A Year Later...

Somehow I have let three months go by without writing on this blog. I can certainly blame the busy weeks before I left my job (May and June) and then the intrusion of a month long family vacation.

I also will blame social media, that reason that twice in his short life our son has fallen on his head while I spent just one more second on my Blackberry.

No matter who or what I blame, I've lost the three months of the first year of the guy's life. Granted I wasn't posting weekly by the end, but at least once a month.

A whirlwind recap: in May we went to Italy, our first vacation just us three without any family to toss the child towards and run out the door for our adult fun. Italy was a lovely place to have the baby as Italians love babies (bambino! bambino, they would cry as walked around with the stroller).

As MZ became more mobile, in the US crawling and crawling, we realized how a change of scene while good for us, was essential to this growth. Falling off his grandfather's coffee table was a one time thing; reflexively he learned not to do it again. But his balance -- more worrying to me was the lack of fear of danger -- seemed precarious as he teetered at the end of the fireplace or other sharp edges.

Then suddenly, at his birthday party, he took five steps in a row. A week later, he had that drunken, old man walk, swinging legs from his hips, hands fisted. He was up, and no longer was the speedy crawl going to make do -- unless he was tired.

This while in the background another mother was saying that her children walked at 7 months and 10 months. Or something that caused the beast of envy to rear up from its banishment. Why are we competitive with our children? None of this is a predictor of anything. If someone writes a symphony at age 3 (Beethoven) call me.

Stretching on his tiptoes for hugs, phones, or books, helped develop his thighs, his muscular legs. I know we're talking about a one year old, but his muscle definition beats mine to a pulp (which they are slowly returning from, the sinews just starting to show).

So long formula: milk, milk, milk. Which is easier to get here in Doha than the pre-made formula we raised him on. The solids have been successful as well. Though I have friends who are still breast feeding (there's the competitive streak again).

His mouth is erupting in teeth, seemingly overnight; there is no safe zone to get in and get out without being pinched. (Here's an area where he has the advantage of the walking wonder who has much fewer teeth).

School is two weeks around the corner. I know he will love the people; I just don't think the dropping off and picking up is going to be great for my schedule. (But then the past few days I've felt slightly at sea. Reading, writing, exercising to my heart's content. And then: boredom.)

He's here to stay, God willing, our little guy. And when I see his face, I really can't think of anything else I've done in my life that counts this much.

9 months: a year in review

This time last year I was preparing for the launch of our start up by attending celebrations in two countries: Qatar and the United Kingdom, graced by a visit with the Queen at Windsor Castle no less.

And now here we are on the year anniversary of that and I'm about to walk away from the job that's had very high highs, and very low, lows.

What's remained constant however, is the growth of this little bundle that is our baby.

He now stands, pulls himself up, smiles at Katy Perry on Sesame Street (and her Peacock video!) as well as eats solids. A baby is such an incredible time keeper. He reminds me of how I felt this time last year, waiting for his arrival, unsure of what kind of parents I would be.

The truth is, I am up to my neck in work. There's leaving this job, there are two start-ups I'm involved in as well as pulling together a volunteer taping of a pilot for a web series. Oh and being a wife, trying to lose the weight, write in my journal and remember to eat, sleep, shower, and show up for meetings on time (most of which I failed to do today).

I have such willing hands to help from our nanny; she spends a lot of time with the baby and she's great at it. He adores her but smiles and turns his head when I enter the room so that helps.

I don't feel the guilt that other mothers talk about - particularly working mothers. I don't know if it's because I am literally running on my feet (which is why I haven't posted here in 2 months) or if it's because I always thought motherhood would be somewhat distanced for me, given the way that I grew up.

My parents were not emotionally tied to us - except in the case of negative emotions - until college. Up until then we were a threat to their good names and me particularly, had a vagina that needed strict policing against the amorality of American teenagers.

Watching Glee today and actually most nights of the show, I wonder about this teenager that our rambunctious little one will be become. Will he experiment and self destruct?

Will I force him into staid Christianity as I experience during college and not be very happy -- but be very good?

My husband had riotous upbringing and broke his father's heart on a regular basis.

Will our son do the same?

Always a lover of inclusive groups and lots of people, I suddenly wonder if I'd rather only have one. Where will I find room in my heart for the other kids? How will my body slow down enough? And not to mention on this new self-employed lifestyle can we accommodate another plane ticket?

When people ask, I try to pretend as though money were no object as to how many kids we'd have: 4-6. As I flip through the pages of People magazine, I see lots couples who have adopted or taken in foster or ill children, puppies, you name it.

And I want that.

But I want to be a jetsetting traveler too. So maybe then it will come.

But maybe not now?

One thing is sure: there is a lot of uncertainty but also excitement ahead.

Both for me and the baby.

Seven Months: seven choices

I can hardly believe all the month of February has gone by without my writing down anything about motherhood. Or that our child has now passed the halfway mark into his first year on the planet.

I held him the other day close, whispered about how he was growing up and it was a sad time for me as his mother.

People always go on and on about how fast they grow. And it's not that he's growing up fast: it's that time is fleeting the older I get. Soon he will walk, he will run, he will go off to college, fall in love, make mistakes - in that order or not.

Children are a great way to mark the passage of time as my nearly 12 year old neice reminds me of being in college and spending the summer carting her around with me in the Florida heat.

My absence from this blog isn't because I haven't been experiencing or thinking about motherhood and the baby. It's just that during my Saturday writing times I focus on my main blog, articles, or other pieces I'm trying to get done so that my career as an academic or writer doesn't suffer from my day job(s). This plus the meetings that often happen on Saturdays as well mean that every single second of my day is accounted for.

This is the life of the working mother, or indeed a mother's life in general. My hsuband is generally great and does pitch in to help but his hours are not close to mine. And mine are nothing near what our nanny spends with the baby. This is modern parenthood. You have to pick your battles. There is no other way.

Other friends seem to suffer from a lot more guilt and don't have the luxury of help. I also have come to the realization that I don't want to worry about things like sleep schedules and other dilemmas. I'm trying to be a relaxed mom so that our child will get from me a sense of what's important and what's not.

Figuring out how to spend my day is a skill I want to transfer to the baby. Being at work is crazy because I'm still doing all the programs I was before, I just have a reduced number of hours to do them in.

Add in again the fact that social obligations intrude on these hours and you have a receipe for a very hectic day to day. I know I put more pressure on myself than others do and often I now see why they take the easier path of not commiting to as much.

But I would rather have a bit of stress so that I could do more and sleep a bit less. These are the choices I've had to make - going to church 30 minutes late, but going nonetheless. Exercising for 20 instead of 60 minutes, but exercising nevertheless.

I hope the baby realizes that you can have most of what you want but it will come at price. And most days that prices is completely worth it.

Is that your baby?

People seem slightly obessed with the differences in color between me and our baby. He's much lighter than me and a mini version of his father. Which I don't mind because I happen to love his father very much. If things were otherwise, I can see why people get annoyed during divorces or separations, abandonment, etc.

It's generally Phillipino women who seem amazed by this difference. Or in a city where so many families have nannies, people think I'm out with my employer's child.

