Dear Lavender,

You’re three weeks old now. You’re growing and changing every day. Your facial expressions are priceless. I wish I could capture every single one of them in a photo. As it is, I’m trying.

I am so grateful to have you, to wake up every morning to your gurgles and baby proclamations. You talk a little bit, which is amazing to me. Your favorite thing to say so far is, “Ngeh!” I like to think it’s your way of saying my name. That’s a mommy thing, though. It’s the reason the word for “mommy” sounds similar in so many languages; usually some combination with the /m/ sound is the first thing babies say, and we want so badly to think they are saying our name that we give that sound the meaning we want it to have. (There’s your first linguistics rant, my dear. You’ll learn to love–or at least tolerate–them, just like Baba has.)

You’ll learn to say “Mommy” soon enough. But for now, I love to hear you say, “Ngeh.”

Our bond is forged in a million different ways every day now. When you read about birth, or watch movies or shows about it, they always make it look like that moment of birth, when mommy sees her baby for the first time, is an incredible, indescribable moment of irreversible bonding. It wasn’t like that for us, though. As much as I wanted it to be like that, there were a million distractions that kept it from happening, although my love for you was palpable and drove me through that first chaotically emotional week.

Don’t get me wrong–I will never, ever forget the moment I looked down and saw you, all ten fingers and ten toes, your little hands balled into fists as you screamed at the top of your lungs at the indignity of being born. All I could feel was a tremendous rush of relief–that you were whole, that you were crying (which meant you were breathing), that you were moving. Throughout my entire pregnancy, I had silently (and sometimes not so silently) fretted about all the things that could go wrong in utero. I loved you so much before I ever saw you, and although I couldn’t wait to meet you face-to-face, when I saw you for the first time, there was no new rush of love; it was already there for you.

The moments after you were born are a blur, but I remember them–I held you for a few minutes and tried to nurse you as your umbilical cord did its job of delivering all of your blood…from me to you. Your baba was right there next to us, talking to you, marveling at you. After your cord had stopped pulsing, the midwife handed a pair of odd-looking scissors to your baba, and he, proudly sporting his medical gloves like a real doctor, cut your cord, and just like that, our bodies were separated from one another. You no longer belonged to only me.

After that, the nurses and the pediatrician came to examine you. Because I was still, shall we say, in a state of immodesty, a curtain was drawn around me, and I couldn’t see you…but I could hear you. Your baba was with you while you were weighed, measured, examined, cleaned, swaddled. He called gleeful updates to me from behind the curtain.

I lost a lot of blood during the birth, a little more than normal. I was woozy, shaking, and your baba says my lips were blue. I couldn’t see very well during those moments after you were born. I felt the same way I did the time I donated blood and passed out cold at the doughnut table afterward, the same way I did right before I opened my eyes and saw at least five faces standing over me, staring down at me. Luckily, the midwife and the nurses took good care of me, and I didn’t pass out this time. I remember the fuzzy scene of your baba sitting in a chair in the delivery room, holding you after the doctor and nurses were done with you (for the time being, anyway), singing a lullaby to you in Arabic, soothing both of us as you got to know this brave new world and I got stitches.

We rode through the hospital hallways to our private room from the delivery room–me on a stretcher, you in your little rolling bassinet, each of us being pushed by a nurse. I watched your bassinet like a hawk, even though it was never more than a few feet away from me as we made our journey. When we got to the room, we both ate and slept. That was pretty much our only moment of relaxation together for the next week or so.

The rest of that week was a whirlwind of sweet visitors, chocolates, flowers, gifts…as is customary when a Saudi baby is born. My delight at the celebration of your birth was tempered by the simultaneously ongoing blur of bottles, tears, pumping, blood draws, nurses, two different light boxes. How could we bond when for the majority of that time, my contact with you was limited to me placing my hands inside of the box that held you when I could not? I always tried to warm up my hands before I touched you while you were in the light box, but still, you always jumped at the feel of my hands, because they were always cold compared to the tropical temperature of your light box. You also couldn’t see me, because your eyes were covered. I cried a lot. Your baba assured me that you knew who I was, that you could hear my voice and that you knew my smell. But it wasn’t the same.

It wasn’t until about a week after you were born that we had that moment. It was late at night and you had just finished your feeding, and you were relaxing in my arms, making this facial expression you get whenever your belly is full, your lips pushed out to their maximum fullness, a look of pure contentment on your face. At that moment, I burst into tears yet again, but for a completely different reason. It hit me that I’m a mother. I have a daughter. For the rest of our lives, we have each other. Two peas in a pod, we are. Suddenly, the understanding of our bond hit me like a ton of bricks. It wasn’t a new bond, though. It was just, finally, an awareness of its existence. Me and you, kid. You and me.

Lots of people told me to do lots of things before I had a kid. Everyone made it sound like a baby is a death sentence, that my life would no longer be my own. And to an extent, I know that is true. It’s true already. But here’s the thing–anything I do in my life from here on out, I want to do it with you. If I am lucky enough to go back to Paris, I want a picture of us in front of the Eiffel Tower. I want to drive through France in a tiny Peugeot with you in the passenger seat while we jam out to French oldies on the radio. I want to take you to Italy–to Venice, to Rome. I want to stand on a platform in a tiny Tuscan train station with you, holding your hand as we wait for a train and listen to the click-click-click of the schedule board updating. I want to take you to the Great Wall, to Confucius’ Temple. You have to see Hong Kong and Las Vegas and New York and Dubai. I want you to walk through Alcatraz, to ride the spinning teacups at Disney World, to stand on the edge of the Grand Canyon. I want to take you to Silver Dollar City, kid.

All the places I’ve gone, all the amazing experiences I’ve had in my nearly thirty years…I want to go back to them so I can share them with you. Any accomplishment that I achieve in the rest of my life, I want you to be there with me. And any place new that I go in the future, I want you to come with me and experience it, too. You’ll hear “Moon River” about a million times in your life, whether it’s being sung by Audrey Hepburn, Andy Williams, or your baba; you’ll learn from the wisdom of Johnny Mercer, “There’s such a lot of world to see.” I want us to see as much of it as we can together, me and you, and your baba, too. And I want those experiences to give you the confidence to spread your wings and fly when you are old enough, both of your passports in your hand. You’re already prepping for that day, I can tell. One of your favorite things to do is throw your arms out wide, as though they are wings.

Last night it occurred to me that my mom, Nana to you, is leaving Riyadh in a little over a week. This feels unreal, as it seems like just a few days ago we were frantically trying to get her visa issues sorted out so she could make the journey to Riyadh to meet you. Hit with this realization, I started to cry (of course…I’m sure that readers of my blog are so tired of hearing about how much I cry. I must seem like such a morose person…but you’ll understand me, and how much I cry will become a running joke for you, as I used to heckle my mom when she cried all the time. But someday you might even cry as much as me, as I grew up to cry just as much as my mom does). I’m not ready to be separated from her again. Naturally, she started to cry, too. Then she walked over to me, kissed my forehead, and said, “You’ll see…Lavender will be your buddy.” Even though I will always need my mom, too, I know she is right…because you already are.

Love,

Your mom

• 

Home! And it feels so good.

I had the baby on May 20th, which was a Monday. We expected to go home on Wednesday, the 22nd. But that’s not how it worked out. We didn’t leave the hospital until Saturday.

I can safely say that my delivery was a wonderful experience. Labor was hard work. It was a rollercoaster of physical and mental anguish and joy. But it was wonderful. When I was worried and panicky, my midwife was calm and soothed my fears. I did pretty much whatever I wanted, whatever felt natural, as I labored. Everything was awesome. Should Mr. Mostafa and I have another baby in the future, if we are living in Riyadh, I will definitely be returning to my midwife for the birth.

The postpartum care, though…well, in many ways, it left a lot to be desired. In other ways, it was great.

Being a new mommy is a tremendously emotional experience, especially when you are becoming a mommy in a foreign country. Not only was I riding huge waves of postpartum hormones, but I was also finding that some of my ideals for motherhood clashed with Saudi cultural ideals for motherhood.

The first major cultural clash that manifested itself was nursery vs. mommy’s hospital room. Mr. Mostafa and I were adamant that the baby should not be taken to the nursery without one of us accompanying her. We wanted her to stay in the room with us at all times, unless absolutely necessary. This worked at first. Occasionally nurses would come in and attempt to wheel the baby down the hall to the nursery, but we would refuse to let them take her. When she had to go to the nursery, like for a checkup with the pediatrician, Saleh accompanied her. More than one of those nurses looked totally confused as we sent them away empty-handed–most babies born in Saudi hospitals spend a lot of time in the nursery, especially at night, so mommy can rest. While rest certainly would have been nice, I couldn’t imagine being able to rest without having my baby next to me (and as I would find out later, I was right about that).

Breastfeeding vs. bottle-feeding was next. About eight hours after the birth, as I sat in bed attempting to feed the baby, a nurse came into my room with two small bottles of formula and told me I should give them to the baby. Being quite set on the goal of breastfeeding, I politely refused. Having talked to other mommies who breastfed their babies and also having read a lot of Ina May Gaskin, I knew that I would probably produce very little milk for the first few days, and also that baby’s tummy is tiny for the first few days after birth and doesn’t require anything more than what the mommy can produce.

And yet, here was this nurse telling me that I must feed the baby formula until my milk came in. I tried to tell her no; she would not listen. She reached over and literally pinched each of my nipples–painfully–and said, “Look! You are making nothing!”

I was so shocked, I couldn’t do what I wanted to do, which was smack this woman’s hand away and scream, “Why do you think I would produce anything for your angry lobster pincers?” As I continued to try to tell her that I did not need formula, the baby spit up–mostly clear liquid with a few flecks of beige, which I think was her getting rid of fluid that had been in her tummy before the birth.

The nurse jumped on this opportunity. “The baby is vomiting. What have you fed her?”

So not only is my supply inadequate, what I do have is actually bad for my baby. Thanks, lady.

I managed to get the nurse out of my room without bursting into tears. After that, my confidence was shaken. It didn’t get much better.

A few hours later, we were informed that the baby’s bilirubin levels were much higher than normal due to a blood type incompatibility between me and the baby, that she had jaundice, and that she needed to be monitored. At this point, the formula pressure escalated. The nurses informed us that we needed to feed the baby formula in order to flush out the bilirubin and avoid having to put the baby under a phototherapy light. I didn’t know if that was right or not, but it rubbed up against my mommy instincts, and I balked. I didn’t want a bottle in my baby’s mouth. Still, Mr. Mostafa was worried and scared (just like I was–first-time parents, duh), and he joined in on the pressure to feed the baby a bottle–because, as it was framed, if we didn’t, the baby was going to be taken away from us to the nursery and put in a closed plastic box under a harsh UV light. So I fed her the formula, and I cried as I did it. I continued to try to nurse her, so that she could get whatever I was producing for her, but of course I couldn’t match the constant supply of formula, and although I prayed she would refuse the bottle, I didn’t blame her a bit when she didn’t.

In the middle of the following night, a nurse came to get the baby and Saleh followed her down to the hallway to the nursery. They drew blood from the baby and found that not only had the formula scheme not worked to flush out the bilirubin, but in fact, her bilirubin levels had skyrocketed overnight. So, despite having pumped her full of formula in a desperate attempt to avoid such a fate, our fear came true; our baby was taken to the nursery and put under a phototherapy light.

I cried. A lot. Seeing her in that box, with those little covers over her eyes, just broke my heart in a way I cannot completely describe. I missed my baby. I wanted to hold my baby. Every two hours, around the clock, I hobbled down to the nursery, took the baby out of the box, and attempted to nurse her, even though I knew I was fighting against the nursery’s neverending supply of formula and bottles. The nurses learned to recognize me. Some were sweet and welcomed me when I showed up at the nursery door asking to be buzzed in, my face without makeup, clearly displaying the dark crater-like circles under my eyes. Others seemed annoyed that I was there so frequently.

The baby had blood drawn every twelve hours. Always from her hand. The phototherapy was successful in bringing down her bilirubin levels, and at first, it seemed like we might leave the hospital on schedule. We spent eight hours on Wednesday “under observation,” hoping and praying that the next blood draw would be the last, and that we would be home that evening.

It wasn’t meant to be. The next blood draw showed that the bilirubin levels had shot back up again. So back into the phototherapy light box she went.

