Thursday, August 9, 2012

18 months ago...

Feb. 8th, 2011.  The scene: our bedroom back in Arlington.  A normal Tuesday morning, I wake up ready to go to work.  It's 6am.  I feel a little off, so I get out of bed and my water breaks.  I'm nervous but excited, Benjamin isn't due for another 3 weeks.  Thomas is awake and getting ready, so I tell him.  I call the on-call doctor, who tells me to just relax and wait at home since nothing seems amiss.  We hang out until 10am, when my doctor tells me to come in to the hospital.  The drive over is quick, it's after rush hour.  I had packed my bag the week before, and we had the car seat installed and checked too.  I feel good about being in labor, it doesn't hurt yet.

We get to the hospital and I go straight up, Thomas parks the car and finds me later.  The nurse gets me hooked into the IV (yuck) but I walk around anyway, that's what they say helps.  My doctor is a sweetheart and tells them to let me walk on my own, without pushing the IV stand.  So they disconnect me and I get to walk around the maternity floor.  There aren't many babies in the nursery, most people keep them in their room.  The serious pain doesn't start until I'm pretty far along, but I get an epidural anyway.  Benjamin is born about 5:25pm, 6lbs 9oz.  He has a ton of straight, spiky hair.  We get to the room we'll stay in about 6:30, after the cafeteria is closed.  Thomas picks us up dinner from an Italian place, and it's the best food I've ever eaten.  We spend our first night together as a family of three.  (This is Ben at a week old.)



I'm so grateful to God for giving us Benjamin.  After months of fertility treatment, it was a miracle to be pregnant, and to deliver a healthy baby boy was another.

On to the daily recap...

Pretty tame day, I drove Thomas to work and came home, Benjamin and I took morning naps.  A couple guys from the embassy came over in the afternoon to spray for ants, we'd had a major problem with them but the past couple days haven't seemed as bad.  Hopefully they are gone for good now.  And a little bit after that another couple guys showed up to look at the AC unit in our family room, last night it didn't seem to be getting cooler and the room was pretty warm.  Evidently the compressor is broken, so they are passing the buck to the landlord.  Fine by me, hopefully it'll get fixed soon.

I picked up Thomas from work and we ate dinner, then ran out to a fruit store for bananas.  Then I conned him into driving us to Carrefour.  Emy, our housekeeper, had given me a list of things to buy so she could clean and I really wanted our floors to get worked on, so I needed a mop and bucket.  It was perfect timing, not too many cars on the road 'cause we left right at Iftar.  We got back home around 8:15, when things get started, so we avoided most of the craziness.  And Carrefour was deserted, very few people milling around.  Since we have so many boxes and they're super sturdy I wanted to attempt a craft of some kind, and found this link on Pinterest.  I got a craft knife and blue duct tape, hopefully this weekend I can work on it.  I'll post pictures of either my success or fantastic failure.

Tonight I got to talk with my parents a little on Skype, but it kept dropping calls.  Argh.  And I got to talk to Priscilla, yay!  It's so fun to catch up.  I do miss having more contact with friends and family.  But living in VA for four years helped to make it an easier transition, if we'd gone from Greenville to Jordan that would have been such a shock.  As it is, I'm trying to enjoy life while we're here and keep it in perspective that two years will go by very quickly.  And I'm not sure I can go back to our teeny house.  And life without a maid/babysitter 12 hours a week.  Oh well, a couple years before I need to worry about that!

-Rachel

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