Hilariously, the East Asians don't think the baby looks Asian at all. I'm not sure if it's because he has large eyes, which are often the central feature of Asians and their ephicantic eyelids. But when we were with the Korean mafia - my nickname name for the close knit group of my husband's college friends - some of them commented that they didn't think he looked Asian.

This was hilarious becuase in nearly all instances, they had each married other Koreans. So their babies were completely unmistakable. And often in photos when they were much younger, I struggled to tell them apart.

Our nanny thinks the baby's face is very cute and she's very glad he's not "dark" like our next door neighboor. This kind of talk of course makes me shiver.

It's been another month since I wrote about breastfeeding. A few weeks after that last post about how much fun it was, I stopped. I got a liquidating stomach virus from my mother in law and realized I was passing it along to the baby. The diapers alone were enough reason to move forward my intention of stopping a few weeks earlier than planned.

While in the US, the readymade formula was easy to find at nearly every drug store or supermarket.

Having the first grandson on both sides with the extended family was a delight for everyone. He was adored, they somehow just turned into silly, babbling babylovers.

And we had willing babysitters for any of the movies, shopping, dinners, errands we wanted to go out on during our first trip back in a year.

I vowed to myself I would exercise 6 out of the 7 days while out on annual leave for over a month. And I nearly did. When I got into the habit of exercising early in the morning when the rest of the house was asleep, it felt great to be cleaned up and ready to go by the time everyone got up.

DC, GA, NV, FL. It was an amazing trip that no one really wanted to end.

I had conflicted feelings about bringing the baby back. While I wanted to be in my house with the nanny at my disposal, I didn't want the negative feelings about work to crowd back in and dominate my day.

The baby and I went on a road trip, our first, just us two. While I had been slightly dreading being left alone with him for a week, and nervous, though never admitting it to all the naysayers who thought the trip unsafe and foolish, I had a great time.

During the day we saw people from my childhoold and college days. At night we snuggled and slept in king size beds between NC and FL. The flight back was even fine - except for the dynamic poop that sent me walking the length of the US Airways cabin back to the bathroom room that had no changing table.

Changing tables, fear of ear infections, and his first serious illness were all a part of this trip.

Thank god my mother came with us to Vegas because the baby's first cold and the mucuous extractor were a little more than the two of us could handle on our own.

What surprised me was the utter love that was showered on him by his paternal uncle.

"He's my blood," he said.

And I renewed my resovle to adopt a child.

This week I'm readying The Unwanted, the story of a family living in Communist Vietnam. And my heart keeps breaking for the "half-breed" children who are half-American and half-Vietnamese during a very dangerous period of history.

It's hard to escape the fact that our baby is blessed in life because of his fortunate birth. Of course, living in a wealthy society, there are many children who are much better off than he is. But then there are also so many children in the world who are so much worse.

It's hard to know which is better and which to celebrate.

I'm giving away his clothes now, clothes that he has already outgrown because he is just shooting up. Now he laughs, he wants to eat our food, and he pulls my hair. He also rolls, cries when he's bored, and is ready for solids.

The solids thing is so interesting because now he has a spoon and a bowl and has to sit up in order to receive food.

I See Now

Breast feeding has finally settled down into being fun. When I first started going back to work, I was on a mad dash to be at home and make sure the baby didn't have formula but my milk (as our nanny calls it).

This meant I often felt as though I couldn't win at work or at home -- I was always losing. But for the first four months or so this period of time was a welcome buffer between the morning at work and the afternoon at home.

I would feed him, climb the stairs, and we'd take a 2 hour nap together. I knew the dangers of this much sleep having encountered a similar pattern a few years ago when working at the national university. I was depressed and my waistline, energy level, and overall outlook on life reflected this.

But I couldn't seem to shake it. When I finally talked myself into working out, it would be just before we had to go out, so rushed, and short. Half though I would always regret not having started earlier. Right now I'm trying to just get up in the morning and get to it. My gym is right outside our bedroom door on the second floor of our house.

To my surprise, I love breast feeding. I'm amazed my body can do this for our baby. I am sustaining him with something I am producing. No one else can do it: not his father, not grandparents, not our nanny, who dotes on him.

Imagine my horror when I started my period. I thought this signaled the end of my milk. I called the lactation consultant in a panic.

"How do I know?" I asked, driving through town.
"Remember the diapers," she said.

Yes, those diapers. The explosion he had while we were at a poker party last Friday proved that my milk is still coursing through him.

And I've almost made it twice as long as I thought I ever would. My original goal was 3 months! We're in month 5 and I hope we can go even further.

You're Pregnant

"Not any more," I told the gushing acquaintance last night whom I hadn't seen in some time.

"Oh," she said and I just kept going to help her recover her embarrassment.

The fact is our son is now five months old and I was hoping that breast feeding was going to melt away the pounds as it had for one of my husband's colleague's wives. The fact that she is a nosy busy body and walking around the size of a toothpick doesn't engender any warm feelings either.

My disappointment at the myth of breast feeding is only eclipsed by the horror of having to see photos of myself in the newspaper and other places.

In order to motivate me to lose weight, I struck up a competition with a co-worker who was also trying to lose weight. He is a 6 foot plus South African and we both had the same goal: lose 20 pounds.

At the end of two months he beat be, barely, by losing one kil (2 pounds). I had lost none but maintained 140, the weight I basically came home from the hospital with.

Happily I was kicked out of the office because I had too many unused vacation days. Every day since the start of this 'staycation' I've exercised first thing in the morning.

I realize why rich people look so good. Looking good takes time. By the time I've exercised, showered, and am ready to do anything, it's usually 12:00 pm. Half the day has gone by.

I'm trying to be gentle to myself and take these two weeks to create this sustainable habit of exercising four times a week. I've never been able to do it even when working out with a personal trainer, going to the gym to private classes, or using the compound's bike, elliptical, treadmill.

Three days, three nearly 1 hour work outs. Let's hope I can keep it going even during the upcoming holiday season.

He is so white

This is a comment that I've heard often enough to make me pause when out with our baby.

I am South Asian and brown; not dark or light. My skin is my skin. After growing up in suburban Florida, I've learned to be completely comfortable in it, despite being aware of the fact that lighter is always better.

Unless you're white. Then it's tan that people spend a fortune and put their health at risk to seek (will NEVER figure that one out). Yet racism still exists because people think those with different skin color are in fact different from them.

The first time it happened I was in the spa with my son. One of the staffer's I'm not really fond of - she told me at 8 months pregnant I was really big - came to stay hello and coo at the baby.

"Oh, he's so white," she said.

I let it go because she has been pushing my buttons since we became members and now I didn't have the excuse of hormones to blow up at her.

A few days later, I was at the frame shop, picking up a few items with my Sudanese American neighbor's son. He is perhaps the most precious child I've seen outside my family (the nieces have a firm place in my heart).

"He's so white," one of the women said.

Again, the first time I let it go. But she had to say it again.

And then: "Not like his brother."

I realized she was talking about our neighbor who is clearly of African descent.

"That's not his brother," I found myself saying, though it was none of her business.

Multiple comments about our baby's color makes me realize that he is in fact a child of mixed races.