More tears, from both me and Mr. Mostafa. More formula went into the baby’s mouth at the hands of the nurses in the nursery, even though by that point, my milk was coming in. The pediatrician on call in the nursery told us that I was, of course, welcome to continue coming to the nursery to breastfeed, but that the more time the baby spent outside the light box, the longer it would take for the phototherapy to be effective and the longer we would likely be in the hospital.

So what could I do? I wanted my baby out of that box, in my arms, and on the way home as soon as possible. I requested a pump from the nurses’ station and I started pumping. I continued to hobble down to the nursery every two hours around the clock to feed the baby my pumped milk, even though I certainly wasn’t pumping as much as the doctors wanted the baby to consume every two hours, which was even more damaging to my breastfeeding confidence.

Things continued to go downhill. Upset about the amount of formula that the doctors were saying the baby needed to be consuming, I demanded to speak to one of the doctors treating the baby. The pediatricians never come to the room to speak to the parents about the baby’s treatment. The best you can do is either catch them in the nursery if you want to speak to them face-to-face, or request that they call you on the phone in your room. When I let the nurses know that I wanted to speak to the doctor, I got a phone call about an hour later from one of the doctors.

I expressed my concerns to this doctor…and she laughed at me. She laughed at me. Then she brushed my worries aside by saying, “We’re doing what’s best for your baby.” Finally she said, “Okay, I will compromise with you–you can feed the baby for every other feeding.” At this, I flew into a rage. This is my baby–no one compromises with me about her care.

The final straw on the feeding issue was when I went to the nursery to feed the baby in the middle of the night and found a bottle in the baby’s light box, propped on a rolled-up receiving blanket, with the baby sucking at it. I threw a fit, and so did Saleh once I went back to the room, woke him up, and told him about it. His brief stint with formula advocacy had melted away when the scheme of pumping the baby full of formula failed to keep her out of the light box, as we had been assured it would. We informed the nursery staff that no one in the nursery was to feed the baby anything, that one of us would be there every two hours and we would do all of the feeding.

The feeding issue wasn’t the only problem I had with the nursery, though. As I already mentioned, much to my dismay, the baby was having blood drawn every twelve hours. And they were taking the blood from her hands, which meant by day three in the hospital, she looked like a tiny drug addict, with all the needle stick marks in her hands. And they wouldn’t let us stay with her while they drew her blood, even though Mr. Mostafa and I both wanted to at least be next to her and soothe her. Which means that I cried even more. I didn’t know it was possible to feel so torn apart. I guess this is just the beginning, though. Welcome to parenthood, Hunter Mostafa.

Finally, the needle sticks in her hands stopped–when I came down to the nursery to feed her and found that she was out of her light box and on an examination table, surrounded by four nurses, three of them helping to calm and hold down the baby while one kept sticking her tiny hand over and over because she couldn’t hit one of her teensy veins. I watched through one of the nursery windows, totally helpless, tears streaming down my face as I watched my baby scream.

Saleh had been on the phone with the doctor in the room as this was going on, but he walked up behind me as I was bawling at the window. Then he saw why I was crying. And that’s when he informed the nursery staff that there would be no more blood draws from the baby’s hands. If they wanted to do a blood draw, it would have to come from the baby’s heel.

Her hands have just now healed; the needle stick dots are finally gone, and I’m grateful for that. Every time I saw those dots, I relived that moment of watching my baby scream and writhe in pain while I could do nothing to help her.

That was the bad. But there was good, too.

The first thing that I must say is terrific about giving birth in Saudi Arabia is that it is affordable. When paired with our insurance provided by Mr. Mostafa’s company, our total bill for the birth, the baby’s care, and our first two nights in a private hospital room was zero. Although I was discharged from the hospital on Wednesday, as scheduled, the baby was not, and we elected to stay in our hospital room as long as the baby was in the nursery. We live quite close to the hospital, but it wouldn’t have been feasible for us to come to the hospital every two hours so I could feed the baby…not to mention that considering what we’d seen in the nursery after our first two nights in the hospital, we weren’t willing to leave the baby for any amount of time. We had to pay for those last three nights in our hospital room; each night cost about as much as a night in a nice hotel room. I am grateful that we were able to make the choice to stay because it was within our reach financially. That part did make our lives much easier. In the States, three nights in the hospital without insurance might have cost a year’s worth of tuition at Harvard. And I don’t even know if any American hospitals would allow parents to opt to take a room in order to stay with their baby, even if they could afford it.

Furthermore, despite all of my (valid) complaints about the nursery, there were also some really sweet nurses that made our stay easier. There was always one nurse assigned to take care of Lavender. The night nurse was usually quite cranky and unpleasant, irritated that I spent so much time in the nursery. The day nurse, on the other hand, was the sweetest thing ever. She always listened (or at least, pretended to listen) carefully to me whenever I gave her directions about Lavender’s care. She always remembered the baby’s name, even though the baby didn’t officially have a name yet and her hospital bracelet tagged her as simply “Baby Nicole Hunter Mostafa.” Once, when I was in the nursery during a shift change, I heard her introduce the night nurse to the baby, saying, “This is baby Lavender.” Later, when I came to the nursery for a feeding, there was another baby’s bassinet parked next to Lavender’s light box. Both Lavender and the baby in the bassinet were fast asleep. The nurse said to me, smiling, “See, you don’t have to worry, she has made a friend!” As I fed my baby, she wheeled the other baby to a different part of the nursery for an exam. When I had finished feeding and stood standing at the light box, unable to walk away, the nurse came to me and said, smiling, “Don’t worry, madam. I will bring back her friend and she will be happy.” That nurse also managed to make me feel like she was genuinely concerned about me as well as the baby. When I continued to show up every two hours, she never discouraged me or made me feel like I was annoying her, but she once said to me gently, “Madam, when are you sleeping? You don’t sleep at all. You don’t sleep, you won’t make more milk.” She was right that I really wasn’t sleeping. Not only was I on a dedicated pumping schedule, but sleeping in between pumping sessions was nearly impossible because I was so worried and heartsick. But after that, I went back to my room after that feeding and slept for four hours straight, feeling okay because that nurse was taking care of Lavender.

We were finally able to go home on Saturday afternoon, five days after we arrived at the hospital. We returned to the doctor for follow-up care twice in the week after we came home, and thank God, the baby’s bilirubin levels went lower and lower with each visit, and she has now been given a clean bill of health.

Now, we can safely say, alhamdulillah, that mommy and baby are home, happy and most importantly, healthy. We’re settling into our routines together. I’m busy staring at her most of the time, memorizing every tiny baby feature, feeding her (yes, we have managed to overcome the less-than-perfect beginning when it comes to feeding, although we are still tackling some issues related to that), snuggling with her, kissing her. She’s mostly very patient with me. And even when she’s not, she’s perfect.

Just perfect.

• 

Well, you know what they say: if you want to make God laugh, tell him (or the internet) your plans. Less than 48 hours after I published my last post about how I desperately hoped that our baby girl would stay in her watery bubble until my mom managed to make it to Riyadh on the 24th, my water broke.

Yes, in the words of Michael Scott, “This is the birth story. And it is beautiful.” It isn’t graphic, but I mean, it is a birth story, so if you can’t handle the implications of a birth story, move along.

The water breaking happened at about four o’clock in the morning on May 20th. Well, I should say, it started at about four o’clock in the morning on the 20th. It wasn’t like in the movies, where pregnant women’s water breaks with one great gush. Rather, my water continued “breaking” until the baby was actually born. But anyway, when this happened, I went to Mr. Mostafa and woke him up to let him know what was going on. His initial reaction was appropriately panicky–”Oh, my God, your water broke? Right now? The baby’s coming? Do we need to go to the hospital? Are you ready to go to the hospital?”

I reassured him that no, it was not time to go to the hospital at all; I wasn’t even really having contractions. The only pain I had felt mildly crampy, and it wasn’t regular at all. Once he saw that this whole “water breaking” thing was not at all like the movies and TV promised, where the woman’s water breaks and suddenly she is dilated to a 10 and is having the baby in the backseat of a taxi, he calmed down. A lot. And with this calm came a collection of quotes that became the inspiration for the title of this blog post: seven things you really should not say to your wife when she’s in labor. They may not seem that bad, or they may seem utterly abominable, depending on your perspective. But I can safely say that due to the wild-eyed panic of going through labor for the first time combined with the tidal wave of hormones coursing through me during those last days of pregnancy, these seven phrases caused me to have rather strong reactions.

1. “Wallah, I need to rest. I have a headache.”

This is what Mr. Mostafa said after he saw that I was not really in pain and was reassured that it was not hospital time. Granted, the kid had just finished taking two major exams (for his Saudi CPA certification) in the past two days, after weeks spent studying for twelve hours or more each day, so he really was in need of rest. And when I woke him up at four o’clock, we had gone to bed just a few hours earlier. Still…this is not an appropriate thing to say to your wife when she is in labor, especially for the first time. Because no matter how much I read that childbirth is not like on TV, that water breaking does not happen in that dramatic way, the fact that it happened and then continued to happen right up until the birth, with the first few hours being pretty much contraction-free, had me more than somewhat freaked out. I think if my water had broken and contractions had started right away, I would have felt better. But it took two hours before anything really timeable–and anything significant pain-wise–started happening. So during those two hours, while Mr. Mostafa tried to rest for his headache, I felt like I was just sitting and waiting for my ticking time bomb of a uterus to explode.

2. “Wake me up when you start having hard contractions.”

Although he wanted to rest, he didn’t really get to. As much as he needed to sleep, the revelation that my water broke had him nearly as keyed up as I was. But this is what Mr. Mostafa said when, around six-thirty, he asked me how I was doing and I told him that the contractions were coming every four to six minutes, although they weren’t very painful contractions. He remembered that our midwife had told us that contractions close together aren’t necessarily a sign that labor has really gotten going yet. So he said this. And I wanted to kick him and yell, in Chandler Bing style, “I’m panicking here! Join me, won’t you?”

Actually, I think I did yell that.

3. “I’m tired, too!”

Since I too was running on a couple hours of sleep and I figured that the athletic event that is labor was best not experienced on the sleep equivalent of a bender the night before, I tried to catch quick snoozes in between those early, mildly uncomfortable regular contractions. Mr. Mostafa suggested that maybe I should get up and walk around, since that helps labor progress. I told him, “No, I’m tired and I want to get some rest while I can.” That’s when he offered this gem, and I snarled back, “Oh, yes, please tell me how tired you are right now. I feel so sorry for you!”

4. “I think I’m having sympathy pains–my back hurts!”

This is what Mr. Mostafa said when, God love him, he tried to ascertain how painful the contractions were at around eight o’clock. I think my response was something along the lines of the first fifteen seconds of this clip.

5. “I’m not going to listen to you.”

As things picked up, I wasn’t the only one in drill sergeant mode. I think I trained Mr. Mostafa for the birth a little too well, because he knew that I needed to labor at home for as long as possible to increase my chances of being able to have a natural birth at the hospital, and that if possible, we shouldn’t go to the hospital until the contractions were severe. He also knew that a contraction is considered severe when the laboring woman cannot talk through it. And since I was still able to talk through all of my contractions, even though I had to pause and focus on them as I talked through them, he fired this one off when I angrily insisted that it was time to go to the hospital. I think this is probably the most dangerous one, fellas. Just so you know. Especially if you follow it up with, “Honey, I know you’re going through a lot right now, but I am the coach!”

6. “Okay, why don’t you go organize while I take a shower?”

Mr. Mostafa is nothing if not crafty, and when it became apparent that I was not going to back down on my insistence that it was hospital time, he tried to distract me. Now, granted, I understand where he was coming from on this one. The day before, I had been obsessed with getting the baby’s clothes sorted and organized into different boxes based on size; in fact, in the last few days of my pregnancy, I had been a little obsessed with organizing in general, although I wasn’t really as effective at it as I wanted to be, due to my girth. So Mr. Mostafa probably thought that dangling the organization carrot would be an enticing distraction for me. But here’s another tip for the men out there: you should probably run on the assumption that suggesting to your wife that she should organize while she is in labor is probably going to backfire, no matter what a neat freak she is. And if she’s not really a neat freak, as I am not (but have always aspired to be), and is hypersensitive about that (and pretty much everything else) even when not pregnant, as I am…then just don’t, boys. Don’t.

