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.
Tuesday, September 14, 2010
Sunday, September 5, 2010
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.
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.
Sunday, August 22, 2010
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 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.
Sunday, August 15, 2010
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.
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.
"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.
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.
Friday, August 6, 2010
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 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.
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