This may sound odd, but my husband and I are both children of Asian immigrants who grew up in emotionally reserved families with demanding fathers. We both work harder than we should at our jobs and enjoy traveling in style.

In short: we have more in common than in differences. If we were to list the differences they would be in the area of personality: he's an extreme introvert and I'm so extroverted, I wish I could run electricity off my energy to save on the power bill.

I've never thought about our different appearances. Though everyone kept saying "we can't wait to see what combination your genes will produce," I didn't really equate that with old fashioned notions of race or color.

At least for our son's sake, he was lucky and got the favorable color: whiteness.

A Month Later...

It's been nearly a month since I last sat down to post my ruminations on this blog. And it isn't because I haven't been ruminating. In fact, sometimes I feel that's all I do now, that somehow having this baby has opened up so many news spaces in my life.

It's true I've shed lots of old habits in order for this to happen. I keep an eye on the clock after a certain part of the morning push back from my desk within fifteen minutes of the time I say I'm going to. I race home, guilty, sweaty, slightly angry at the thought of being controlled by an 8 week old.

But when I get home and see him -- his eyes, and yes his miles of hair that everyone exclaims about -- I never regret the decision to leave on time.

Working 9-2pm is a different style for me; the workaholic who infamously ran a company by herself for the better part of a year.

But I don't want to do that anymore. Even though my body and mind don't know this: I was jangly tonight after passing up not one but two networking opportunities to come home.

Even after coming inside the door to find my husband watching football on television I couldn't shake the nagging feeling I'd somehow made the wrong decision. But when I was upstairs with the darling and he had fallen asleep on my shoulder, all such silly thoughts vanished.

People comment on one of two things when they see him: his hair or his temperament.

"Does he ever cry?" a parent of another two month old asked. I tried not to simper with pride.

Because of course he does.

"He vocalizes so much," another mother said of him in comparison to her own child who was only a week older (lots of kids born this summer!).

Again, I resisted the urge to preen. My parents put horrible burdens for behavior and expectations on us and before I found comfort in faith, I teetered under the weight of their demands. I don't want to do that to my child -- particularly starting when he's so young.

But this afternoon when he has his fingers in his mouth, it's REALLY hard not to snatch them out!

Instead of being angry at him, I decided to give in and see what the worst was that could happen. His sucking of his fingers got so loud, even my football watching husband could hear them.

First trip

There are so many firsts that people record: steps, words, smiles. For us we just had our first airplane trip and that at six hours to Paris, France. With our six week old baby in tow and grandpa on hand to babysit, carry the diaper bag, push the stroller, plus cousins to do any of the above, it was an ideal vacation.

The way back was a night flight, departing at 10:30 p.m. and arriving in Qatar at 6:00 a.m. The baby was a bit fussy in the airport because he was hungry. And I grew new contortionist skills, pulling aside layers of fabric to nurse him on tour buses, airplanes, and in the hotel room.

This is one of the reasons I don't know if I will make it to my October 30th/3 month deadline. The timing of breastfeeding - all day, almost every 2 hours on the clock - puts a major wrench in one's social life. Several times my father-in-law was prevented from coming into our room because I was feeding the baby.

The ready made formula bottles I fell in love with at the hospital came in handy because we often were places I just didn't want to mess with the apparatus of breast feeding. Or the fact that I was exhausted and couldn't really get up the energy to pull one out.

I've talked to every mother I know about breastfeeding and the stats are inconclusive. Some say they did 11 months (how?!) and others couldn't at all because their babies rejected the nipples, didn't like their milk, or other scenarios. Some do only breast, some do a mix.

My cousin-in-law said with her first she did 3 months and with her second she did only 1.

My boss said she did however long her maternity leave was.

A colleague said she had done it for 10 months for her older daughter and didn't feel that she could jilt her son, so was going for 10 months again.

Since my milk has come, and the baby is on a schedule, it feels like a betrayal to our baby not to do for him what all the books talk about. But my diet is affecting him: we have gas at the same time and also have to go the bathroom at the same time. It's slightly hilarious.

I can't deny that the sight of those big, brown eyes looking up at me from the crook of my arm is a sweet feeling. Now that I'm not sleep deprived or as worried about banging his head into something sharp, I like breastfeeding. As long as I'm home, on vacation, and have nothing else to do.

Perhaps I'll take to doing only nights. The fact is I don't like to quit or not give the best of anything. And so trying to make it to four months for solid food and breast is my dream. I don't know if I can get there.

I do know that being surrounded by family and their delight in your child is one of the best encouragements towards having another child. This was the perfectly timed visit because just when all our local friends have doted and cooed; delivered meals and gifts, we then had a fresh round from our cousins and one of his grandparents.

While I had wanted a tropical getaway and balked at the idea of going to Paris; the trip was restorative in a multitude of ways in giving us the first night out with both of us and minus the baby. We didn't worry at all. We knew he was in great hands. Which may mean we are slack parents or that we had confidence in my husband's father and aunt. Or in our very sedate baby. In any case we did not call 100 times or rush back home early. We had a lovely dinner and counseled our cousin on some major issues going on in his life.

All in all, it was a week well spent. And I'm looking forward to a few days at home to catch up and to reset my clock. Gone should be the days of 2 hour naps. Instead I need to write and exercise during those times I normally sleep.

Oh: and Paris wasn't that bad either.

Four weeks old

Last Monday our son turned a month old. And it was like an invisible cue had been given to my entire body to just sigh in relief.

I had managed to go an entire month and:
--breastfeed as much as possible for me (5-8 times a day depending on the day)
--not hit his head on the corner of our nightstand while picking him up for 3am feedings
--change countless diapers without wincing, avoiding, or griping

We finally got what each other were about, my boy and I.

I understood that he could wait a few more hours to eat and that not every cry meant that he was in fact hungry. Sometimes he had gas, or a stomach full that he was trying to dump, or a wet diaper. I discovered he could sit in his poop all day but thirty seconds of his own pee was more than he could be asked to handle.

He started smiling at the sound of my voice and calming down if I entered a room. He showed us how good he could be in the car seat and slept through the blaring music of the mall, the blistering heat of a never ending Doha summer, and being passed around like a party favor at my 32nd birthday.

The rest of the people in the house are around story: they wrecked his schedule this past Wednesday out of misguided sympathy because the kid was working the angles with his cries while I was out at an office gathering. It took me a full day to get him back on his schedule.

Now I'm counting how many more cases of ready made formula we'll need before he's on solid food.

Though it's exhausting, mentally and physically, to breastfeed I have committed to do it for the first three months of his life. This means October 30th. Crossing the one month mark gave me the confidence to look ahead to the end of September. Since we are still on Ramadan hours, and have a week's holiday, this should not be that hard.

No one could believe I went back to work three weeks after my first child was born and by C-section. I dreaded it myself. I wasn't sure how it would go or how much energy I would have. The thought of postponing it was available: I had an appointment to go to the Embassy to apply for his passport the first morning I was due back. But like removing a band aid or setting a broken bone, I rescheduled and went it. There were no balloons or welcome signs, but it felt strangely good to sit down at my desk and get back to work.