I finally managed to convince Mr. Mostafa that it was indeed hospital time, even though I was still able to talk, albeit haltingly, through my contractions. We left for the hospital at 9:30 a.m. My mother-in-law came with us. By 9:45, I had been wheeled into the OB/GYN emergency room, where it was pronounced that I was dilated to a 3 (my thoughts upon hearing this number: “This is a 3? This is a 3? I’m going to die”). I was then wheeled into an elevator and taken to the delivery room on the third floor. This was around ten o’clock. My mother-in-law accompanied me, because Saleh had to take care of all of the admission and insurance paperwork, and it took longer than usual because we hadn’t yet gotten insurance approval for the birth (to be honest, we really were not expecting to be in the delivery room nine days before my due date. Silly of us, I know).

So for the first hour of my labor at the hospital, I had my mother-in-law with me as my “companion.” The hospital only allows one person to be with the laboring mother, whether that’s the husband, her mother, or whatever. And my mother-in-law was wonderful. She sat out of the way as I paced around the room, breathing and making weird noises through my contractions, reading Qur’an and praying aloud. I really wanted Saleh, but she was terrific. At one point she asked me, “Nicole, what you need?” I said, “Hugs.” And she walked over to me and put her arms around me and rubbed my back and continued to pray for me.

The contractions were making me sick. Every time I had one, I ended up running to the toilet to throw up. But there was nothing in my stomach to throw up. Eventually, my midwife gave me an injection of antiemetic drug to stop the vomiting. I think this was mostly to do with the fact that my midwife and the nurse were both trying to get me to lie still on the bed for at least a couple of contractions, so they could monitor them and get a read on them, and they figured that if I wasn’t running to the bathroom for every contraction, that task would be easier.

But the thing is, even without the urge to puke, I was no good at lying on my back during the contractions. That position made the contractions a thousand times worse. How can anyone labor on her back without an epidural is beyond me. I couldn’t handle it. I had to be standing up, I had to be moving, I had to be doing something besides lying on my back. (Later, when my midwife came to visit me after the delivery, she said, “We really wanted to keep you on the bed for a time, but we were quite impressed with how fast you moved. You let us know you were having a contraction, and then you were gone.”)

Finally Saleh arrived. And let me tell you, despite the negative tone of the title of this post, he absolutely shone in the delivery room. Only one of the seven things you shouldn’t say to your wife when she’s in labor happened in the delivery room, as I was pushing, and leaning on his arm while squeezing his hand. And it was…

7. “I can’t feel my arm. I think I’m going to need a cast after this.”

Other than that, though, Mr. Mostafa did and said everything right in the delivery room. To prove it, here is a list of five things that you should say to your wife when she’s in labor. I heard them all. And each one means more to me than the previous seven put together.

1. “You are doing great, baby.”

Guess what? Labor is an amazing experience but excruciatingly hard, and Mr. Mostafa had never seen me in that kind of pain before. Every time I ran to the bathroom to attempt to throw up, or leaned over and attempted to moan into the contractions like Ina May Gaskin’s books taught me (but I think I ended up doing something closer to yelling most of the time), Mr. Mostafa was there, holding my hand, hugging me, or reassuring me. And despite his declaration pre-hospital, he did listen to me. At one point, he attempted to rub my back during a contraction, but that only made it worse, and I commanded, “Stop.” He did. And he still said I was doing great.

2. “I am so proud of you!”

I am so grateful that my labor actually went, as our midwife put it, “very fast for a first baby.” My dilation went from a 3 to a 9 in span of about two hours, and this is what Mr. Mostafa said when we found that out. Right after the midwife let me know that I was at a 9, she told me that she was going to, as she put it, “nip home for a bit.” She lives just across the street from the hospital, and her daughter was home visiting from university and was about to leave, so she wanted to say goodbye to her daughter very quickly. I had a feeling that the baby was going to come before she got back, and I told her, wild-eyed, “Please don’t nip anywhere!” (Yes! I got to use British slang during my delivery!) She assured me that she would be ten minutes, if that. About five minutes later, the nurses were calling her to get her to return, because I was about to start pushing. When they got her on the phone, she was in the elevator on her way back to the delivery room; she had hugged her daughter and headed right back because, as she told me later, “I started to worry that you really were going to go faster than I thought!” And I did.

3. “Hell yeah, you can do it!”

This is what Mr. Mostafa said to me right around transition, when the contractions were at their absolute hardest and I was about to start pushing. TV and movies make it seem like the actual birth of the baby is the most painful part…no. Those last few contractions before I started pushing were where I thought that either I was going to die or my baby was going to have to be cut out of me. As I leaned against the hospital bed, I said to Saleh, “I can’t do it.” He let me know in no uncertain terms that I was wrong.

4. “Wallah, every year on her birthday I am going to tell her the story of everything you did to get her here.”

As I pushed, Mr. Mostafa gave me updates about what exactly was going on. And then he said this. Even with the burning pain and the baby half delivered, I had to laugh. I think it’s now safe to say that he can always make me laugh.

5. “I love you both so much.”

Baby was born at 12:42 p.m. on May 20, almost nine hours after my water broke and a little under seven hours after my contractions started. She weighed 3.3 kilograms, or 7 pounds 4 ounces. As I held the baby and tried to nurse her while we waited for the cord to finish pulsing so Mr. Mostafa could cut it, this is what he said.

Her name is Lavender, and she is our world. If you are an Up fan (as we are), you will recognize her button as the Ellie Badge. Which means that she is officially in the club now.

• 

So this is what I look like now (from the shoulders down, anyway).

I’m pretty much all baby bump. Or baby mountain. Baby volcano. Whatever you want to call it, it’s all baby.

Yesterday was Andy’s sixth birthday. I think the big brother is going to miss my giant belly. It’s become one of his favorite resting spots.

My due date is less than two weeks away, and Mom is scheduled to land in Riyadh on Friday evening. Unfortunately, we’ve been having some issues with obtaining her visa. To get a family visit visa for my mom, Saleh has to go to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and apply for it. It gets issued after about a week, and then we email the documentation to my mom, and then she mails all the necessary paperwork, including her passport, to the Saudi embassy in Washington. They put the visa in her passport and send it back to her. Easy sneezy.

The first time we did this, back in October (for my mom’s visit in November), it all went as smooth as butter. Unfortunately, this time, there was some confusion about the “Point of Embarkation” question on the visa application. What they were asking for was basically the country of origin; what country the person would be obtaining the visa in. Somehow we got the answer right the first time we did this back in October, and we picked Washington off the list, even though none of Mom’s flights went through Washington. This time, however, when we applied for her visa in late April, we got confused by the “Point of Embarkation” question, because Mom’s point of embarkation from the United States is not Washington, but Chicago, and Chicago was not an option. Frankfurt, however, was an option, and since Mom will stop in Frankfurt and it’s where she will catch her flight to Riyadh, we thought that’s what we were supposed to pick.

But we were wrong. So when Mom sent her paperwork in as she did last time, instead of issuing the visa, they sent all the paperwork back to her with a note saying that we’d picked the wrong city when we submitted the application; her visa was sitting in the embassy in Frankfurt, not in Washington.

We still haven’t figured out how we managed to do this correctly in October, since the flights were the same. It’s a total mystery.

So anyway, we had to do the whole thing again. Saleh had to go back to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and submit a new application. Now we are still waiting for them to issue the new visa. As long as they issue it by tomorrow or Monday, we should be okay. Mom will have to overnight her passport and paperwork to the embassy and have it overnighted back, and she will have to pick up her passport from UPS on her way to the airport on Thursday. But she should be able to catch her flights as scheduled.

The only thing is, should the baby come before Thursday, Mom won’t be able to change her flights so that she can leave earlier. Because of the dang visa.

So right now I’m praying for two things–one, that baby girl stays where she is at least until my mom’s scheduled flight arrives, and two, that the Ministry of Foreign Affairs issues the visa either tomorrow or Monday so that my mom’s departure won’t be delayed.

Besides praying, I’m also nesting. I’ve read that pregnant women get this urge, and I’ve had little flurries of nesting urges throughout my pregnancy. Like one day I’d feel like I simply could not go on unless I rearranged my bathroom cabinets. Or another day I’d go crazy scrubbing out my laundry machine from top to bottom. But now, I’m really in cleaning mode. I feel like I simply cannot get my apartment clean enough (a few days ago I sent Saleh out for a toothbrush specifically so I could scrub grout lines in the tile floors), and of course, the belly is now so unwieldy that it makes it difficult to really clean the way I want to (have you ever tried scrubbing a floor on your hands and knees while 38 weeks pregnant? Or am I the only crazy one who has tried this?). And I don’t want to exert myself too much, lest I bring on labor, which, as we’ve already discussed, we don’t want to do for at least another five days!

I’m also incredibly emotional. Everything makes me cry. Of course, I’ve been emotional throughout my pregnancy, but now it’s just, like, a tidal wave of hormones. Yesterday my husband told me I’m not allowed to listen to Bruno Mars songs until after the baby is born because right now, within an hour of taking out my earbuds, I’m crying and telling him that he isn’t romantic or sweet enough.

And a few days ago, I cried on the phone to my mom about feeling overwhelmed by all the cleaning I wanted to get done before the baby came, about feeling like I was going to be a terrible mother if I didn’t get these things done. My mom, in all her wisdom, replied, “You think every baby in this world comes home to a perfectly clean place? Babies don’t care about that. All that matters is that you’re there to hold that baby, momma.”

She always knows what to say, that momma of mine. She has to get here on time…she just has to!

• 

When I first met Mr. Mostafa, I started reading everything I could find about Saudi Arabia. One of the first blogs I stumbled upon was American Bedu, written by Carol Fleming Al-Ajroush, an American former CIA officer who met, fell in love with, and married a Saudi diplomat. They lived together in Pakistan before settling in Riyadh. In 2008, Carol’s husband, Abdullah, was diagnosed with a rare form of leukemia. In the same year, Carol, who had previously been diagnosed with breast cancer but had been in remission, found out that her own cancer had relapsed. Abdullah passed away in 2010. Carol is still battling her metastasized cancer.

I have such a fondness for Carol and Abdullah and their story. In the earliest days of my relationship with my now-husband, before we were even engaged, and long before I started writing my own blog (or at least, my own public blog), I remember that I sent Carol an email expressing my admiration of the American Bedu blog and telling her all about my story with my own Saudi. When you fall in love with a Saudi, you find yourself pouring your heart out to anyone in a remotely similar boat because there really isn’t anyone who can truly understand except other women married to Saudis. Sure, you talk to your friends as much as you can, and my mom was always destined to be my confidante, no matter where my husband ended up coming from. But truly, there are so many things, culturally and otherwise, that other Americans (or even non-Saudis) just don’t get. Not that they don’t want to, in many cases; they just can’t relate. And that’s okay.

When I sent Carol my email, I remember that she responded so graciously. I’m sure she read my rambles, rolled her eyes, and thought, “Oh, great, yet another American girl who thinks her fly-by-night Saudi is the one,” but she didn’t respond to me that way at all. She thanked me for writing to her and wished me and Saleh the very best in the future. We didn’t become instant pen-pals or anything, but I continued to read the American Bedu blog, to learn from her, and to be thankful that she was writing. We eventually became Facebook friends, and earlier this year she interviewed me on American Bedu.

I have never met her in person, but I have never forgotten how kind she was to me in that first email. From that alone I learned what a special person she is.

Carol has been very open with her readers throughout her long and difficult fight against cancer. Yesterday, I read on the American Bedu Facebook page that Carol is now in liver failure and is likely going into hospice care. My heart became so unbearably heavy at this news.

And of course, there nothing I can do except pray for Carol…for a miraculous cure, and if that isn’t possible, then for peace and comfort, and for a joyous reunion with her beloved Abdullah on the other side. So that’s what I am doing.

Aside from prayer, the only thing I can think to do is write. A few weeks ago, Carol shared a blog post on American Bedu about how her Saudi mother-in-law came to love Carol’s sweet cats, Max, Tripod, and Saheba. I just loved this post, and on Carol’s Facebook page, I commented that her adorable story made me want to write about how Andy has grown on my own Saudi in-laws. She responded, “I can’t wait to read that post!” So for Carol, here it is.

