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.

Where is....

my memory?

They say that there is no such thing as baby brain. But in the past week I have misplaced my engagement ring which was hooked onto a watch and two other rings I had been wearing that day. I searched the trash, I moved furniture, I even went into the street in front of our house because around the time I remembered removing it, I went outside to say hello to a friend.

My husband, memory of an elephant for unflattering moments, kept asking me if I had left it at work when I washed my hands. This because once I ordered a McFlurry and got upset when the woman gave me an M and M one when I thought I had ordered and Oreo (turns out I hadn't and he was there to witness this through the ages). This was in my non pregnant life and I have never failed to live this moment down as proof of my faulty memory in the four plus years since.

We went to bed, wondering if we had renewed the insurance on the ring, wishing I had lost the wedding bands which were no longer wearable because they were too small - tucked safely in the jewelry box (they were cheaper he said) not knowing where the hooked rings and watch were. I woke up in the morning and went downstairs in my tank top and underwear, looking around the house with fresh eyes.

I was drawn to a book out of place on the bookshelf behind where my dearest had been studying for hours for a big test on Sunday. I picked up the book and thought: Right, I was holding this around the time there was someone at the door and I thought I had walked over to the entry way table. The ring is here somewhere. Being too short to put it on top of the book case, I looked around at the surrounding shelves. Thank God: There it was. Ten steps from where he sat in his chair at the dining table.

And there's something wrong with my memory? What about his eyes?
He maintains that this was my problem which I am now trying to turn back on him.



On Sunday morning we had a fly epidemic in the house - unexplained and early enough in the morning that I slept through it while my husband spread Piff Paff (a powdery version of Raid) underneath the kitchen and front doors. I came downstairs hours later to find the remains of 100s of their wingless bodies. That day I wore the tan pair with a blue jean dress. A new maternity outfit despite having only two months left because I cannot be bothered with bending down to put on pants anymore.

Now my favorite black shoes (the ones wide enough for my pregnancy feet and yet somewhat stylish) are missing. Today I put on my the trustworthy black dress - the one a friend convinced me to buy along with a pile of maternity clothes left by a pregnant expat woman who left Qatar in a hurry - that I have been wearing weekly to work. And looked for the black shoes.

Missing. I asked the man who lives here with me if he had seen them. Surprise. He hadn't. So I'll have to figure this out.

The Name Dilemma

I headed a translation conference last week and I was listening to the plenary speakers, I realized I had a wealth of intelligent minds to help us with the dilemma of naming our child.

This is what they came up with:

Farid (Fred, Fried)
Rami
Karim
Raoui
Nadim
Raja
Nader
Sinan
Murad
Munir
Firas
Malik

Frankenstein

Last week I went to have the extended glucose tolerance test in order to assess if I have gestational diabetes. Having to schedule the test and being given advice by a midwife ‘to be really good 24 hours before’ made me realize how much sugar I do intake on a daily basis. I’ve always had a sweet tooth but since the pregnancy, the occasional Coke, ice cream, cookie, or piece of chocolate has different consequences than it used to. While I haven’t yet found out the results, and I have relaxed into mini cokes and small doses of ice cream, the cramp in my style and my growing girth are reminders that I am in my last trimester.

This morning after about a month break (or longer – can’t really say I’ve kept track) I panted from the 20 minutes of floor work on the pre-natal yoga video. A stern reminder that my arms could not handle the 30 pounds I’d put on in the past seven months and that they were severely underworked from my 8 hours a day (plus at least 3 or 4 in the evening) of my desk job.

The good news is the sciatic back pain that had plagued me the first few months has abated. Whether because I’m more active or have more padding to shield the nerves: not sure, but grateful in either case.

I am starting to play with the idea of being pregnant as a excuse for getting out of things I wouldn’t want to do normally anyway. For example, during a meeting at the week’s end, I declined someone’s offer of tea because of the caffeine, referring to my pregnancy.

“I’m in the home stretch,” I said, “I can’t wait until this child is on the outside.”
Everyone at the table looked surprised.
“Well, things will be different,” two of the men at the meeting said. “Your whole life will change.”

This hit me in a different way than all the other times people have said it to me. Because my life has already changed. I’m a chronic sleeper, I’m a water drinker, I’m easily irritable and that’s all just in the seventh month of this journey.
I’ve been focusing on the things that I will be able to do again after the baby without guilt: Eat as many sweets as I want, drink all the carbonated beverages there are in the world, attending spinning classes, and use the time that I am now sleeping to write or catch up with friends.

But for the first time yesterday, I had a small notion of the things I would now start doing. Not that I could focus on them close up – breast feeding, changing diapers – but the reality of a child not being inside me anymore but on the outside is starting to dawn on me.

Focusing on the Good

Things have been quite on the blog front the last month because they have been runaway train busy in the real world.