Granted this was for all of three and a half hours; it felt like my play job. For the past three weeks we've settled into a routine of getting up, going to work, coming home, eating lunch, and sleeping for two hours. I don't know who will miss the nap more: me or the kid. This is the wonderful thing about Ramadan and the reduced working hours. Since the majority of people are fasting, if you work for the government or Arab company, then the day is only five hours. Subtract from that the fact nursing mothers get one hour, either to come in late or to leave early, and I'm turning off my computer at 1:00 p.m. everyday. The end of Ramadan brings with it some trepidation, however, as I know this cannot go on forever.

But over the weekend I wrote out the schedule again, adjusting the times slightly, and I think even after the Eid break we will be able to carry on more or less the same.

The (Un) Natural Truth About Breast Feeding or Pump Wars

You don't want to deny your child anything within your reach to give him/her even while also not wanting to spoil them rotten. Early on in parenting, you realize that the choices of what you can give and what it costs often make seemingly cut and dried decisions much more difficult. And this includes the milk that your body could potentially produce. The milk that is full of antibodies and other things that could protect your child in his/her early years.

"The World Health Organization says you should breastfeed for two years," someone said to me.

"You should be feeding 10-12 times a day," the doctor who delivered my son said at my two week check up.

Right. 10-12 times a day means that's all you would do.

And then I think of women like a colleague I know who breastfed TRIPLES for TEN MONTHS. I called her in my hour of discouragement and received a great pep talk to get me through the day. And thought about starting a cheerleading group for myself to make it to October 30th, our son's three month birthday.

Breast feeding is the blight of mothers; if you do it, you are resigning yourself to sleepless nights and missed social opportunities. The second cost may not be true unless you are really adept at using a hooter hider, talking, and checking on your feeding one OR have such great self esteem that you don't care about exposing yourself in front of all and sundry.

As you can tell - or may already know from your own mothering experiences - the choices are really non-choices. Which is what makes motherhood one of the most selfless experiences a human can have.

It struck me in the days after my own mother left to get back to her own life, leaving me with the newborn, nanny, and his father, that human beings are strangely resource intensive. After all, since the moment of his birth, my son has had a team of people looking after him. Four people to be exact once we got home from the hospital.

I shared this rumination with one of my friends who was visiting me during a coffee morning here at the house. These visits kept my morale up by making me feel special. My friends celebrate this achievement of mine which is as old as time but new to me. This and a father who does diaper patrol at nights and the two hour afternoon naps have been key in keeping the postpartum depression at bay.

I'm convinced that women get the baby blues largely because of sleep deprivation. Think about it: if it can be used as a means of torture, should anyone voluntarily give themselves over to it? Women get overwhelmed by newborns because this wiggling, squirming, bundle of love is introduced into an already full life and often nothing gives. We still have to cook, clean, have sex, work, and now look after someone so small, that he/she can't be left alone even for a second.

Back to the breast.

When the lactation consultant came over four days after my son was born, she had some ominous words for me.

"Your body makes all the milk your baby needs."

Well, as great as that line is, many mothers will tell you this is not necessarily their experience.

As during the course of my pregnancy, talking to other women has gotten me through the last three weeks. Lately it's been getting advice on how to increase milk production. So many people have said that they obsessed about how much milk they were or were not making that now they would do it all differently.

"Do what's right for you," or "Do what works for you," have been the supportive responses to my worries that my hungry caterpillar is not satisfied with what he's getting out of me alone.

This had me at the GNC kiosk last night to pick up a bottle of fenugeek which two people told me stimulates milk production.

My wars at the pump, as in breast pump not gas pump, are disheartening. The very first time I tried using it, I didn't realize how far down your nipple has to be in order for the suction to work. So ten wasted minutes later, I shrugged and put it way. Then I asked a few friends at the tea we had for my visiting mother.

"It's got to be down in there," a mother of two, her bouncing three month old just a few steps away told me. With both of her children she has had to supplement with formula because of low production. And she does not have small babies.

The second time I pulled it all out, I almost cried when 45 minutes into it, I only managed to eek out 1.5 ozs. Determined not to repeat the drip, drip, of the second round, I pulled it out at night while we were watching T.V. the third time. An hour later, about the same amount, and this from two sides!

Needless to say, my dreams of building up a bank for my child to eat while I was at work were quickly disappearing.

I never thought about how long I would try to breast feed: the whole idea was a vague notion in my head. Last night I promised myself three months as that is supposed to be the critical period. But today, as my young one screamed his head off only an hour and a half after we had nursed and sucked down 2 oz. of formula in less than a minute, I gritted my teeth, thinking of how I would make it to next Friday; one month after his birth.

The Afternoon

I got to the room, expecting to see the baby, but instead was transferred to my bed and told I wouldn't be able to get up again for 24 hours. The nurses were totally focused on me: on hooking up my IV, getting in my antibiotics, giving me shoots for circulation. The baby was nowhere in sight: the over efficient nursery had taken him in and we would only see him over the next four days as and when we asked for him.

We all breathed a sigh of relief as the baby was wheeled in; wrapped tightly in a hospital blanket because we didn't have the presence of mind to hand over any of the clothes we had brought in our well prepared and packed bags. He still had no name that we could both agree on either so the debate continued.

"When they first showed him to me, the name that popped into my head was Magnus," I said. This was one of the earliest names we had considered and it was fitting because the child was nearly 8 pounds.

"Where were you hiding that child?" the doctor asked me when she came to check up on me. I shook my head at her. She had seen me through all my pre-natal care and at 45 pounds heavier than before pregnancy, I certainly hadn't felt I was hiding anything in the last few months.

I was ready to get him on the breast and give it go: but for the next six hours he didn't wake up. And we all took advantage and went to bed as well. There was no sound in the room from 12pm until much later in the day, except that of nurses coming to change out my IV bag every two hours or my catheter.

It was at that moment I realized how traumatic the past 72 hours had been for everybody. The baby's tiny cries every hour or so, as though he were having nightmares or reliving the experience of trying to get out without being able to, were confirmation that we had all just survived a harrowing journey to life.

The MIddle of the Day

Though it was only 8am, we were all assembled and ready for what was going to come next. An update on what my status was in terms of dilating.

"How long have you been married?"

"Three years," I said.

Mom and hubbie had taken up their stations again in chairs side by side facing my bed.

"That's still really new," the doctor said. "Husband, please leave the room."

"He's seen all the other exams," I said, managing a laugh, feeling good after a few hours sleep and the liquid sugar still keeping my body at a steady hum.

"No, no," she said. He willingly left. They did another sweep, this one perhaps the most painful of all.

"You're 3 maybe 4 centimeters," the same stylish, extroverted South Asian looking doctor said. "The baby hasn't dropped and your cervix isn't expanding."

Lovely. And this after a pitocin drip, that magic dilation drug.

"We recommend a C-section," my doctor, now back on duty and almost girlish in cream scrubs said.

This was an interesting development because earlier, a lifetime ago, when we checked in and were debating the category of room to get at the hospital, we had asked her if she thought it could go this route. She had said natural delivery at the time. We decided to wait for the room in a regular room to avoid being charged at the higher price. Now I was really glad we had exercised patience.