Andy is one of the topics I’m most commonly asked about–how I got him, how I got him to Riyadh, and what it’s like living with a dog in Riyadh. To read my posts about Andy and Parker, you’d probably think that I’ve been a dog lover for my entire life. Not true. I’ve never hated dogs, exactly, but I’m allergic to most of them…so, as a species, it took them a long time to really grow on me. I grew up around animals–horses, cows, dogs, cats. My dad has always been something of a Dr. Doolittle, and he always says that he gets along best with animals and kids–it’s adults who screw the world up. He’s also one of the very few men in our area of southern Missouri that doesn’t hunt. So I was certainly raised to love animals. Still, my parents never had a dog in the house until I was seventeen years old, and even then my mom joked that they got her because I was moving out to go to college. I didn’t mind dogs, per se, but I never really wanted one of my own.

But by the time I was 23, all of my closest friends had dogs. In other circles of friends our age, the trend might have been to have babies, but at the time, none of us were married or in any other way positioned to have a kid, so I suspect our collective trend toward dog ownership was a vent of maternal instincts that we weren’t prepared to express in a conventional way.

After watching my friends throw doggy birthday parties and bring home doggy Thanksgiving dinners from Three Dog Bakery and otherwise become totally wrapped up in their new role as furbaby mothers, I began to think that having a dog might be a nice thing, after all. I was also getting ready to move into a house alone, so I thought that it would be smart to have a dog, for my safety. I started researching hypoallergenic dog breeds and decided that I wanted a Labradoodle.

Although I was not excited about the idea of buying a dog from a breeder, the fact is that there aren’t a lot of Labradoodles available for rescue. On one hand, that’s a good thing, of course. On the other hand, that left me with no other option than to go to a breeder. After I had finally found a breeder whose prices I could afford (seven hours away), I contacted them, chose my Parker from the pictures of available puppies (it was very easy–I saw him and knew he was mine immediately. He was five weeks old at the time, and I didn’t get to bring him home until he was 9 weeks old. When I saw him, I emailed the breeder and said, “That’s him.” She emailed me back, “He is so sweet; a very affectionate pup.” I don’t think she knew how right she was), and started collecting puppy supplies.

As I simultaneously prepared to move and prepared to bring Parker home, I began to think that maybe it would be good for him to have a sibling. At the time, I was a full-time grad student and a full-time elementary school teacher, and I was teaching in a school that required a two-hour round trip commute every day…and I already felt guilty for bringing Parker home into that situation–a single mother, and a very busy single mother, at that. I knew that Parker would be spending a lot of time home alone, and well, I didn’t want him to be totally alone.

So I started looking into adopting a Yorkshire Terrier puppy. My roommate at the time had a Yorkie named Lucy, and I thought that Lucy was just adorable–not to mention, she didn’t make me sneeze. So I knew a Yorkie would work for me. I got on Petfinder and found that there were two tiny male Yorkie pups available for rescue in my area. I contacted the rescue and found out that these two puppies had been born at the rescue. Their mother, who had spent her life as a breeding dog in a puppy mill, had been pulled out of that puppy mill situation, ill and pregnant. Once in the rescue, she had six puppies, only two of whom survived–Andy and his brother. Shortly after giving birth, she died, as well.

After submitting my application, with my vet reference, to the rescue, I was thrilled when the lady in charge called me and invited me to come and meet the two puppies and choose which one I would like to adopt. When she brought them both out, I sat on the floor so I could play with them and get to know them.

It turned out that “getting to know them” was about a twenty-second process. When she put the two pups down on the floor, one immediately began darting all around the room, sniffing, exploring. The other walked right up to me, climbed into my lap, curled up, sighed, and looked up at me as if to say, “Okay, you found me. Now what do we do?”

And that’s how I met Andy.

This is Andy as a baby, about six weeks old. The picture is fuzzy because it was taken with a camera phone in 2007.

Our first year together–Parker, Andy, and me–was a chaotic process of getting to know one another, and for me, learning to become totally unfazed by poop, pee, vomit, and the destruction of my belongings (which, now that I think about it, was probably very good preparation for parenting). Parker was hyper and crazy as a puppy, so we went to puppy school. Andy couldn’t yank my arm out of the socket on a leash like Parker could, but what he lacked in brute strength he made up for with his jaws. He chewed everything. Who would have guessed that such a tiny creature could leave such destruction in his wake? He chewed through the straps of two of my backpacks. In the middle of the night, he tugged my Palm Treo smartphone (which was cutting edge then, man) off the nightstand by its charging cord, dragged it under the bed, and reduced it to shards of plastic and metal, which I stepped on when I got out of bed the next morning. And he really, really loved gnawing on books. Some dogs can’t resist shoes; for Andy, it was books.

What can I say? He’s my baby, alright.

Still, after our first year together, after a year of being pooped on and puked on and snuggled and licked and jumped on, we were bonded. I was a completely neurotic dog mom and proud of it. My dogs were my world. Then I met Saleh, and things got complicated.

When I met Saleh, he, like most Saudis, wasn’t fond of dogs, and the dogs became a sticking point for us. He refused to eat at my house because the dogs were there. He would not touch the dogs. He would not interact with the dogs. It took him three months just to pet Andy on the head, and even longer for him to touch Parker. I say that he hated the dogs, but he corrects me now, saying that it’s not that he hated them–he was just scared of them and didn’t want to admit it. I spent my second year as a dog mother completely torn between them and the man who would become my husband.

But that changed eventually. When he saw how being torn between him and my dogs was really wearing me down, he started spending more time around them. Slowly, he began to see their personalities; he started to understand what made me love them. I’m grateful that Mr. Mostafa was able to get past his fear, because otherwise, I’m afraid we would not have worked out in the end.

Over the next few years, I became a single parent no longer. Once Saleh loosened up with them, Andy and Parker fell in love with Saleh, too, and this is partly how I came to know that he had, in Saudi terms, “a white heart.” I watched Saleh go from despising all dogs to cooking doggy kabsa for Parker, sharing pizza with Andy, rushing Andy to the emergency vet hospital in the middle of the night for an upset tummy, and giving me instructions on how to make Parker’s “favorite meal” when Parker cut his paw and had to have five stitches while Saleh was in Riyadh and we were in the States. He also went through a year where he learned to be unfazed by poop, pee, and vomit (although by this time, Andy had outgrown his chewing phase). We became our own little family.

When Andy arrived in Riyadh, more transition was necessary. Obviously, Andy was a bit freaked out by the change. He had to learn to do his bathroom business on tile instead of grass. For the first two weeks, he barked (or, as my Saudi in-laws described it, “how-howed”) whenever he was left alone in the apartment.

Although I’m sure they wanted to tear their hair out during those noisy weeks, my in-laws were patient. And they did their best to accept Andy, even though dogs were certainly not something they were used to.

This is my father-in-law petting Andy for the first time, right after my mom, Andy, and I got to Riyadh in November of last year. It was really one of the most adorable things I’ve ever seen. It looked like he was so nervous, and wasn’t even quite sure how to pet a dog. But he was pleased to discover that, as he told me after I took this picture, that, “Andy is very kind.”

To be honest, even now, dogs are still not something my in-laws are used to. They will pet him, but licking is, of course, a no-no. They will talk to him (“Hello, Andy!”) and laugh at his antics, but they mostly are not snuggly and hands-on with him the way many Americans are with dogs. Still, they regard him as a member of the little family, and Andy loves them, especially when they share their food with him (which they do often). He spends most of his time with me and Saleh in the apartment, but whenever we go downstairs to sit outside in the hosh, if we don’t bring Andy, someone will inevitably grill us as to why we left him upstairs by himself and will send one of us back up to get him so he can enjoy some time outside in the hosh, too.

Despite my in-laws’ cultural discomfort with dogs, they know how much I love Andy, and how much Andy loves me, and for that I am always grateful. My mother-in-law loves her cats, and so, as she told me, she understands what it’s like to feel like a pet is your baby. Once, when I got home after a few hours away, my sister-in-law saw how excited Andy became, and she said, “He loves you so much! I wish my cats did that for me when I got home!” They have adjusted to Andy, and Andy has adjusted to Riyadh.

Last night, my mother-in-law came up to our apartment to visit. She had heard Andy barking at me earlier in the day, and as she petted him, she asked, “Why Andy was how-howing?” I explained that I had been eating watermelon, and Andy loves watermelon. He was trying to get me to share. She just laughed.

But a few minutes after she left, there was a knock on the door. On the other side was my sister-in-law, carrying a huge plate of watermelon that her mom had sent up for us.

It’s true that there are no dog parks, or doggy bakeries, or PetSmarts in Riyadh. But I think it’s safe to say that despite the general cultural aversion to dogs, especially indoor dogs, that surrounds us here, Andy and I are taken care of very well in Riyadh. We are loved, and we have watermelon. What else is there, really?

• 

T-minus 19 days until my mom arrives from the States! I can’t wait. As I’m sure you’ve been able to glean from previous posts (if you’ve read previous posts), my mom is one of my favorite people in the world. I love her so much and I haven’t had a hug from her since November. Torture, I tell you! Torture! She’ll be staying for a month, during which time she will get to know her new granddaughter and impart all of the motherly wisdom that I can absorb in one sleep-deprived month’s time.

Besides bringing her soothing mom presence to Riyadh, her suitcases are also going to be weighed down with items that I can’t obtain (or thus far haven’t been able to find) in Saudi Arabia. I have to admit, I’m pretty excited about the arrival of these things, as well.

Now, I would like to say that generally, I’m fine with the selection of foods, products, etc. that I find in Riyadh. In fact, there are things I can get here, and for much better prices, than I can find in the States. (I’m not sure how I lived this long without knowing strawberry juice and mango juice existed on a grocery store shelf on the other side of the world.) The variety of produce is often much better. Sometimes, I’ll be really wishing for something and it will magically show up in a grocery store near me (this has happened with Kraft macaroni & cheese and with Cheez-Its, among other things). And to be honest, grocery shopping here is often something of an adventure. The stock of American products in stores changes frequently, and sometimes I find random things that I didn’t even realize I miss. Then I get super excited.

Here are just a few of my most recent finds. Two of my favorite cereals!

That being said, there are several things that I have not yet been able to source here in Riyadh, things that I need, man. Need. (Yeah, I know that this is a very loose/insulting interpretation of the word “need,” but hey, I’m 37 weeks pregnant; I’ve got license to be dramatic for a few more weeks.) And my momma, she’s a-bringin’ em. Because she’s awesome.

So, without further ado, a totally whiny list post of ten things that shall be entertaining/weirding out customs inspectors as they ride to Riyadh in my mom’s suitcases.

1. Coconut oil.

This one is actually a maybe, as I’m on a mission to ascertain whether good coconut oil can be found here in Riyadh before my mom comes. If it turns out to be a lost cause, then I’ll have Mom bring me some. Due to this mission, I’ve learned more about coconut oil since moving to Riyadh than I ever knew it was possible to know.

I’ve been using coconut oil as my main head-to-toe moisturizer for a couple years now. It works better on my dry skin than anything else I’ve tried. Supposedly it has lots of health benefits when used in food, as well, although up until this point, I’ve only used it as food for my skin.

I’ve even got Mr. Mostafa using it now, too. He started using it on his dry, itchy hands this winter, and now it and argan oil have become like his version of Windex in My Big Fat Greek Wedding. In our home, any skin ailment has not been properly addressed unless Saleh has asked, “Did you put some coconut oil on it?” or “Did you try argan oil?” Usually at least one of them works.

Before I moved to Riyadh, I didn’t know that there were different grades of coconut oil. We Americans don’t use coconut oil much; it’s mostly the realm of crunchy health food nuts (and I say that with all possible love, because I aspire to be one of them someday. However, a cursory glance at this post will demonstrate clearly that that day is not today). So usually, the only place to find coconut oil in the States, aside from ordering it online, is in health food stores, where, of course, it is always pure, cold-pressed, unprocessed, unrefined, organic, and extra virgin.

I came to Riyadh with two jars of coconut oil bought at my beloved MaMa Jean’s. By the time I ran out, what I knew about coconut oil could be summed up thusly: it’s solid when below room temperature and liquid when above room temperature. (So basically, it’s almost always liquid in Riyadh, unless you put it in the refrigerator.) When it’s solid, it’s white. When it’s liquid, it’s clear. And it smells like fresh coconuts. I assumed that these attributes held true for all coconut oil.

