We spent about a month traveling in the US, and I had been really looking forward to our return, to getting settled into our new apartment, and most of all, getting settled into a new routine when I officially started work on 1 August.
1 August came, and I went to the office. The next day was the weekend. 3 August came, and I went to the office. The next day was also the weekend (I know; it doesn't make a lot of sense). 5 August and 6 August came, and I went to the office. What happened next? Eid al-Fitr!! A hefty five-day weekend to celebrate the end of Ramadan.
Oh yes, part of this new routine was taking Salim to daycare. He started with just a couple of hours a day and then worked up to "full" days, except that hours were shortened during Ramadan. And daycare, of course, was closed for the long weekend.
So, 12 August came. I went to the office. Salim went to daycare. I picked him up approximately 7 hours later (even a real full day at daycare is not the same as the workday that I'm used to). We did the same thing the next day. And the next. And I fully expect to do the same thing tomorrow.
But on Saturday I will start a week's worth of staff workshops, which means that I will have only an hour or two of normal workday time to actually do my job. Things are moving more slowly than I anticipated.
Wednesday, August 14, 2013
Tuesday, April 16, 2013
Stuff to Learn #1
Arabic.
Really? Ambitious much? You couldn't have started this off with something a tiny bit simpler?
The truth is, I don't really have much ambition to learn Arabic, and I've shown fairly little discipline for studying it in the past. I'd SO much rather have the language gods bestow Arabic proficiency on me. Still waiting for that.
In the meantime, I really, really have to do something about this. I'll be starting a new job here this summer-ish/fall, and while it's an English-language workplace (technically, though certainly not entirely), there's no question that every bit of Arabic I can use with colleagues will make a difference - in comprehension, in rapport, etc. That's not to mention the off-site work-related stuff that will involve interaction with people who may or may not speak English. So, it must be done.
I don't have a really good plan for this yet. Since E has been at this for several years, we have a host of Arabic teaching materials in our possession, including a couple of very accessible textbooks for spoken Arabic. At the moment, Salim is not very helpful in facilitating focused book-study time, but I'd like to try to work something out on that front. Otherwise, we have some lessons in iTunes that I can play pretty much anytime; I'm hoping to absorb some of that subliminally even when it doesn't have my full attention. Sigh. This doesn't sound very promising at the moment, does it?
Really? Ambitious much? You couldn't have started this off with something a tiny bit simpler?
The truth is, I don't really have much ambition to learn Arabic, and I've shown fairly little discipline for studying it in the past. I'd SO much rather have the language gods bestow Arabic proficiency on me. Still waiting for that.
In the meantime, I really, really have to do something about this. I'll be starting a new job here this summer-ish/fall, and while it's an English-language workplace (technically, though certainly not entirely), there's no question that every bit of Arabic I can use with colleagues will make a difference - in comprehension, in rapport, etc. That's not to mention the off-site work-related stuff that will involve interaction with people who may or may not speak English. So, it must be done.
I don't have a really good plan for this yet. Since E has been at this for several years, we have a host of Arabic teaching materials in our possession, including a couple of very accessible textbooks for spoken Arabic. At the moment, Salim is not very helpful in facilitating focused book-study time, but I'd like to try to work something out on that front. Otherwise, we have some lessons in iTunes that I can play pretty much anytime; I'm hoping to absorb some of that subliminally even when it doesn't have my full attention. Sigh. This doesn't sound very promising at the moment, does it?
Thursday, April 4, 2013
Best Accessory Ever!
And by that I mean my child. Probably not a healthy characterization.
But being here with a baby is a vastly different experience from being here without one. In a good way. For one thing, this is a super baby-friendly society. As in, virtually everyone is happy to see me out and about with my baby. Well, really they're mostly happy to see my baby. Complete strangers - adults, teenagers, and kids - will stop in the street to say hi to him, touch his cheek, or kiss him. Once a small boy, maybe six, stopped what he was doing to study Salim for a minute and then came over to pat his head. He patted his head!
Because everyone is so kind to babies (and to people with babies) I worry a lot less about baby behavior than I would in the U.S. If we're in the supermarket or on a bus and Salim starts getting chatty, even noisily so, it's not a big deal. That takes a lot of pressure off of going out!