"Let's do it," I said, "I want this baby out." I wanted to hold him in my arms after waiting, and waiting, and then the last two days of more painful waiting.

After this long road and all jokes about my husband's queasy stomach, it turned out that neither men or mothers were allowed in the operating room. The first reason was cultural and the second reason was to not ruin the sterile environment.

They rolled in another bed, switched my gown, fixed the IV because I could feel the right side of my body again (turned out it had come unhooked from my body) and within twenty minutes I was being rolled into the operating room.

They clipped my dress up to between two poles and this served as a screen between my head (eyes) and what was going on about 20 inches below near my pelvis. I was wide awake, though numb from the waist down.

I could hear all the gossip between the doctors: this discussions of various parenting strategies, thoughts on other doctors on the ward, plus the added variety of the mostly Philippino nurses speaking to each other in Tagalog.

"Here he is!"

And they showed me a squirming infant, with dark skin, who was screaming his head off.

"Oh thank God," I said, and cried, for about three seconds, all the strength that I had left in me. And they took him away. Gone was my birth plan immediate to the chest bonding or breastfeeding.

"Like humpty dumpty," the one doctor said to the other, "we are putting her back together again." The other one didn't get the joke right away and so she had to repeat it.

They sewed me up which just felt like major pressure being put on my abdomen. And then someone came and squeezed my hand, telling me I had done well.

"Can someone tell my husband?" I asked the nurse feebly. They agreed and then came back and aid he couldn't be found. This was not the sweaty, heartfelt moment you see in the movies as the exhausted couple kiss over the downy head of the infant.

But my dynamic duo were waiting for me when we left the operating room. They squeezed my hand as we had to go our separate ways yet again.

They wheeled me into recovery and I couldn't stop shaking. First from the mild shock of surgery and second from the cold. The strange thing was while my upper body was freezing, my lower body was still numb so even with the heat vents they turned on, I still couldn't feel anything to get warm.

The recovery room was a cacophony of sound. The Tagalog nurses from my procedure were joined by they colleagues and the conversation was non-stop, at full volume.

"You aren't sleeping?" A nurse who came by to check on me asked.

"Who can sleep with you all shouting at each other?" I asked.

It was finally time to be wheeled to my room and to see and hold my baby.

The Beginning of the Day

At midnight, Friday, July 30th, I was wheeled into the labor ward at the hospital. They hooked me up to the dreaded CTG and this time the doctor listened to the fact that I was in pain and couldn't take anymore: because the baby's heartbeat was affected.

We watched in terror as it went from a healthy 135 to 100 to 70 and even lower. She told the nurse - the same one who had checked us in when I came in earlier in the week with the bleeding - to get the other doctors on duty and prepare the team.

My mom and husband were holding their breath; an oxygen mask was put on me and I was told to breath deeply. Between the oxygen mask and another one they gave me for gas to numb the pain, I was concerned as well in my pain crazed state.

"If we give you the epidural now, it will slow things down," a very confident, South Asian looking doctor with a stylish bob was saying to me in what I'm sure she thought was a comforting tone. It came across condescending.

"Slow me down to what?" I said, knowing that I had been 2 centimeters or under for the past 48 hours. "I can't take this anymore."

The CTG chart to my left attested to the strength of the contractions. My darling mom and husband had their eyes glued to the machine, rather than at me. Thinking they were helping, they started telling me when to brace for the contractions.

"Look at me," I told them. "Not the machine."

While the rule in the labor rule was only one person at a time (see my notes on our trip via the emergency room) this evening the nurse made one attempt and then let it go.

I had both my soldiers there with me.

Finally I won the argument on the epidural; They said I need two bags of an IV before they could give it to me.

"The gas isn't working," I was telling my husband who was pressing the part of my back that hurt the most when the contractions came.

"Get the children's books and press it in my back," I heard myself say vaguely as though from a distance.

"Mom, she's talking gibberish," I heard him whisper on a half laugh.

I know you are making fun of me! I wanted to say but I couldn't force any words out.

The nurse was trying to stick me for the IV and without success on my left hand.

"Why are your veins like this?" She asked me in exasperation as though I could respond. This was the typical sort of question you could expect to hear in my house growing up. If something wasn't working you never had anyone to blame but yourself.

"You need to lift weights, baby," my husband said, trying to find some humor. I rolled my eyes at both of them. She gave up on the left hand and found a steady, non-rolling vein on the right hand.

The bag drip started, along with my vigilant observations to see when I could have the magic drug.

An eternity later, a very tall German man in blue scrubs came into the room. The anesthesiologist - my hero.

"She needs to sit up straight," he was saying, as nurses were busy behind me.

"Sit up straight," my mom was saying to me.

After 48 hours of contractions, this was like saying to a blind man, walk along the dotted line on the floor.

"I don't know what straight is," I said. My mother let my husband take over. He pulled me up by my hands, forward, as the nurses held me still. Four people were making sure that I was ready for the epidural. There were still contractions wracking my body: the doctor said, "okay, we wait."

I knew in order to get the epidural you had to be still. I was terrified that my inability to sit up would mean that they wouldn't be able to give it to me. But the team was patient and they waited.

"Does she have back pain?" The doctor was asking my husband.

"No," we both said.

"That's amazing," he said, "I think she has scoliosis."

Hearing that my back was an inverted comma was not really high on my list of things to find out about during delivery. But having delivered this news, a feeling like liquid sugar raced started high on my back and raced through my veins, spreading a delicious numbness.

The epidural was taking effect and for the first time in two days, I could sleep.

"Go and sleep," I said to my cheerleading duo. They were reluctant but I finally convinced them when I said that none of us would stop talking unless they went. We all needed rest.

I spent the next 8 hours on the labor ward, in my bed, hooked up, but not feeling any pain. What remained was to see how much I would dilate.

This Was Not in the Birth Plan

Thursday morning at 8:00 a.m. and my mom is with me to check in to the OBGYN clinic where I've done all my prenatal care (my husband is parking the car in anticipation that this will be the day). She has been the faithful husband surrogate and come with me to two other appointments so she knows my frustration with the administrative/bureaucratic haze of the place.

The receptionist does not greet us, say hello, or make eye contact when I hand her my insurance card.

"Don't you want to tell her?" Mom whispers to me. I shake my head.

"She doesn't care, Mom," I said.

The woman makes what has to be the 100th copy of the same insurance card I've used since December. They make a copy each time, at each visit. Yet somehow at the pharmacy, they can look up in the computer that you have insurance. Part of the bizarreness.

"The nurse will see her," the woman says, confirming to my mother that I am just another file in the long hours that will be her day.

Instead of taking a seat in the faux-velvet sofa lined waiting room, I knock on the door to the patient area which is locked by a key pad.

A nurse opens the door.

"I'm having contractions," I said. They took me in and hooked me up to the CTG, the same monitor I've been on for 20 minutes during my last four visits, and that I was on Tuesday night in the ER.

The contractions are sharp and my mom and husband are sitting with me, waiting for the doctor. My doctor, while being a very nice person and having delivered two of my friends' babies, has been the 10 minute appointment variety, particularly here in the end. She has not yet arrived to the clinic, even though they gave me an 8 a.m. appointment and it is now nearly 8:30 a.m.