I easily found a bottle of coconut oil on the shelf at my local grocery store. I brought it home, poured it into one of my empty jars, and stuck it in the refrigerator, feeling safe in the knowledge that this was one thing I wouldn’t have trouble finding here.

A few hours later, when I took the jar out of the refrigerator, my first clue that something was off was that the now-solidified oil was yellow. That didn’t really bother me, though. Things didn’t start getting weird until that night, when I took a shower, slathered the oil all over myself, put on my pajamas, and went to curl up on the couch next to Mr. Mostafa.

He sniffed. Then, “Honey, what is that smell?”

I crinkled my nose, as I was noticing it, too. “I don’t know, but…ugh!”

He leaned in and took a big whiff. Then he leaned back and covered his nose with his arm. “Ew, it’s you!”

“Me? How can it be me? I just took a shower!”

“Did you use a new soap or something?”

“No, but…”

I jumped up and retrieved my coconut oil jar, ripped the lid off, and sniffed. Smell identified. The only way this oil smelled like coconuts was if it had been made from coconuts that had been rotting in the sun for a couple months.

Luckily, that was just a week or so before I was scheduled to go home to the States for a visit. So I brought more of the good stuff when I came back to Riyadh.

After that experience, I started doing my research. Apparently, coconut oil can be made in various shades of quality, processing, etc., and made from different parts of the coconut. Only the varieties with all those health food store adjectives have all the nutrients that coconut oil is famous for (not to mention the pleasant smell). But most coconut oil here is refined, processed, hydrogenated, and all that stuff, as well as made from the scraps of the coconut as opposed to the actual meat. When I first started inquiring about where to buy coconut oil here, I got a lot of weird looks, because duh, coconut oil is everywhere. There are many Pakistanis and Indians here, and coconut oil is used a lot in Pakistani and Indian cooking. There is even a non-edible (read: very heavily refined) version of coconut oil available for use on hair and skin. It’s not hard to find coconut oil here at all. So far, it’s just been hard to find what I’m looking for, which is the minimally-processed, unrefined, cold-pressed, virgin variety that still has all the nutrients and fats that are good for skin and hair and organs and everything else.

I know that all of this sounds incredibly snobby–”There is coconut oil here, it’s just not good enough for me!” So I apologize for that, because it’s not my intention. But what can I say…as a girl whose dry skin plagues her in even the most humid climates and who has ended up living in the middle of the desert, I appreciate a maximally beneficial, effective, all-natural moisturizer that doesn’t cause my husband to scoot away from me on the couch. Call me crazy. It’s okay; you won’t be the first.

2. Shea butter.

I actually don’t really use this yet. But I’ve been wanting to try to make this homemade shaving cream (can you tell I’m kind of a nut about all-natural skincare? It’s a result of a lifetime of dry skin), and it requires shea butter. I’ve read great things about shea butter, as well, so I may find other uses for it. Who knows? If you have any other suggestions, I’m all ears.

3. Cadbury Creme Eggs.

These are my favorite Easter candy. I like to eat them frozen. I haven’t seen them in Riyadh yet, but that doesn’t mean I won’t. We often get Western seasonal candy here at non-seasonal times (like Christmas candy in July), so I may stumble across them later on (and a friend of mine already found them at one supermarket here!). But still, because I love them, I asked my mom and dad to stock up on them for me during Easter time. And they did. Because they’re awesome.

4. Cross-stitching floss.

I have two new cross-stitching patterns that I’m eager to get started on. I know it will probably take me ages to get them done, especially after the baby arrives; cross-stitching is my TV time activity, and baby holding and feeding will probably take up most of that slot. But still, I’m excited to get started on them, and there are over twenty new colors of DMC floss that I need to finish them. When I sent my mom the list of the colors I needed, she and my dad went on this adorable floss-finding mission at sewing stores (and Walmarts) all across southern Missouri and northern Arkansas. At press time for this post, there are only two colors that they haven’t located yet…but they haven’t hit the craft stores in Springfield yet. Did I already mention that my parents are awesome?

5. Triscuits.

Mr. Mostafa and I are equally enamored with these simple, perfect wheat crackers. They’re one American product that haven’t shown up on any grocery store shelves since we got here…at least, not that we know of. Of course, now that Mom is bringing us some, they’ll probably show up somewhere. That’s what happened with Cheez-Its. But that would certainly be fine with us.

6. Essential oils.

I like to use these around the house for different purposes, but I haven’t been able to find any here. I’ve heard rumors to the effect that it’s illegal to sell them, although I don’t know why that would be the case. I can just imagine the headlines–”Essential oil bust in Riyadh! Shopkeeper caught with hundreds of bottles of verbena, eucalyptus, and ylang-ylang!”

7. Cloth diapers.

As far as I can tell, cloth diapering is kind of unheard of here. I haven’t been able to find any cloth diapering supplies in any stores at all. So Mom is bringing it all–prefolds, covers, and Snappis. She’s encouraging me in my goal of cloth diapering. Saleh thinks I’m nuts, but he’s going along with his hormonal pregnant wife. He’s such a smart cookie sometimes.

8. Dog treats for Andy.

Most of Andy’s treats here consist of people food–carrots, cheese, crackers, etc. The pet stores here don’t really have a good selection of dog treats (heck, last month, for some reason, we couldn’t even find dog food anywhere in Riyadh. Saleh visited more than five stores and none of them had any in stock). So Mom is bringing some good treats for Andy. He deserves a big brother present, after all. Isn’t that the first rule of bringing home a new baby–that the siblings should be recognized for their new role in the family, as well?

9. Many tubes of Tigi hair color from my stylist.

I’ve written at length about my adventures in haircare since arriving in Riyadh. Saleh is still my favorite stylist here. But we need to restock our home salon. Thanks to my mom and Amy, my stylist in the States, we’ll hopefully be good to go until the next time I’m back in Missouri.

10. Latest issues of my favorite magazines.

Speaking of restocking the home salon, I have also requested the latest issues of two of my favorite magazines, Lucky and InStyle. The only time I ever read magazines is when I’m on planes and when I’m getting my hair done, so having new magazines to read will really add to the home salon ambience when Mr. Mostafa, the reluctant haircolor wunderkind, does my hair. I’m excited. And a nerd. But you already knew that.

To be honest, these are just a few of the things going in my mom’s suitcase. I could keep writing practically forever (cloth books for the baby, my stick blender, my Wilton cake decorating tips), but I won’t. Suffice it to say that all expats, anywhere in the world, have to have a lifeline for the little things that we, perhaps selfishly, want/need and can’t find in our new home countries. My mom is mine. And Saleh’s, honestly. There are days when he feels like an expat himself, days when he really misses the States, days when I’m really the one out of the two of us who is adjusting well to Riyadh life.

But you know what takes the edge off? Triscuits.

• 

So here is a general update post, I suppose.

Nesting is the name of the game right now. I’ve let the dishes pile up in the sink in favor of getting things ready for baby. I’m washing all of her little clothes, taking inventory of what we have for her so far, and making lists of things we still need to get…trying to make things as comfortable as I possibly can for the little pumpkin before she arrives, and trying to set up our little space to accommodate all the needs of a newborn.

Yes, we’re planning to do the cloth diaper thing…at least while we’re at home. I don’t think I will be hardcore enough to carry around dirty cloth diapers when we’re out and about.

As the baby grows and I feel her every little hiccup and squirm, I’m reminded of just how close I am to being a real mom. And as the moment of her grand entrance draws nearer and nearer, I find myself getting more and more scared. Of so many things.

First of all, there’s the labor, of course. When I first found out I was pregnant, I downloaded everything Ina May Gaskin ever wrote, and I found myself especially drawn to the birth stories in Spiritual Midwifery. Of course, no one in an Ina May Gaskin book ever really describes labor as painful, exactly, even amid descriptions of screaming and vomiting. Adjectives like “psychedelic,” “far out,” and “holy” are the norm. Contractions are referred to as “rushes.” Labor is made to sound like this massive LSD trip. I have no LSD-tripping experience, so this isn’t really all that helpful to me, but an LSD trip has to be better than the ripping, searing, unforgettable, indescribable pain that labor is more often sold as, right?

I even watched birth videos online–and even more incredible, Saleh watched a few with me. I can’t speak for Saleh, although I will say that he did a pretty good job of not freaking out, but as for me, they mostly left me feeling like, “Okay, that looks like it really sucks, but I mean, it’s not that bad. I can do that. I can. It’s doable. And it’s worth it for my kid. Right?”

Of course, the kind of women who tape their births and upload them on the internet are typically not the type of women who march into the hospital and demand their epidural at the first contraction. They are not women who want to smack you in the face with the message that if you have chosen to pursue a natural birth, you are a naive idiot who has no effing clue what you’re getting yourself into. They’re mostly women who want to share the exquisite joy of their beautiful births and all that stuff. Such a woman is often giving birth in a tub in the middle of her living room, surrounded by an entourage that includes a midwife, a doula, a spouse, her other children, perhaps the proud grandparents, her six closest girlfriends, and even maybe a curious cousin or two. As the baby emerges, everyone is cheering her on. The woman looks simultaneously enraged and enthralled. And then, plop, there’s a kid.

So while the internet may be full of women declaring, “If you want a natural birth, stay the hell away from me in case your mental illness is contagious,” it’s also full of videos declaring that it’s a survivable experience, if not altogether pleasant. And there’s plenty of research to back up the conclusion that when possible, it’s by far the best way to go for mom and baby.

So all that was/is somewhat encouraging.

At the same time, my pregnancy experience has not exactly led me to believe that an uneventful (well, as uneventful as popping a tiny human out of you can be) natural childbirth is in the cards for me. Everyone says that if you want to know what your pregnancy will be like, look at your mom’s pregnancies. Well, my mom was freaking born to be pregnant. She wasn’t sick a single day during either of her pregnancies. She had no stretch marks. She had no heartburn.

Has the opposite been true for me in every single instance? Let’s see, check, check, and check.

Furthermore, my mom had amazing labors. She was in labor with me (her first) for maybe seven hours total, and popped me out with a few pushes. My brother, meanwhile, took around four hours from start to finish. Her labors were easy (she describes them that way, not me) and fast. “Yeah, it hurts,” she told me, shrugging. “But it’s so worth it, and it’s not that bad. Heck, I was chatting on the phone with your aunt in California while they were stitching me up after I had you!”

Yeah, Mom, just keep on braggin’.

So due to my observation of the pattern that my pregnancy has taken compared to my mom’s, combined with the fact that I’m going to be giving birth in a hospital in Saudi Arabia, I’m now expecting a terrifying, excruciating, days-long labor experience that involves the shadow of an anesthesiologist with an epidural needle in hand darkening the delivery room doorway, cruelly tempting me as I wrench my husband’s arm out of the socket while he implores me to tummy breathe and I scream at my British midwife, “WHAT DO YOU WANT ME TO DO? I CAN’T UNDERSTAND YOUR ACCENT,” and culminates with a curtain separating my face from my abdomen as a team of doctors saws me open to rescue my child.

And all that…all that scares me.

And then of course, getting the kid out of me is just the beginning. I admit that I broke one of the rules I set for myself in an earlier post–I tried to read a parenting book. But it wasn’t a parenting philosophy book, exactly…more like a book on surviving your baby’s first year. I read the reviews before I bought it; it came very highly regarded, and was supposed to emphasize the importance of listening to one’s parenting instincts, where other parenting books tend to make you feel like all of your instincts are wrong.

Still, by the time I got about a quarter of the way into the book, I had to stop. Simply could not continue. You know that episode of Sex & the City where Carrie is sitting on her bed going through her mail and she opens an invitation to Big and Natasha’s engagement brunch, and she is so shell-shocked that she puts the invitation down on the comforter and then gingerly shoves it off the bed with her foot? That’s totally what I would have done with this book if I had a hard copy of it instead of having it downloaded on my iPad.

This book terrified me. It was like studying for the most horrible test imaginable. I found myself panicking and thinking, “I’m never going to be able to remember all this! What if I forget something? Am I going to be a terrible mother if I forget something? ‘Cause I know I’m going to forget something!”

Labor doesn’t seem half as scary as actually having a baby. I mean, labor will inevitably end. Having a child will never end. For the rest of my life, even after she is no longer a child, after I no longer have the direct responsibility of keeping her alive, I will be worried about her. I will want to take care of her, even when I have no clue how and books can’t tell me.

