culturally incompetent

it's tradition here for women to stay in bed (or at least at home) for 40 days after giving birth. since families all live close to each other or together, the woman's mother or mother-in-law does the shopping, cooking, takes the baby to appointments, etc. the woman basically does nothing except rest and take care of the new baby.

this is what i have done since matthias was born:

-worked at paidia's carnival for two nights when matthias was less than a week old....he came with me.

-taken matthias to drs. apointments and blood tests by myself - walked to one, drove to two

-walked hiba to/from daycare while carrying matthias in a baby bjorn - a crazy concept here

-went grocery shopping a couple of times...usually with matthias in his bjorn

-cooked meals and cleaned the house

people here think i'm crazy.

but, my mom will be here in less than a week, so i'll take advantage of that and sleep some and let her cook. :-) too bad she's not staying for 40 days.

who the heck is this guy?!? -by hiba

on tuesday, i woke up and it was a normal day. me, mama, dada, and mama's belly named matthias. i was the center of the world (obviously) and everything was fine and dandy. mama seemed a little busy all day, packing lots of different bags and making lots of lists. but she always makes lists, so no big deal.

in the afternoon, i went over to rachel's. i like rachel, so this was fine. i got to ride in her car, which has a radio and i got to have pizza for dinner. i slept at her house, which was kind of strange, but it was fun. i talked in my sleep a lot about mama and dada - i guess i missed them.

then, everything changed. dada came to pick me up from rachel's and instead of taking me to daycare, he took me to where mama was. they called it the hospital. she looked different. matthias was gone and instead of her belly, there was a baby that they kept calling matthias. but i don't know what happened, because i thought matthias was her belly. and she was holding the baby and kissing him. she tried to kiss me too, but i wouldn't let her. i tried to leave the room, but dada wouldn't let me. so then i tried to throw a fit to get attention, but they just kept looking at the baby. then they tried to get me to sit by mama, but i didn't want to. not until she got rid of the other baby. but, none of this seemed to be making them happy, so after a while i decided to try to be nice to the baby. so i gave him a kiss and sat on mama's bed with them. she gave me hugs and kisses too, so i know she still loves me.

thursday morning when i woke up, mama still wasn't home. this was not really ok with me. so i was a little cranky. but then i got to go to daycare, where everyone loves me. this is because i'm the cutest. when dada came to pick me up, mama was in the car! i was so happy to see her! finally, everything would be back to normal. and then....that baby was in the car too!!! what?!?! why was he following us?!? what is the deal? he came home with us and he got to hang out with mama while i had to take a nap. this was not cool. i was not happy at all.

so now it's friday and he's still here. i am starting to like him. i know that baby matthias is not mama's tummy, but my new baby brother. i like to say "baby" a lot, because i like him. but i don't like to sleep because i'm afraid that there will be another baby getting all up in my space when i wake up, or mama and dada will be gone again. and i don't like sharing my toys with anyone. and i don't really like it when mama or dada holds baby matthias. but i'm getting used to it. i guess i have to, because it doesn't look like he's leaving any time soon.

Matthias Edward

our son was born on tuesday. i'm very glad he's here. i'm also very glad to not be pregnant anymore. so here's the story...

two weeks ago, my doctor told me that i might have to be induced early because my fluid level was low. now, as much as i didn't like the idea of being induce, i liked the idea of not being pregnant even more and kind of got excited about this idea. and while i had originally geared myself up mentally to be overdue, like i was with hiba, the glimmer of hope he gave me made all those patient thoughts fly right out the window. but, when i went back to the doctor the next week, he said everything looked fine and we could wait. great....so then, he did a little procedure that was makes 90% of women go into labor naturally within 48 hours, so i still had a little hope. however, i realized that this time around i fall into the elite 10%.

so after a long week of waiting and nothing happening, i went back to the dr. on tuesday, which was my due date. by this time i felt overdue, huge, and uncomfortable so we had decided that as long as the doctor said everything looked good and healthy, i would check into the hospital and have them break my water to put me into labor. so, that's what we did.

i checked into the hospital around 5 p.m. it was dinner time, so they let me eat (which i actually appreciated because otherwise i would have been starving during labor) and then took me up to the delivery room. the doctor on duty came in at 6:35 and broke my water. he said he'd be back in 2 hours to check on me and if hard labor hadn't started by then, he'd give me some medicine to speed things up.

he never made it back.

matthias was born at 8 p.m. yes, 1 hour and 25 minutes later. it was pretty intense. i had a great midwife and a wonderful husband to help me through. matthias was 4.27 kilos or 9 lbs. 7 oz. - quite a big little guy. he is healthy and doing great - so far he basically sleeps and eats. it's pretty crazy that we're a family of four now, but we're all excited (well, hiba's not too excited, but that's another post for another day) and can't wait to see what the future holds for us.

matthias edward pollack, sept. 15, 2009

things i couldn't have done today if i had a baby...

trying to stay on the positive side....

-take a two hour nap while hiba took a two and half hour nap

-bagels and coffee with jamie

-stir-fry for dinner

-play settlers of catan with friends (or online...)

-slept in

but, since i got to do all that great stuff today, i'm still ok with having a baby tomorrow.

The Drama of the Mechanics Continues...

so we finally gave in and switched mechanics. only, ziad doesn't really know this. i mean, we never told him that we're taking our car somewhere else, we just stopped taking it to him. this is a tricky situation, since we don't really want to hurt his feelings or anything, but he just doesn't do his job, at least with our car.

so last week, we took our car to our new mechanic to get some little stuff fixed. we know we'll need to sell it in december, plus we have to get our yearly check done in october, and we figure if we start trying to fix all the little stuff now, it'll be in good shape by the time we need it to be. anyway, jason took the car and when he got to the garage, musa was there. musa works with ziad. this is not good.

musa acted kinda strange and wouldn't really tell jason what he was doing at the new garage. but musa is always a little strange, so we figured that word would get back to ziad and it would all blow up. however, when i went back the next morning to pick up the car, musa was there again. our new mechanic came over to me and told me "musa....he doesn't work here, ok? don't say he works here." and then it became clear. apparently musa has two jobs - one that ziad doesn't know about. so he has two jobs, we have two mechanics and neither of us can tell ziad, so it's all good.