Someone else examines me; she says I am now 1 cm dilated which in delivery terms means my body is not yet serious about forcing the kid out.

My doctor appears: she doesn't examine me again because someone else already has. She decides to admit me. These are the magic words we'd been waiting for. Finally something is happening that will take us closer to having this child see daylight.

The hospital admissions officer comes. We say we want the second room option, the "deluxe" room which has two sofas as opposed to the one in the standard room, so that both Mom and hubbie can sleep in the room with me.

"There are none available," the young woman informs us. This of course is not according to plan.

"Well, we have a problem," I said, "because when we did the tour, I asked about this possibility and they said that it couldn't happen. There are always rooms."

We waited for thirty minutes to see if one would become available: nothing happened because the hospital is like a hotel, most people weren't going to leave until noon or later. We debated going up yet another category of room and then back down if one become available. I tried my best to evoke their sense of customer service and ask them to give us the next room at the rate of the deluxe room. No dice.

My doctor saw us waiting and said she would go up to the ward and see if anyone was being discharged later that day. Another thirty minutes and we were still sitting: I was fuming at the woman who had done the hospital tour who was now out of the office on vacation. Her flippant "oh, I can even change the curtains and all the bathroom fixtures if you want" and assurances that we would receive the best in care were now useless.

Finally we decided to go into a standard and wait for a deluxe to open up later in the day. This may all sound silly, but it was a sign of things to come, had any of us been paying attention. Nothing would go according to plan.

We went up to the room to wait, laptops, Soduku at the ready, as contractions continued to roll throughout my body. My doctor said she would check on me in a little while. We decided to order lunch from Chili's.

A few hours went by; more contractions, the nurse moving us to another room across the hall that had more light and a closet (the first one missing both) and my husband arriving with my favorite foods for lunch and our luggage. Poor thing he was dripping with sweat, somehow having missed the bellhops that the hospital provided in his trek from the parking lot to our temporary bunker.

Most likely because of his Asian-Philippino looks, people thought he was a driver and left him to it.

We ate (the nurse being confused that I was on a normal and not liquid diet). I was getting antsy. Why hadn't anyone been to see me? It was now past 2 p.m. and we were told that a deluxe room had been made available -- it was just being cleaned.

I was walking the floor to ease the pain of the contractions which were coming every five minutes now and lasting for about 30 seconds. The magic medicine ball was in the car if I should need it.

I asked the nurses when I would see a doctor. Soon they said. I lurked outside the site of our soon to be room which had a huge flower arrangement out front that say MYTHA in pink velvet letters. There were four women sitting on the two couches, all of them wearing nikab, or the full face veil.

On another sweep, the nikab wearing women were gone, replaced by two slow moving custodians who were clearly having a catch up gossip while doing anything but cleaning the room.

I kept walking the floor.

"Is it a boy?" One of the custodians asked, as I passed her.

"Yes, and we are trying to get into that room!" I told her. She seemed surprised but this did galvanize her a bit; we were finally in thirty minutes later. My mom and husband unpacked; I needed more hangers but also was in enough pain at this point that I couldn't be bothered to do much.

At 3:00 p.m. my doctor showed up. She wanted to do one of the dreaded exams but this time I welcomed it because I wanted to know what was going on with my body. This involved me getting back on the bed and hooked up to the CTG which I was starting to hate because it meant not being able to move at all when the contractions came. And walking or standing was the best way to combat the rolling waves of pain.

She hooked me up, watched for a while, and then with the five fingers pressed together of a glove covered with some of my blood announced:

"Still only one centimeter."

This is when I disregarded any ideas about inducing being a bad thing: essentially it had been 24 hours since my first contraction and yet I was still nowhere near active labor.

"I can give you a tablet," she said, "but you said no drugs."

"I'll take it," I said.

She failed to mention it was a vaginal tablet but I was game.

"I'll check on you in a few hours," she said, "and if the pain is bad, I'll write up some painkillers for you. Keep walking."

I unhooked from the machine, asked for the magic ball, and started walking again. My husband came back from the parking lot saying he had seen one of his colleagues on the floor. He and his wife had gone on the hospital tour with us; he had been the most vocal about being unimpressed by the cruise director attitude of the hospital customer service person.

His wife was due August 8th. I remember joking with her.

"If I'm late, maybe we'll both be here together."

Since she was a Muslim woman who covered her hair, my mom and I went to her room alone, to make sure that my husband didn't walk in on her uncovered.

What we found demoralized me even further: there she was, sitting on the bed, holding a tiny pink bundle of a baby in her arms. She had also delivered early, by about two weeks, in the spirit of the all the summer babies in Doha (but ours).

I braved a smile; we commiserated about the various hospital issues. I listened without gnawing my fingernails or any other part of my body as she described arriving on the labor ward already 5 centimeters dilated; she advised me to take the drugs, told me about the laughing gas they gave her to numb the pain, and then the birth of her baby.

We returned to our room and I sent out a text in all capitals to my closest friends: She HAD HER BABY! Texts came back sympathizing, laughing at the situation with me, sharing my frustration at the universe and my body, and of course this stubborn baby who was refusing to descend into the real world.

At seven thirty, the pain was so severe, I asked the nurse for one of the painkillers. She wanted me to lie down on the bed; I refused, asking for it to be given to me standing up. Lying down was now not only painful, it was hard for me to get back up because of knot that my back had become.

The painkiller helped and Mom and I watched a movie; at least we made it through half the movie and dinner arrived. The immediate relief made me want to sleep but I stayed awake; if I had known the ordeal ahead, I may have taken advantage of the opportunity to get a few minutes of rest.

"If the pain increases, let us know," the nurse said cheerfully. This had been a repeated refrain over the course of the day so it was now meaningless to me. What did she mean, if it got worse? Isn't that were all of this was going?

In typical fashion Gulf fashion the food was ordered via a form and included everything from salmon, to steak. But I had no appetite.

"You have to eat, so that when the baby is born he has glucose."

Mom took this to heart and so I ate fatoosh, a Middle Eastern salad which I normally love, but tonight it had no taste for me. The toasted pieces which give the salad variety were missing. I ate it to keep everyone in the room happy.

We tried to watch the movie again but the pain was so great that I couldn't take it; Mom continued on alone. I sat on the ball and gritted my teeth.

There was a knock on the door - and instead of nurses - our neighbors' big smiles filled the doorway. The youngest at 3, the middle boy at 8, and the only girl, the oldest at 14, with their handsome father, came in. They were a sight for sore eyes; all summer the youngest and oldest had come over to play board games and kept me entertained. They had also bonded with Mom in the two weeks she had spent with us waiting for the arrival of baby.

Their visit was a brief respite from the monotony of waiting; I was able to put on a brave face while they were visiting.

After they left, I asked for the nurse again because I wanted another painkiller. The doctor came to see me: CTG again, and by now I was wondering how we put a man on the moon but not managed to find a way to measure these signs in an upright position.