Aaaaah, I can’t even write about it anymore because it feels like my brain is going to turn inside out.

Fear is kind of a theme of my life, I suppose. My childhood milestones are marked by the things I was scared of–fireworks, balloons popping, thunderstorms. It didn’t get a whole lot better as I got older. I’m just not brave. If I could wish for one character trait, it would be bravery. There are so many things in my life that I wish I would have been brave enough to do. There are so many things that I wish I were brave enough to do right at this very moment (and some of them are the most stupidly simple things, like attaching something to an email and clicking send). There are so many things that I hope I will be brave enough to do in the future.

I’m scared, always. Just…really, really scared. I’ve been told that being scared about having a baby is a good thing, because it means you care about being a good parent. And I can safely say that’s true. But being scared won’t keep me from messing it all up…will it?

But who knows, maybe being a parent will be a crash course in bravery. On this side of it, looking up the hill (nay, the mountain) i have yet to climb, it certainly seems like if I can give birth and then manage to settle into parenthood without any major traumas, I can do anything.

• 

Ever since Mr. Mostafa went back to Saudi Arabia, before we got married, I’ve been hearing about Janadriyah, the  annual Saudi culture and heritage festival in Riyadh, and how it’s something I cannot miss.

Janadriyah this year has even been getting some international press due to the story that’s circulating about how three Emirati men were supposedly kicked out of the festival by the muttawa and deported for “being too handsome.” To me, that story sounds like one of those fabricated tales about Saudi Arabia that the international media loves to pick up and run without regard to how true it is (or isn’t). But still, it’s a pretty funny story…especially since early last week, Saleh sent me an email with a link to it, and in the subject line, he had written, “I guess now I can’t go to Janadriyah this year.”

I’m dying to know how many men who heard about that story made that joke to their wives.

There were a lot of muttawa there, for sure. But as far as I can tell, you’re pretty much free to ignore them. (You’re not free to ignore the Saudi National Guard members on duty, who wear military-style uniforms and actually do the job of maintaining security at the festival.) As we first walked in through the gates, I was so busy looking around at everything that I didn’t notice a muttawa standing next to the entrance, yelling something at me. After we got past him, Saleh nudged me and said, “Hey, did you hear what he was saying to you?”

“No, what?” I asked.

“He said, ‘Cover your face! Cover your face! Fitna!’” Saleh shook his head. “Makes me so mad. I love Janadriyah, but this is why I don’t come every year. I’m not good at ignoring.”

Honestly, though, I was a little sad I didn’t notice the muttawa yelling at me. The sweat brought out by the sweltering Riyadh afternoon sun, combined with the pregnant woman crying jag that my hormones had caused me to dissolve into in the car on the way to the festival, had ensured that I had not a stitch of makeup left on my face by the time I walked into Janadriyah. So the fact that the muttawa considered my face a potential fitna for men at the festival made me feel pretty good about myself.

It’s a good thing I didn’t hear you, Mr. Muttawa. I might have hugged you…and that would have been awkward.

Janadriyah is awesome. When it was described to me, I always imagined it as a kind of festival set up on fairgrounds that were mostly empty the rest of the year. But it’s not like that. It’s a permanent space, kind of like a theme park, even though the actual festival only goes on for around two weeks every year. As Saleh described it in jest, it’s kind of like “a Saudi Disney World”…in that there are areas built that represent each region of Saudi Arabia. Each section is built to showcase the architecture of that particular region.

This is the entrance to the Qassim section.

 Here is the Madinah area. This place was a madhouse, but had some great things to see!

Some of the yummy food we bought in the Madinah area included sobia, a kind of juice made from raisins and tamarind, manto, which are Saudi dumplings, some amazingly fluffy and delicious sambousek…and some great tamees (Arabic bread).

Spice vendor in the Madinah section.

Sandalmakers in Madinah.

I love this fun striped wall with all these pretty dishes, which is in the Jazan area. The writing over the doorway says, “Welcome to Jazan Heritage Village.”

A part of the architecture in the Aseer section.

In addition to the food, there are tons of interesting things to buy, traditional crafts from each Saudi region and all over the Gulf region. We brought home some pretty fun souvenirs. Not only did I get a wreath of flowers to wear on my head, but Saleh got an Arabic walking stick (he says it’s Emirati, and used for traditional dancing). For the past few days he’s been walking around the house with it like he is very old and important, and tapping people with it when he asks them to do something. I’m predicting the stick gets snapped in two within the next week or so. I love you, honey!

We also brought home a few dresses for the baby, as well as her first pair of Saudi sandals!

We bought them in the Jazan region.

These sandals are called madas in the western region of Saudi Arabia, but here in Riyadh and the rest of the middle region, they’re called zebeariyah.

Awwww, baby’s first zebeariyah.

Maybe they will fit her by the time we go to Janadriyah next year.

I had such a wonderful time seeing everything at Janadriyah! I didn’t take too many pictures this year because I was so fascinated by everything (and so busy trying every delicious food I could get my hands on!), but next year…it’s on. I hope that next year my mom can visit around Janadriyah time, so she can experience it. It’s not to be missed if you’re in Riyadh while it’s happening!

• 

I think I should give you fair warning, as I often do when I write posts that contain potentially icky subject matter, that this post is probably going to be the ickiest of all I’ve written so far. So if you would prefer not to read an oversharing tale about bathroom hygiene habits and toilet plumbing problems, I understand.

But it will be educational, I can tell you that for sure.

Before I launch into the story, there’s some background you need to know about Saudi bathroom habits, if you don’t know already. The first thing you should know is that some Saudi homes utilize what Mr. Mostafa and I refer to as “squatty potties.” They are commonly (and more formally) known as floor toilets, but hey, we make things cutesy when we can. Even when it comes to toilets.

Anyway, a squatty potty is basically a toilet set into the floor. There are ridges on the side of the toilet so the person using it can place their feet and get a good footing. Then you squat, do your business, clean up, and flush (yes, they flush like regular toilets). Many Saudi houses have these, but many have sit toilets (you know, the kind that we Americans are used to), as well.

The other thing that you should know about Saudi bathrooms is that Saudis use water to clean after they’ve done their business. In the States, toilet paper does this job. But if you visit the home of a Saudi family in the States, you will almost always find a watering can (like the kind you use to water plants) sitting next to the toilet. Don’t get confused. No plants are growing in the toilet tank. This is there for cleaning after using the toilet. (I feel like I should point out that if you are a male who observes a Saudi male in a public restroom heading to a stall with a bottle of water in hand, or even filling a water bottle from the sink and then heading to a stall, this is why. This is not water for drinking. It’s for cleaning after he finishes his bathroom business.)

In Saudi homes, every toilet, squatty or not, will have a hose and sprayer hooked to the wall next to it to serve this function of washing after toilet business. (In Arabic, this is called a shettaf. Which is kind of hilarious if you’re a native English speaker, because it sounds eerily appropriate to its function: word-you-can’t-say-on-television-that-is-synonymous-with-”number two,” off. Yeah.) The sprayer looks like a larger version of a sink sprayer you might see at a kitchen sink.

Europeans have the bidet, Saudis have the shettaf, Americans have…toilet paper.

Meanwhile, toilet paper is somewhat optional in many Saudi homes, because the shettaf is used to get everything clean. Then, after everything has been thoroughly washed with the shettaf, without getting too graphic, the left hand will sometimes be used to make sure of it, especially if there is no toilet paper. This is not to say that toilet paper is never used in Saudi homes in the same way that it is used in the States. Its use just always follows thorough cleaning with water, which is regarded as the really necessary cleaning step. So running out of toilet paper in a Saudi home is not the panic-inducing event that it is in the States. (On a related note, this is why Saudis–and many Muslims–have a custom of using only the right hand for eating. It is even regarded as a sunnah, because maintaining cleanliness has been a priority for Muslims since the earliest days of Islam, long before the days of all these newfangled restroom innovations. So it’s a longstanding Arabic/Islamic tradition that the right hand is for eating, and the left hand is for the bathroom, even though nowadays we have running water, toilet paper, and antibacterial soap. Scrub scrub scrub.)

If any Americans are grossed out by these Saudi toilet habits, you should know that the idea of using only toilet paper to clean oneself after using the restroom (and especially using the right hand to do so) is pretty disgusting to many Saudis. And I admit, now that I’ve spent some time in Saudi Arabia (and, while we were still in the States, some time as a member of a household that required a watering can next to the toilet), I’m pretty icked out by that idea, as well. You feel a whole lot cleaner when you use water. But I’m equally grossed out by the idea of not using toilet paper after cleaning with water. So now I need both to feel comfortable. I haven’t adopted the Saudi custom of carrying around a water bottle with me for use in public restrooms when I’m in the States; I’m not that hardcore. But I do always have wet wipes.

Oh, Saudi Arabia. Why did you have to come along and mess with (no pun intended) perhaps the one thing in my life that was never supposed to get complicated?

So, anyway. Thursday night started much like any other night. Saleh got home late from work, around eight o’clock. He picked me up and we went out to dinner at Benihana, which was nice. (By the way, Benihana, I’m sorry you had to get your shout-out on my blog on such an otherwise unappetizing post.) When we got home, we planned to spend an uneventful evening chilling out on the couch with The Cosby Show.

We were just about to settle into our evening plans when Saleh went to the restroom to quickly take care of some business. I heard a halfhearted flush, like the toilet was sick and just couldn’t muster a full flush. After about thirty seconds, the same thing. Finally, after another thirty seconds, Saleh called from behind the closed door, “Honey…have you been putting toilet paper in the toilet again?”

See, when I first moved to Saudi Arabia, Saleh warned me not to flush toilet paper down the toilet, that after I use it I should put it in the wastebasket next to the toilet. In the house, this is an issue unique to our particular bathroom. When the house was built (just a few years ago), the plumbers, for whatever reason (but probably assuming that our little apartment would be the maid’s room), decided that the future owners would most likely want to install a squatty potty in our bathroom, rather than a sit toilet. Thus, they hacked off the longer pipe necessary to facilitate a sit toilet, so that the plumbing in the bathroom would be squatty potty-ready.

However, after my husband started setting up the space to be our little third-floor apartment prior to my arrival, being the wise man that he is, he decided that it would be in his best interest not to move me to an apartment with only a squatty potty in the bathroom. I have six weeks of experience with squatty potties from my time in China, but still. Six weeks is not a lifetime, and my husband was right when he conjectured that I would probably feel more comfortable in an apartment with a toilet where I could sit down to answer nature’s call.

So in order to revert the bathroom plumbing its original state, my husband and the plumbers improvised a solution in which a wax ring was used to extend the main pipe in such a way as to facilitate a sit toilet.

(If any plumbers are reading this and shaking their heads at my explanation, you’ll have to consult my husband for exact details about this. I once put baking soda and vinegar down a clogged drainpipe with great success, but that is about the extent of my plumbing expertise.)

Anyway, Saleh explained to me that because of the way they had fixed the plumbing in order to install my fancy-schmancy toilet, toilet paper is likely to stick to the wax in the plumbing on the way down and thus clog the toilet. Hence the directive to not flush toilet paper.

But what can I say? It’s easy to forget that warning. I mean, ever since I’ve been potty trained, the routine is that toilet paper goes in the toilet. You do your business, you use the toilet paper, drop it in the toilet, and flush. It’s a reflex at this point, a habit with nearly three decades of precedence. I can’t help it, man. I can’t.

So, when the toilet couldn’t flush after Saleh’s very simple use of it, it was evident that his warning had come true.

I have to give the husband credit, because he dutifully tried to remedy the problem on his own instead of making me deal with my own toilet paper mess. First, he flattened a wire hanger (the kind each thobe is hung on when he picks them up from the cleaners) with the hook at the end, stuck it down the toilet, and tried to loosen the clog that way. Nothing happened.

Next, he went downstairs and returned with a standard toilet plunger. It didn’t help either.

After that, he went back downstairs and returned with a pipe snake. Still, the toilet would not flush.

Finally, it was time to bring out the big guns. He went downstairs and came back up with a giant plumbing apparatus that looked like one of those things that cartoon characters use to detonate dynamite…you know, a cylindrical thing with a handle at the top that goes up and down. Even that would not budge the Little Toilet Obstruction That Could.

So, finally, at ten o’clock on a Thursday night (which is the equivalent of a Saturday night in the States, since Thursday and Friday are the Saudi weekend), my husband went and got a plumber.

