I'm Pregnant Not Handicapped

But I have been using the handicapped bathrooms and parking spaces (with negative consequences). It's a toss up here where people are much more lenient with pregnant people than in western countries. I haven't used it at work but it's in my personal life I would like a little more leeway.

I was at the mall with a friend and though I should have gone before leaving the conference we were both attending: I didn't. We started laughing so hard I knew I had to go to the bathroom before it looked like my water had broken. I dashed to the bathroom without any of my belongings in the effort to get there faster. And before I came to the one with the stalls, I saw a female handicapped one. And I ducked inside. I may not have been in a wheelchair but I was pregnant and my body in an altered state from what it normally was.

Imagine my relief turning to dismay when, after washing my hands, the lock wouldn't turn in the tumbler. I panicked because the person I was with didn't know where I was - I didn't have my phone or my purse in my rush to get to the bathroom.

There was I was: in a foreign country, at the mall, locked in a bathroom. If I hadn't been worried I'd spend all night in there, I would have laughed. Instead I started pounding on the door, unsure how I would communicate with the passerby that I was stuck, reviewing my Arabic, hoping someone would hear me over the noise, as twenty minutes went by and my heart beat threatened to floor me.

And amazingly, someone did. A woman's voice, in Arabic, not sure what my problem was, but telling me she would help.

I wasn't so lucky with the police officer who gave me a ticket for parking in the handicapped spot even after 30 minutes of trying to find a parking space at the mall (without success).

Am going to take my belly into the station and see what happens.