"You can't have another one until 11 p.m.," the doctor said. The clock facing me on the bed said this was in an hour. I didn't know how I would be able to do this, but I saw the light at the end of an hour. Another injection.

By eleven and the time of the injection, I was crazed by pain. I wanted to see a doctor; I wanted to know if my body was opening up to let the kid out. I wanted information.

The nurse told them I needed to keep walking. One doctor was on an emergency, the other was in the labor ward. It would be some time before anyone could come and see me.

"The painkiller isn't working," I told the nurse.

"It only helps with some pain," she said, "it can't help you with real labor pain."

"I want to go up to the labor ward," I said.

"Can you walk for ten more minutes?" Mom asked me.

I shook my head. Since no one seemed to understand the enormity of the situation, I was going to take it into my own hands.

I went to the door, as our room was directly across from the nurses' station.

"I need to see the doctor," I said to the three pink uniforms at the counter; they were all young, skinny, and sweet. And about to tell me the reasons why they couldn't make good on my request.

I gagged. But unlike the previous time when Mom was trying to get me to eat the KFC my husband brought for his dinner, this time I couldn't keep down the bile. It filled my mouth. For someone who can remember each of the times she's thrown up in her life (and never once during pregnancy) this was a distressing event.

1. Eight years old on a Greyhound bus in Canada; overly warm in the streaming sunlight and warning my mother I was going to throw up. This was on the way to get immigration paperwork completed and we didn't have a car. A few seconds later I proved that I wasn't kidding around. And one of the other passengers was kind enough to offer me some gum.

2. Feeling sick during a trip in Turkey, not realizing that overseas medication is much stronger, and waiting for lunch, I rushed to the bathroom and threw up for the first time as an adult.

3. Waking up with a stomach virus or food poisoning (we never determined which) and throwing up steak for the first time as an adult.

4. July 29th, 2010: twice in a row the fatoosh I had for dinner.

Now the nurses went into action; another wheelchair, with speed to the labor ward.

It was nearly midnight. And the real fun was about to begin.

The Long Night

After coming back from the emergency room, we more or less went back to our routine. My husband to work, my mom and I around the house, getting things ready, finishing errands and site seeing around town.

Wednesday the Braxton Hicks contractions, the ones that happen but aren't really painful or associated with active labor kicked up a notch making us all hopeful. I canceled my Arabic lesson because I didn't feel I could focus on any one thing which was highly unusual for me.

We stayed close to home and just hung out: at 2:30 p.m. I went up to take my usual afternoon nap and said to my mom "That was a big one." The force that rocked my body was a like a fist pushing it's way up through my back.

I had been sitting all day on an exercise ball - the magic ball - of a friend who swore that doing so had caused both her babies to drop and bring on labor within 24 hours. She was one of the five people who had her baby early this summer, by a week.

I slept and there all was quiet within my body. The afternoon came and went, dinnertime, and then it was evening.

I wasn't sure when labor would start (if was also a dim question in my mind at this point) so I took advantage of being alert and worked on the laptop upstairs. There were a few loose ends to tie up and miraculously the wireless signal was also working (which it normally does not in our bed). But near the window on the chaise lounge chair, I was able to send and receive emails.

1:30 a.m. the contractions were starting in earnest. As my mom had said we needed to do when the time came, I started timing them. About 45 minutes apart. So I kept working.

3:00 a.m. I shut off the computer after debating whether to keep working; the entire house was sleeping and I let them, though now the pains were coming 15 minutes apart

We had an appointment at 8:00 a.m. with my doctor so I wanted to hold out if possible and just go once to the hospital. Plus I heard stories from friends of going up to the hospital thinking 'this was it' and being told to go home. The magic number was 5 minutes. That much I knew. Plus my water hadn't broken - even though I also knew this was no guaranteed sign and other people had gone to the hospital and had their water broken there.

4:00 a.m. I dozed as the contractions came closer and stronger

5:00 a.m. I took the advice in all the books and took a shower, washing my hair, and putting on lotion.

6:00 a.m. I dozed again for a bit

7:00 a.m. I got dressed, woke up my mom, and then my husband

"This is it," I said to them. Everyone started getting ready; my hospital bag had already been in the car with the car seat for two weeks. I pulled myself together, plus the last minute items like contacts, journal, toilette and went downstairs.

My mom was on email, my husband was texting, their bags waited by the front door. It was 7:30 a.m.

"What is everybody doing?" I asked.

They jumped a foot and then we were out the door, letting the nanny know that we'd call her and there was a good chance we were not coming back from this hospital visit.

Mentally I prepared myself. This time I wanted to go into the hospital and not come out until we had our baby.

Hurry Up and Wait

When last we left this story, it was with the expectation that things were about to move forward quickly. On Monday, one day after my due date, I lost the famed mucous plug after which my friends went immediately into labor - their membranes (or water) breaking, heading straight to the hospital for a few hours and then the text message later: Baby girl XXXX has arrived (all of them were girls)!

This was the story with all of the summer babies born to my friends over the past three months. No less than 5 babies, each of them early, some as little as a week, others as many as four weeks.

Our little one was not so fast which confused me given that my sister's three kids and indeed myself and my siblings had all been either on time or early ourselves.

When the first friend had her baby, due okay, I reasoned with myself, she was nearly a trimester ahead of me anyway; by the time we went to visit my friend with the four week premature delivery, whose date was AFTER ours, I was going slightly insane.

Conflicting emotions rolled through me: between a small tinge of pleasure that our son was happy where he was and healthy but mostly irritation and a growing sense of disbelief that I would ever get to meet this creature I had carted around for nearly a year.

I've already talked about my dismay and surprise at passing my due date (mom here visiting to entertain me and keep me from scratching my eyes out). As the week wore on, everyone was getting restless. I had used up three of the six weeks of maternity leave legally available to me; any further delay and my mom's four week trip was also slipping by.

Sand was spilling through the hourglass.

Tuesday night, nearly 24 hours after the 'bloody show' that started in the morning, we decided to go to the hospital. The bloody show is described as two teaspoons of blood and a sign that labor is imminent. I had changed maxi-pads at least four times during the course of the day and increasingly there were membranes and tissues emerging. (If this makes you queasy: pregnancy and delivery are not for the faint of heart).

We went to the emergency room, wanting to avoid the OBGYN clinic for their administrative lacking and obvious reasons previously discussed on this blog.

I walked into the emergency room and of course a Qatari gentleman was served before me; then I handed my paperwork to the woman.

"What's the problem?" she asked.

"I'm pregnant and bleeding," I said.

"How many months?" she asked.

"Nine," I said.

They told us to take a seat. My mom, husband and I sat in the 'male' waiting area because while women can sit in the men's area, men cannot sit in the women's area in the gender segregated culture of the Arabian Gulf. Two other men were in there with a few toddlers who were bouncing off the walls.

"You're not nine months pregnant," my mom said, "you're ten months pregnant," pointing out one of the grand ironies of pregnancy that it actually goes 40 weeks instead of 36.

Then a nurse came with a wheelchair.

"I can walk," I said, but they insisted not wanting to take any chances. They wheeled us straight up to the labor ward and got me onto an exam table. The nurse's bedside manner was limited to data related questions.

