, and it just didn’t happen.  My apologies.

What I am excited to share are a few traditions unique to the Jewish community regarding our shared interest and love of all things baby here at Hellobee.  When I was pregnant with Little C, there were two things inherently “Jewish” about my pregnancy journey.

There is a tradition that is rooted not in Jewish law but in long-standing superstition, which says that drawing any attention to a baby before it is born brings bad luck, or “the evil eye.” It is similar to the modern day proverb of not counting your chickens before they hatch.  These traditions likely began in the days when miscarriages, stillborn babies and high infant mortality rates were much, much higher than they are now, and the customs were carried from generation to generation.

Because of the tradition of protecting baby from bad luck, many Jews in more religiously observant communities wait until far later in pregnancy to openly tell anyone outside their immediate family that they are pregnant – oftentimes until they are well into their fifth month of pregnancy or are visibly showing.  While this is not as common nowadays among the mainstream Jewish community, there are still several very common traditions, all rooted in protecting a baby from “the evil eye.”

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First, Jews traditionally do not have baby showers.  This one was tough for me, especially as I attended showers for non-Jewish friends and saw fabulous Pinterest photos of glamorous baby celebrations.  What made things more difficult was when a few friends of mine offered to throw me a baby shower, and I had to find a polite way to explain that while I appreciated the offer, showers are traditionally off-limits for Jewish mamas.

This is an evolving custom, and more and more Jewish families are bucking tradition and celebrating their babies in advance. However, in my case, I had an acquaintance from childhood lose his daughter two days after her birth, and knew another girl from college who had a late-in-pregnancy miscarriage, and the thought of emptying a nursery filled with items hand-picked for a baby no longer there frightened me enough to observe this tradition to its fullest.

Instead, my sister threw us a “Meet the Baby” shower when Little C was two weeks old.  These “sip-and-see” events, as they are called down south, are becoming more and more popular.  Having the opportunity to be “showered with love” while introducing Little C to all of our friends made me even more reassured in my choice to follow the Jewish custom of holding off on receiving baby gifts until the baby is born.


Little C with his Auntie Confetti dressed in a fancy collared onesie for his Meet the Baby shower

Aside from the lack of a baby shower, we also upheld the tradition by not bringing any “baby supplies” into the home in advance of the birth.  Pregnancy can create an urge to “nest” – to prepare your home and your life for your new bundle of joy.  While I had ample projects in the organization department around our house (we moved apartments when I was 38 weeks pregnant – not the best idea), we didn’t set up a nursery or bring any baby items into our home until Little C was born.

We circumvented the superstition a bit, as many shops in Chicago have dealt with other Jewish families and are prepared to accommodate them by holding merchandise in their warehouse until the baby is born.  When I was mid-way through my second trimester, we found and ordered nursery furniture that we loved, and we worked with the staff at the store to arrange delivery once I (and the baby) had safely made it through the labor and delivery process. The folks at Lazar’s Juvenile Furniture were in the top ten list of calls we made once Little C made his grand entrance, and by the time we came home from the hospital two days later, they had delivered and set up all of the furniture and other items we tacked on to the order.

Other strategies we employed while figuring out how to manage this challenge were ordering a few key items that we could keep at my parents’ house until Little C had safely arrived (like newborn clothes, tiny diapers and other necessities of early babyhood), and making an extremely detailed list of items we would need my mom to purchase while Little C and I were at the hospital after his birth.  All of these tactics, plus an Amazon Prime subscription meant that after we managed the first rushed few days after the birth, we were all set in supplies.

My only big exception to the “no shopping rule” before Little C was born was buying and installing a car seat, since I didn’t feel safe waiting on that purchase, and if I could have done it again, I would have pre-ordered and stashed my breast pump, unopened, at my mom’s (since nothing is worse than having your milk come in and having nothing but a lousy hand pump to help with super painful engorgement.  Yikes!).

Finally, the last way that Jews protect their babies from “the evil eye” is by keeping the baby’s name a secret.  The traditional superstition from days of yore says that by holding off on naming the child until he has arrived, he lacks the clear descriptor of a name to catch bad luck.  Mr. Confetti and I didn’t have too much trouble with this, although it drove our families a little bit crazy.  We were so excited to share Little C’s name once he was born. Since we had known early on that we were having a boy, it was exciting for us to keep something secret until he made his grand entrance.

Along the topic of naming Little C, the second Jewish influence in my pregnancy journey was determining Little C’s name.  A special part of Jewish tradition is to honor the memory of deceased relatives when naming a child.  Using the name of a deceased relative not only keeps their memory alive, but according to religious tradition, creates a bond between the soul of the deceased and the child, so each one benefits from the good deeds of the other.

Interestingly, the Jewish community is split when it comes to naming after living relatives.  There are two halves of the Jewish community: the Ashkenazi Jews who are of Eastern European descent (and make up the majority of American Jews) and the Sephardic Jews of Middle Eastern and African descent.  Sephardic Jews support naming individuals after living relatives (most often grandparents), while Ashkenazi Jews deem it inappropriate.   The Confetti family falls in the Ashkenazi camp, so calling our son Mr. Confetti Jr. was definitely not in the cards.

When we were debating names for Little C, we knew we wanted to honor the Jewish naming tradition of memorializing loved ones lost.  Little C has four names — a first and middle English name, as well as a first and middle Hebrew name.  We did this to honor three deceased relatives: Mrs. Confetti’s mother, his grandfather and my grandfather.

Where this gets a little bit less traditional is the modern interpretation of using just the first letter of the deceased relative – after all, I wasn’t going to give my son his deceased grandmother’s name, right?!  So instead, we used the first letter of her name (which in real life is actually C, fitting for my HB moniker), brainstormed a ton of choices and eventually narrowed it down to three and then to one.  It sounds similar to her name and starts with the same letter, and is the perfect name to honor her memory.

We picked Little C’s middle name using the first letter “H” after my grandpa Harry. And when picking Little C’s Hebrew name, we honored both of our deceased grandfathers by using both of their Hebrew names, one for the first name and one for the middle name. Our families were touched by our name choices, and we were able to share the story of how he got his name with all of our friends and loved ones at his bris, his circumcision ceremony.

Looking back, it is interesting to reflect on how our heritage affected our journey toward parenthood.

Did you have any special religious or ethnic customs that played a part in your pregnancy?