Being seven months pregnant has given me an appreciation for what women have been doing quietly to ensure the survival of the species since the start of the human species; working during this time has been both a blessing and also a challenge.

I'm astonished to discover the limits of my own strength -- which until now I've managed to push through -- being sleepy and unable to get things done; grumpy and not wanting to come out of a black mood; most of all impatient with things that are the way they are because its in people's nature and they can't change.

The rigid nature of some people or inefficient systems is not a happy thing to be confronted with when the entire flexibility of your body is being confirmed daily as your stomach, breasts, and face continue expanding. Not to mention fingers, feet, and legs.

In the Arab world where family is at the center of cultural and religious obligations, being pregnant is a pleasure. My co-workers don't let me lift heavy objects or expect me to pretend like everything in my life isn't changing all at once in preparation for the biggest change of all -- the arrival of the baby.

This supportive culture has draw backs as well, however, including that everyone says you are 'glowing' and you get pumped up by their exclamations of "You look great!" "It totally suits you!"

The reality is always there to face you. It's true what they say: the camera does not lie.

I've tried to say at work at that there are no more photos allowed of me from now on - months 7 through to the end. In a culture where many women are not photographed because of their families' displeasure, this could pass. But the opposite is true: everyone wants pictures of 'the bump' in profile.

Well the bump is turning into much more of a sizeable mountain than the euphemistically named "bump."

Going forward I'm going to give up all pants or the requisite bending of your legs to get into a pair of anything. Dresses are going to be the norm going forward.

So many new mothers told me not to buy too many maternity clothes but apparently they didn't get as big as I did or they weren't working as long as I am. Because my clothes, while always loose to be appropriate in the Middle East, now leave nothing to the imagination about the 'bump'. Wearing tight shirts just makes my already stretching skin feel more watermelon like.

The best part of this has been being pregnant with other people who are also in the various stages of this humanity serving lunacy. Take for example today: a friend and I who both tested a little over on our glucose tests are now here with our laptops at the hospital during the four hour extended test for which we fasted all night, and now can't eat anything until it's over (mixed with blood drawing every hour for four hours).

So it's true: misery loves company.

Six months down, three to go

This pregnancy has not slowed me down with those factors I imagined to be the most complicated for expectant mothers; since I haven't been sick or craving pickles and peanut butter.

Instead it has been unexpected little factors: The fatigue has been an adjustment and the lack of brain capacity - though I have been stumped as to the cause of this since it isn't illness which was my previously imagined rationale. The fact my arms, previously the size of sticks and a key feature which identified me as part of the Ghandian race, didn't fit comfortably in most of my sleeves whether on shirts, or coats.

Last week I attended a wedding of a former student (along with 600 other guests) and bemoaned the fact I had to be cute in a culture where women spend hundreds of dollars and hours getting ready to parade before each other.

"You know I'm pregnant right?" I said to one of the few women at the wedding who I wasn't sure did know.

"Yeah I figured," she said, but what she really meant was, thank God, because I wasn't going to ask if you were letting yourself go.

That's the strange part about being in this in-between stage; you aren't large enough for people to assume and yet you're bigger than your previous self. It's a bummer on deciding what to wear to major events that could be recorded for posterity.

This week I will be in a room with two major heads of state for a function related to work; a good friend had a similar dilemma when she presented the turkey to be pardoned by the president at the White House in her eight month with her third child.

Needless to say, your opinion of how big or small I am varies based on ethnicity or kindness if the books are to be believed. Most of the Arabs and white people I know have been very complimentary about how 'small' I am for how far along I am. And then a Skype conversation with my sister during which she asked me if I was expecting twins, along with a morning when I tore my favorite shirt while getting dressed, deflated any sense of pride.

This is what pregnancy does and apparently it's good preparation for the challenges of delivery and motherhood where there is very little privacy or grace.

Inspiring my husband to Write

Though I keep telling him how easy a pregnancy I'm having (and my friends use this rationale also to counter my we-are-not-doing-this-again mantra) he has decided that he wants to write a book about the man's view of pregnancy.

The title? She's Pregnant Not Crazy. This is a revision from the She's Pregnant Not Handicapped starter idea he came to me with when I asked him to go downstairs and get something for me to eat as I lay in bed after work. After I thought about it, I realized that a lot of men must be scratching their heads and would like to have a community to go to like women do with the EXPECTING and dozens of other books out there on the market. So we're working on it together (secretly hoping this will be our millionaire maker!)

Last night here in the hotel on a business trip, he was on the phone, I was ready to sleep, and the other line of the hotel phone on the other side of the room was ringing. I refused to get up. I had just been drug through Ikea and a mall; eaten Mexican food, and attended two workshop sessions at the conference. No phone answering here.

I wish that my assertiveness would rub off at work where I still feel compelled to pretend that I am not in fact hosting another life. I have scheduled a major screech to halt on this front for June 10th. Let's see if comes any sooner.