How many weeks pregnant was I?
When was my due date?
When had the blood started?

They were insisting only one person in the room with me at a time and so I had a Sophie's Choice moment: my mother or my husband? In the end, we decided they should take turns. My husband had his iPhone with plenty of games to keep him entertained.

They hooked me up to the CTG monitor and my contractions were there but over thirty minutes apart. The familiar thump, thump of the baby's heartbeat reassured all of us.

The doctor came in and got gloved up. One of the dreaded exams which are so painful they should be billed as good birth control.

"This is the cervix softening," the doctor said, "a good sign. We can induce you or you can go home and wait for the labor to progress."

I nearly burst into tears from relief. At that moment I realized how stressed I had been all day each time the blood had shown up. I had carried around the worry that the placenta had ruptured or was leaking or there was some other destructive force at work on our baby, slowing killing him, while I ignored it as normal.

Having been coached to resist the words "induction" or anything related to it and it also being Tuesday night, a week from the following Monday when my doctor had said we would look at options, the three of us decided to go home and get more sleep.

We were relieved that the baby was healthy, that the amount of blood was more than normal but not a cause for concern.

The mood in the car on the way home was slightly jubilant. We went through the Dairy Queen drive through for blizzards and home to wait some more.

And There Goes the Plug..

Yesterday we had our 40 week check up at the doctor and still no sign of anything near the volcanic activity my friends had experienced in the last two months. Of the five summer babies due, all but ours had come early. I had alternate feelings of annoyance that we had a full term 'dud' and also relief to be spending so much quality time with friends, my visiting mother, attentive husband.

In a black mood when we left the hospital, I was determined to try to shake it off. Though I was tempted to just come back to the house and 'rest' (which no one would have blamed me for since getting up at 7am and it bein 35+ outside) Mom's tourism took over and we went to buy t-shirts, a wireless router, tour the Islamic Museum, and try out lunch at the Malaysian restaurant in the souq.

It was the perfect centering afternoon: lots of walking and spending time around ancient objects. Nothing in that museum was made in a hurry and being around those objects was strangely soothing- including the architecture of the 300 million dollar structure itself. The cool marble, the bountiful air conditioning, and sheer stillness of the place made me catch my breath and reset me for another day of pregnancy (as opposed to impending delivery).

This morning - the date given to us by our doctor's for when our baby was 'due' - I had a meeting with an intern who is doing some editorial work for an ongoing book project. I took my computer so that afterward I could do a little bit of work and make the most of the extra time we have without the baby on the outside. While I was sitting there, I felt wetness. Not enough for the one liter flood I had been warned about for the infamous 'water breaking' but more of a trickle. As though a period were starting.

I kept typing: finished the review I was working on, sent a few more emails, putting up on Facebook that no, in fact, people are NOT helping when they make jokes about your passing your due date. The responses were overwhelming. I've never seen that many people respond to a status update unless it was someone's birthday or wedding.

The remedies came pouring in: sex, spicy food, walking, certain kinds of tea.

When the one hour of internet time given by the cafe ran out, I got up to the bathroom to investigate. There was no rush of water, embarrassing me in the middle of the Middle Eastern mall. But I did find evidence of the 'mucus plug' that everyone talks about so much. This had been previously described to me as something you'd 'know' when you saw.

Sort of like falling in love and trying to decide if someone is 'the one.' There are so many aspects to pregnancy that people describe in this manner, it could drive a more precise person crazy. (For the record: It was like snot but from the other end.)

I called my husband who was excited and announced the fact to his single male friends who likely couldn't care less and were a bit horrified a) at the knowledge and b) at this being announced on the way to lunch. I called our one other close friend and mother of two who urged me to get home as quickly as possible as her water had broken within minutes of loosing the plug.

I bought batteries and postcards for my mother, got gas and doughnuts on the way home.

Nothing. No waters, no contractions, just a yummy shrimp curry lunch and then a one hour nap. Friends from work came by to entertain me: a bit of Wii and board game; then a movie with my mom and husband.

Now to bed, hoping the guy decides to do us all a favor and wait until tomorrow morning. Everything feels better in the light of day. Even your body being pulled apart by something the size of a watermelon.

What's Wrong with Your Feet?

The bile salt scare I had at 36 weeks has subsided except for one glaring fact: the topical steroid cream I was using on my feet has caused them to shed without end, like a snake replenishing itself.

I was shedding and scratching so much I couldn't take my feet in for their pedicure. My big toenails were dragon lady size and had torn into the skin on the opposite heel while I was in bed one night. I only caught this last weekend when my feet were so dry, it hurt to walk on them.

The wonders of Neosporin which brought the swelling down in the right foot after two days; and allowed me to take the feet in for a pedicure. There was also peeling on my hands but it was insignificant compared to what was going on down under.

The girl at the spa worked hard scrubbing them and I immediately went down the road to the store she recommended to pick up the foot scrub and pedicure instrument she used. She kept working and working, pulling away the skin. After the third time, she said:

"What's wrong with your feet madam?"

I laughed. Because when she first sat down, she had asked "Are you pregnant?" Which given the size of my 9 month belly, seemed an even sillier question.

"They are just peeling," I said, "but you are helping."

She shook her head and took out a pair of tiny scissors going all the way around to get the smallest pieces of skin.

My husband has had to put lotion on my feet every night just so it doesn't hurt to walk. All through our marriage he has given me "toesizes" or foot rubs and now in the home stretch they have become more vital than ever.

I used both the scrub and the pedicure peeler this morning in the shower and after an afternoon of walking around, there is a new layer of skin that needs to be removed.

I can't complain given what other women endure during pregnancy. And the size of my Shrek ankles - cankles - the books did warn me about. The fact my boobs are straining even my sports bras which up until now had been the most comfortable solution to wearing any kind of support all points to the day when our son will make his appearance.

Only he and God know exactly when that will be. In the meantime, the rest of us will have to wait (scratching and rubbing as there is no such thing as patience five days before a due date).

Survey Says..

We've been having a hard time getting to agreement on a name. My husband even taunted me with the promise of the turtle hatching trip saying: "If we go to see the turtles, I get to name the baby."

"Fine," I said, "I'm going to call the kid whatever I want."

Multiple names are not unheard of -- particularly in ethnic cultures like ours. This was confirmed and inspired me over lunch this week with friends from Zimbabwe who each had several names that family members used to refer to them. And two names for their daughter which different people used.

This was the best argument for a middle name that I ever heard. Up until now, I thought of middle names as useless Caucasian middle class inventions. The only purpose they served was to solemnize formal occasions like graduations or weddings or protect from identity fraud.

We put up a poll with our final six names to see what would shake out as the top two. My husband was not expecting the eclectic taste of our friends.

Out of:
Seth
Marcus
Miles
Zane
Zak
Miach

Micah and Seth (two that were not his picks) were the front runners. So the debate continues as the voting has reached 100 participants. Zak and Zane being in the bottom rung; we've promised ourselves to flip a coin if we can't agree on the order of the top two.

One thing I know for sure: these 40 weeks have been worry free. So much so I can't really imagine what it will be like when the guy is on the outside. But they all have to come out eventually.