By this point, my husband was pretty pissed (again, no pun intended), although I could hear the plumber laughing. (I’m sure glad he found the whole thing hilarious.) I don’t blame Saleh, though. He really had warned me multiple times not to do it. I tried to listen, really, I did.

As I sat in the bedroom with the door closed, Saleh was supervising the plumber and texting me the play-by-play, with commentary. My iPhone jangled merrily at the arrival of each message, oblivious to the gravity of the situation. Bing bing. ”We’re taking the whole toilet off the base now.” Bing bing. “Didn’t I tell you not to flush toilet paper?” Bing bing. “He’s snaking out the clog now.” Bing bing. ”Why don’t you listen when I talk?” Bing bing. “He pulled out a giant ball of mushy toilet paper.” Bing bing. ”How much do you use every time you go, anyway?!?” Bing bing. Picture of the “giant ball of mushy toilet paper.” It was like the toilet gave birth.

I texted back an apology every time. I felt terrible.

But Mr. Mostafa was not ready to accept my apologies, and that made me mad. First I felt guilty, and then I was angry. Once the clog had been snaked out and cleaned up, the toilet had been put back on its base, and the plumber had gone home, Saleh started yelling at me. “How many times have I told you not to flush toilet paper? You never listen! All I asked you to do was throw the toilet paper in the wastebasket next to the toilet! But nooooo…is that really so hard?”

At first, I continued to apologize. But then I started yelling back, because hey, I said I was sorry, and finally, I released my inner spoiled brat and screamed at him, “I did not move halfway around the world to throw nasty toilet paper in a freaking basket by the toilet!” Then I flounced into the bedroom, slammed the door, and sent WhatsApp messages to my mom explaining everything that had happened.

When I sheepishly revealed to her how, in the heat of the moment, I had let all of my pent-up First World obnoxiousness fly, she texted me back a caps-lock, “LOL.” Then, much to my surprise, she added, “You sound like me when I first moved to Missouri.”

See, my mom and dad grew up in California, in the San Francisco area. My mom was a city girl, born and raised. But my dad spent every summer of his childhood in southern Missouri with his grandparents, on their farm on a dirt road, and he always wanted to live there. A few years into their marriage, in the early 1970s, my dad came home and told my mom to pack up because they were moving to Koshkonong, Missouri (population: 205). I think moving from San Francisco to Koshkonong in 1972 was probably a lot like moving from Missouri to Saudi Arabia in 2012…maybe even harder, because there was no Skype, WhatsApp, or MagicJack. It was a pretty major culture shock for my mom. But she’s been in Kosh ever since.

She explained, “We spent at lot of time at Aunt Lorene’s house back then, and they used to have to do that at Aunt Lorene’s house.  It’s okay; I thought it was gross, too.”

Ah, me and my momma. Boldly going where spoiled women have not gone before, one toilet paperless flush at a time.

Saleh and I went to bed without speaking to one another. Then, the next morning, he rolled over and said quietly to my back, “Habibeti…are you still mad at me?”

“Yes,” I said rudely. But I rolled over and gave him a hug. After all, the guy had paid a plumber for the privilege of photographing a giant glop of my used toilet paper not twelve hours earlier, and yet he wasn’t mad at me anymore. And he didn’t want me to be mad at him, either.

I love him more than our toilet loves toilet paper. That may not sound very romantic, but the picture still on my phone can testify that it’s pretty freaking significant.

• 

Feminism is the radical notion that women are people.–Cheris Kramarae

Lately a big story in the international news has been that of Tunisian Femen protester Amina Tyler, who posted topless photos of herself on Femen Tunisia’s Facebook page. In response to the horrible backlash that Amina received from some of her countrymen, Femen protesters around the world organized what they called “International Topless Jihad Day.”

This sort of thing is nothing new. A few years ago, Egyptian blogger Aliaa Elmahdy posted nude photos of herself on her blog in the same spirit as Amina’s photos. The reaction by the super-conservative Egyptian establishment was much the same as the one displayed by their Tunisian counterparts. When I first read about Aliaa, I admit, I rolled my eyes. “Doesn’t she get what she’s doing?” I thought. “Doesn’t she get that this is part of the reason why I put on my hijab–because I don’t want to be objectified? Doesn’t she get that this stunt is doing nothing but objectifying herself?”

But then, I had a fight with my husband.

I will be the first to tell you that my husband is awesome. Every day, even on the days I want to pinch his head off, I am grateful that I met, fell in love with, and married him. I hope that we have a very long and happy marriage, and at this point I see no reason why we won’t, because above all things, we talk to each other, and we work hard to understand each other.

That being said, there remains the inescapable fact that I am American, and he is Saudi…which means we sometimes have to work harder to understand each other than most.

My husband is, relatively speaking, what most people would consider an “open-minded” Saudi man. He doesn’t fit the stereotype in a lot of ways. Whenever I tell people I am married to a Saudi, often I get this deer-in-the-headlights look, like, “Seriously? How are you still alive?” The stereotype of the Saudi man (or any Middle Eastern man, for that matter) is that they are chokingly controlling wife-beaters who imprison their wives in their homes, or, when they momentarily let their wives out of their cages, in their burqas. And I’m sure that there are some who fit that stereotype. (I’m sure there are also some American men who fit that stereotype, sans the burqa.) My husband, obviously, and thank God, does not. However, at the end of the day, he is Saudi, and there are some things about me that he has had to learn to live with, because women in his culture do not do these things.

One thing that I do that used to bother him is post pictures of myself online that show my face. If you are Facebook friends with a Saudi woman (or a conservative Muslim woman—but to be clear, these two things are not the same thing), the chances are high that you will never see a picture with her face posted anywhere. It’s rarely done. Why? Because, as my husband tried to simplistically explain it, “We’re from the desert. We have hot blood. We’re Arabic. We get jealous.”

So women are expected to keep their faces under wraps so their men don’t get jealous? I demanded further explanation, as that was just not sufficient for me, and I got it a few months before we were married, when my husband noticed that a few Saudi guys were following me on Twitter. “I don’t like it,” he said. “They’re following you just because they want female friends. I know how Saudi boys are. They are kids. I don’t like that they can see your face. Who knows what they will say about you? Maybe they will steal your picture. They will talk about you, and call you a whore. I know how Saudi boys are.”

Now, I understand (and appreciate) that my husband was trying to protect me. He was trying to save me from the wrath of the social protocol of his culture, and trying to protect himself from embarrassment, as well, just as I do the same with him when he is in the States (“You have to come with me to meet my friends–otherwise they will think you’re a jerk”), even when conforming to those rules puts one of us in something of an uncomfortable position. But man…being told that I should not show my face online just rubbed me the wrong way. And I admit, I exploded, as I am prone to do.

“This is so stupid! I will not raise my children this way, to think that a woman who shows her face is a whore and a woman who hides is a good girl! It’s stupid, and if I take down my pictures, I am giving in, and I am perpetuating these horrible ideas.” And then, I found myself saying, “My face is my face, my body is my body—and you cannot tell me what is acceptable for me to show.”

And that’s when it clicked. Suddenly, it was clear to me what made Amina and Aliaa take their clothes off. That choice is not one I would make for myself, but I now I understand the reasoning behind it. I worry for both of them–they are both so young, both only 19 when they posted their photos, and I fear they will regret their decisions as they get older. Even now, going back and reading blog entries from when I was 19 (yes, I was blogging way back in 2002), I have to smile at the naivete of some of the things I wrote and I find myself grateful that the only people who ever read those posts were my close friends…and they aren’t even about anything really significant, and there are certainly no pictures on that blog that I wouldn’t be fine with the whole world seeing. And who knows, maybe ten years from now, I will look back at this blog and read what I have written and feel the same way. But at least I have a decade of adult perspective behind me in order to inform the decisions I make about what I now post (and what I now do, for that matter). I don’t think that either Amina or Aliaa truly understand the potential long-term consequences of their exhibition. They are teenagers (well, Aliaa technically isn’t anymore, but she was when she posted her photos). Ten years ago, they were nine and ten years old; they don’t have a decade of independence to look back on and shake their heads at some of the silliest things they said or did with their newfound adulthood…things that for most people are, thank God, confined to the memories of the people who were physically present when they said or did those things, rather than committed to the internet for eternity. They don’t have the perspective to understand the potential regret inherent in their actions, as they might have if they had been, say, in their thirties when they decided to shed their clothes in feminist protest. Nor do I think they truly understand the irony of claiming attention for their ideas by displaying their bodies.

I don’t know much about Amina Tyler, but I’ve been following Aliaa Elmahdy since her story first made international headlines. I’ve read her interviews over the years, and even now, I just want to hug her and say, “Okay, sweetie, just pause…take a step back, and reexamine if this is really accomplishing anything. Give it a decade or two. Come back to this when you are in your thirties, when you’ve had a couple kids and your body is in such a state that misogynistic voyeurs in the West–or anywhere else–are going to tell you to cover that shit back up instead of applauding you and clamoring for more, when the display of your body is no longer verging on child porn.” (Because let’s be real–Aliaa was 19 when she posted her nude photo, as was Amina. If these were American girls, we would have been wringing our hands at the rashness of their decisions, about whether or not they are old enough to fully understand the long-term consequences of their actions. But when the girls come from the Middle East, posting nude photos of themselves means they are completely “women” and “revolutionaries” who have obviously thought all this through and found getting naked online to be the only way to go, and yay for them. Does this not strike anyone else as wrong? Like, if it’s Western girls flashing their boobs, to the Western media they’re whores who want attention, which we will gladly provide while tsk-tsking about how we’re grateful those aren’t our daughters. If they’re Middle Eastern girls, it’s, “Heck yeah, good for you! Way to shake off oppression!” So Middle Eastern women/girls should be free for international media consumption, but not Western girls? Isn’t that the flipped version of the same horrible idea that those angry Middle Eastern Muslim men are so often accused of perpetuating, that Western women are free for consumption but Middle Eastern women must be covered from all prying eyes lest they be shamed?) I want to tell Aliaa,”If you still find after those years that in your mind, this is still the best and most effective means to achieve your ideological goal, then by all means, have at it. But do you really know what you want yet? Go back to school. Study art or whatever else you love. Develop your philosophies and your goals. Get to know thyself.”

More than anything, Aliaa strikes me as a little girl whose complexity of ideas hasn’t caught up to the complexity of her actions. In an interview with CNN, she said she dropped out of the American University of Cairo months before she posted her nude photo because her parents “attempted to control my life by threatening to refuse to pay the fees.” She said her parents want to “support me and get closer,” but she isn’t having any of that because “they accuse Kareem”–her boyfriend–”of manipulating me.” She said she “practices safe sex” but doesn’t “take pills because I am against abortion” (I wonder if Femen knows that, by the way, or if she knows that abortion rights are a part of Femen’s platform). And in a recent Twitter exchange with a follower who questioned her decision to post a nude photo sent to her by another girl (who, apparently, was underage), the retort she snapped back at him was, “The fact is that you are jealous of us.”

I mean, this is not intellectual feminism. This is pretty standard spoiled teenage rebellion stuff. But I guess when viewed through a colonialist lens, it becomes revolutionary.

But still, I get it. I do not mean to imply that Amina and Aliaa are not actually feminists. I think they are brave young women, if youthfully rash. And I suppose I see Aliaa as something of a kindred spirit, because in that same CNN interview, when she was asked who Aliaa Elmahdy is “inside the body portrayed in the nude photo,” she said, “I like being different. I love life, art, photography and expressing my thoughts through writing more than anything.” This sounds like something I would have said at age 19, and it sounds like something I would still say today. But you know what they say…the more things change, the more they stay the same. I know that I’m a very different person than I was at age 19, yet I know that at the same time, I essentially hold the same ideals as the 19-year-old me. And I know that if I had made some of Aliaa’s same choices when I was 19, I would regret them today.

But then again, I’m sure there are many people who would ask me the same question that I would like to ask Aliaa: “Are you sure you’ve thought all this through?” And they would probably give me the same advice: “Had I made some of your same choices, I would regret them today.” Or even, “I made some of your same choices, and now I regret them.”

I was a Muslim for about six months before I started wearing hijab regularly–i.e., a scarf on my head.

Me on my first day as a public hijabi.

On my first day at work wearing the hijab, a well-meaning coworker pulled me aside and said, “You know, you don’t have to wear that for him.”

At first I thought she meant God, but then I realized she meant my husband (then fiancé). It was the first time I had faced what I would soon realize is a common assumption in the West—that if a woman covers, it must be because some domineering male relative (her husband, her father, etc.) is forcing her to. I assured her that no one was making me wear the headscarf, that it was a choice I had made totally on my own. In fact, my husband had serious reservations about me wearing hijab in the States, especially since I lived alone at the time. He actually tried to discourage me, for my own safety.

That’s right, I defied my Saudi husband in order to wear hijab in the States.

For the first couple years, I wore it everywhere in Manhattan, Kansas, where I lived. But when I went home to southern Missouri, I took it off. No one there knew me as a Muslim, I was worried about my brother’s reaction if I showed up with a scarf on my head, and my parents were concerned that I would end up a hate crime story on the evening news. Now that I’ve spent some time living in Saudi Arabia, though, I’ve reached a point where I don’t give a flip what anyone thinks. Especially since I’ve learned that anyone who would throw stones at me for wearing a scarf on my head likely has managed to hide some pretty ugly skeletons in a closet in his lovely glass house. When I go home, I will probably wear a scarf. I will probably style it in a way that looks less obviously Muslim and more “Carrie in Sex & the City 2” (even though I despise that movie), but still, enough is enough.

I mean, seriously. It’s just a scarf. Yes, it represents a lot more than that–to me, it represents that I’m a Muslim, I’m proud of my faith, and I don’t feel the need to show my body to anyone who cares to look in order to feel like I am a person of worth. My decision to wear my hijab was not based solely on my faith, although obviously that was the strongest reason. But the decision was also influenced by my feminism, by my desire to fight the notion that Western society has that a woman who covers her hair is being oppressed when those same Western women, who are raped at a rate of 78 per hour in America and beaten at a rate of one every 15 seconds in America (and most experts believe both of those estimates are on the low side), starve themselves and spend hours every day on an elliptical and pay doctors to suck out their butt fat and inject it into their lips and spend their time trolling Sephora to spend their paychecks–which, on average, are 30% smaller than those of their male counterparts who do the same job–on serums that promise to make them look younger and prettier and more appealing to men and are made to feel worthless if their bodies aren’t skeletal enough to allow for jutting hipbones ideal for hooking the strings of their practically nonexistent bikinis on.

Yeah, American non-Muslim ladies, you’re free as freakin’ birds. What really oppresses women is a scarf.

Putting on my headscarf didn’t free me from all of that, nor would I expect it to. I’m still concerned about my weight. I still can’t leave the house without at least a little makeup on my face. I certainly don’t want to imply that any Muslim woman who covers doesn’t care about how she looks, because that’s not even close to being true. But it was a step toward disentangling myself from the expectations that my culture had of me, of who my culture dictated that I should be.

In other words, part of what made me put on my hijab is the exact same catalyst that made Aliaa and Amina take their clothes off. No, I personally did not directly receive threats of bodily harm for coming out publicly as a Muslim, the way Amina and Aliaa did. But the sense of rejection, the sense of now being on the fringes of my own home culture, was palpable. I spent 26 years with my head uncovered. I know how Americans treat non-hijabis. And now, I know how Americans treat hijabis.

1. I am often spoken to very slowly and loudly by cashiers, waiters and waitresses, and other people who don’t know me, as if I must be from some foreign land. Most of the time I don’t mind this, because at least I know the person doing it is kind enough to want to make sure that I understand what he or she is saying. But it is still quite alienating.

2. Often people ask where I am from. When I reply, “Missouri,” they look perplexed for a few seconds before clarifying, “Yeah, but where are you from?” I have to insist, “Missouri.” Sometimes there is a follow-up inquiry of, “Okay, but where are your parents from?” Then, I explain that both my parents grew up in California but my dad’s family is originally from Missouri. Or sometimes the follow-up question is, “Okay, but what are you?” And then I explain that my mom is Chicana and that by blood my dad is…well, total Ozarks hillbilly, and his earliest documented ancestors came to the States from Scotland in the early 1800s. In other words, I’m 100% Heinz 57 American. It’s quite perplexing to some people. Why would any American girl choose to put that thing on her head?

3. The staring. Oh, the staring! When I first started wearing hijab, I was stunned by how brazenly my fellow Americans stare. I don’t know what they expected me to do that warranted such staring in fear that they would somehow miss it or be caught off guard, but my goodness. After awhile, I stopped noticing the staring as much, but I’ve never forgotten how it felt in those first few months, and even though I’ve grown past noticing, I’m sometimes reminded that it is still happening, because I’ll be out with a friend or colleague and they will ask me, “Doesn’t it bother you the way people stare at you like that?” I have to answer truthfully that I don’t even notice anymore. This was really good preparation for moving to Saudi Arabia; I usually don’t notice stares here, either (which happen sometimes because I don’t cover my face). But I always have to chuckle at American (or other Western) women who come here to Saudi Arabia, don’t even cover their hair, and then complain about the staring, as though such uncivilized behavior would never be on display in their home countries.

Some of the most intense staring I’ve ever encountered happens in the weirdest places…like the shampoo aisle at Walmart. I didn’t think much of this staring until I came across a meme online, which I now cannot find but would post if I could: it showed a Muslim woman wearing a headscarf, shopping in the hair care aisle, and it had a caption that mocked her, like what does she need shampoo for? Suddenly, that staring made sense, but not really—I mean, why in the world would people assume hijabis don’t wash their hair? I don’t see your butt crack (if I’m lucky), but I certainly hope you try to keep it clean. I often wonder what people think we’re hiding under the scarf. Sometimes it feels like they think the scarf is actually covering up my brain.

Remember Krang, the evil disembodied brain from Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles? There is no Krang under my scarf. It’s just hair. Seriously.

4. Walking through an airport in a headscarf is a unique experience of palpable paranoia on the part of fellow passengers. In my experience, everyone who works at the airport has mostly been quite friendly…or at least, not any less friendly than they are with any other passenger. But the other passengers…well, I freak them out. They stare, they edge away. They see me and they glance down at their boarding passes, I guess checking their seat numbers and hoping I’m not on the same flight. Once a guy in a cowboy hat literally scowled at me from the time I entered the gate area until after I passed him. I made eye contact with him and smiled at him (a tactic I frequently use to tell starers that I happen to make eye contact with that yes, I know they are staring at me, but I’m nice, really), and he continued to openly scowl at me. Like he wanted to push me out of the airplane in midair. It was unsettling.

Sometimes others’ obvious sense of suspicion, of me not belonging, of me being a threat, is really not a big deal to me, but at other times, it stings. For example, once I was walking into Walmart and there were ladies standing outside the doors, handing out red poppies for the Veterans of Foreign Wars. As each shopper approached, the lady next to the entrance doors would smile and proffer a poppy to each person who walked by her. I watched her do this for the three or so people in front of me.

As I approached her, the smile was wiped off her face. Her arm went limp and her poppy-offering hand hung by her side as she stared at me blankly. I stared right back, with a smile, of course, hoping to be offered a poppy. I mean, my dad was a paratrooper in the U.S. Army. My maternal grandfather was a decorated U.S. Army soldier during World War II. I come from a U.S. military family. There’s no reason why I wouldn’t support the Veterans of Foreign Wars. I would have happily accepted the poppy and then stopped at the table to make a donation.

But the lady wasn’t having any of it. As I walked past her, out of the corner of my eye I saw her face light up into a smile again as her hand rose to offer a poppy to the person walking behind me.

These examples may seem trivial compared to what Amina and Aliaa have endured for their choices. No, as I mentioned, I have not faced such a dire situation in which I might be called to seek political asylum in another country, as Aliaa Elmahdy did (she now lives in Sweden). But the feeling of suspicion, of being shunned, of being an Other in one’s own culture, often hangs in the air like a humidity haze when I go out in public with a scarf on my head in the States.

And in many ways, that is precisely why wearing the hijab is liberating, if difficult. For me, because of the culture that I come from, it is a feminist act. (This is not to say that wearing the hijab in a culture that is opposed to it is automatically a feminist act, nor is it to say that wearing the hijab in a culture that accepts/expects/demands it is never a feminist act.) Like Amina’s and Aliaa’s photos of themselves, my hijab, for me, aside from its primary purpose as a declaration of my faith, also serves as my middle finger to my society’s expectations of what I should be. I do not wear my hijab because I think it makes me a better, more pious Muslimah than one who does not. I wear my hijab because I am a Muslim feminist woman who embraces my faith and my freedom, who understands that my body is my own and won’t let anyone tell me what I should or should not show. Just like Amina and Aliaa.

They, however, grew up in a culture where what I perceive as my expressions of faith and freedom are societal expectations that can be uncomfortable—or dangerous—to defy. I grew up in a culture where the exposure of one’s body parts is encouraged and rewarded as an expression of beauty and freedom (although embracing those ideals for the gratification of others won’t save you from slut-shaming after the fact)…and as it turns out, defying those societal expectations can be quite uncomfortable, as well. I’ve never faced bodily harm for doing so, but my parents and my husband have expressed worry that I might at some point.

Thus, I don’t understand how taking one’s clothes off in a culture that encourages women to take their clothes off shows solidarity in any way with Amina or Aliaa. I’m sure heterosexual males in Paris got a very stimulating view as they walked to work on the morning of Femen’s “International Topless Jihad Day,” but I don’t see how their “topless jihad” did anything to further the cause of women taking ownership of their own bodies.

Feminist rebellion is culturally relative. If Femen protesters in Paris really wanted to show solidarity with Amina Tyler and Aliaa Elmahdy, what they would have done is marched the streets fully covered in abayas and niqabs, in violation of France’s niqab ban. Sure, on the surface it may seem like that would be the total opposite of what Amina and Aliaa did. And I don’t know either of them personally, obviously, so maybe they would agree with that, especially since both of them have aligned themselves with Femen.  But to me, a horde of French non-Muslim women wearing niqab in the street would do a whole lot more to show support for women and their rights over their own bodies. Marching around topless in a culture that is delighted and titillated by (no pun—okay, pun totally intended), if not indifferent to, topless women is not brave, and it is not transgressive. Walking around with your face covered in a culture that is prepared to arrest you for doing so—that would have been brave and transgressive, and it would have matched the spirit of Amina and Aliaa’s defiance.

Rather than showing support for women, what Femen protesters displayed (aside from their breasts) was support of the same old orientalist tropes, the same culturally-based ideals that turned second-wave feminism, despite its critical importance in history and the great strides it made for many Western women, especially American women, into a relic of a bygone intellectual era. In truth, the Femen protesters discarded their clothes in support of nothing more than the well-worn stereotype that Muslim women are an Other who need the West to swoop in and save them, altogether helpless creatures with no agency of their own, who are chained to and restrained by their coverings, their ideals, and their men.

That’s not feminism. It’s colonialism. It’s imperialism. It’s orientalism. It’s xenophobia. It’s Islamophobia. It’s racism. But it’s not feminism.

I mean, just look at this picture (from Jezebel).

So much is wrong with this picture. This came from one of the International Topless Jihad Day protests. I have no problem with the boobs—they’re not mine, and thus I have no right to tell this woman what to do with them. And let’s set aside the fact that with the mat she is kneeling on and the position of her hands, she is mocking how Muslims, including women, pray. Not everyone is Muslim, so not everyone will hold those things sacred as I do, and that’s okay. I can shake that off and go about my day.

No, what I have a problem with is the huge fake beard, the penciled-in unibrow, the towel on the head. Could this possibly be any more racist?

It is not okay to be racist in the name of feminism…or anything else. In fact, actions like this just give feminism an even worse name, especially in cultures where it’s already a dirty word. Actions like this exclude women from feminism, especially Muslim women…women who, in all likelihood, would mostly otherwise be on board with the whole “women are people, not property, and have the right to make their own choices” thing. You know, the essence of what feminism is all about. If this is what it takes to be a feminist…well, no wonder so many women around the world either try to steer clear of anything that whiffs of feminism, or espouse their adherence to feminist ideals while prefacing their statements with, “I’m not a feminist or anything, but…”

But despite the movement’s name, Femen is not what feminism is. I know because I’m a Muslim, I’m a hijabi, I’m American…and I’m a feminist. Femen does not include me, but feminism does. And it includes Aliaa and Amina, even with their clothes on.

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