I also worry less (both for better and worse, I suppose) about how I present myself. No one harasses a woman with a baby, so I'm much more relaxed when I go out. Maybe most of all, I feel a fair amount of license to do whatever I need to do. For example, once we were out running errands with E, and I had Salim in the carrier. E had an appointment to get his hair cut, and Salim fell asleep in the carrier as we were arriving at the (men's) salon. I really wanted Salim to take a good nap and didn't want to risk waking him up prematurely by wandering around outside in the traffic. So I sat down in a big armchair in the salon and watched E get his hair cut. That doesn't sound like much, but I don't think I'm exaggerating when I say that I may have been the first woman ever to walk into that salon, much less to hang out there for half an hour. Salons here are generally men-only or women-only, but baby trumps all!
But being here with a baby is a vastly different experience from being here without one. In a good way. For one thing, this is a super baby-friendly society. As in, virtually everyone is happy to see me out and about with my baby. Well, really they're mostly happy to see my baby. Complete strangers - adults, teenagers, and kids - will stop in the street to say hi to him, touch his cheek, or kiss him. Once a small boy, maybe six, stopped what he was doing to study Salim for a minute and then came over to pat his head. He patted his head!
Because everyone is so kind to babies (and to people with babies) I worry a lot less about baby behavior than I would in the U.S. If we're in the supermarket or on a bus and Salim starts getting chatty, even noisily so, it's not a big deal. That takes a lot of pressure off of going out!
I also worry less (both for better and worse, I suppose) about how I present myself. No one harasses a woman with a baby, so I'm much more relaxed when I go out. Maybe most of all, I feel a fair amount of license to do whatever I need to do. For example, once we were out running errands with E, and I had Salim in the carrier. E had an appointment to get his hair cut, and Salim fell asleep in the carrier as we were arriving at the (men's) salon. I really wanted Salim to take a good nap and didn't want to risk waking him up prematurely by wandering around outside in the traffic. So I sat down in a big armchair in the salon and watched E get his hair cut. That doesn't sound like much, but I don't think I'm exaggerating when I say that I may have been the first woman ever to walk into that salon, much less to hang out there for half an hour. Salons here are generally men-only or women-only, but baby trumps all!
Sunday, March 24, 2013
On Breastfeeding
I know, I know. This has been done countless times already in other places. But I'm going to anyway.
This has to be considered a breastfeeding success story. Salim is nine and a half months old and has had no milk forms other than breastmilk. Pause while the breastfeeding purists (I opted against using a more loaded term there) chalk that one up. Oh wait, the purists may not give me credit until we make it to at least one year. Anyway, moving on. Breastfeeding, on the whole, has gone really well for us, both at home and with pumping after I went back to my office job part-time when Salim was six weeks old and full-time when he was ten weeks.
BUT:
I had some really important things working in my favor. There are the obvious, but absolutely critical things, like a supportive husband, a really good breastpump, and a baby who didn't mind taking breastmilk from a bottle. And the also obvious, but more detailed things, like a very supportive boss at work, having my own office with a door that locked, and having coworkers who never complained (either out of consideration or oblivion; who cares which?) about the three times a day (once during lunch break) that my door was closed and I wasn't answering my phone. Then there are fine points like being salaried so that I never had to choose between pumping and income. Having enough supply. No thrush or mastitis. A lot going for me.
AND:
It still wasn't what I would call easy. In retrospect, getting through the initial learning curve, with cracked, sore nipples, etc., was one of the easier, or at least more concrete, challenges. The occasional blocked duct can be pretty painful. Also, sometimes I had to shift my pumping schedule to accommodate work meetings or had to skip lunch gatherings altogether in favor of pumping. A little hit to my social life but not too big a deal.
Then came the first time that I got sick, in late October. It was just a cold, but my milk supply dropped pretty dramatically. Turns out it's hard to work full-time and breastfeed when your rest is based on a baby sleep schedule, and a little virus was enough to tip the balance. I pumped about 30% less than usual at work that day, meaning that, since I hadn't been planning ahead very well with freezing milk, I knew there wouldn't be enough pumped milk to get Salim through the next day (and he wasn't eating any solids yet). So, choice: grab some formula for the next day (which he had never tried and we'd been putting off because of dairy concerns) or take a sick day and stay home to feed him and help myself recover. I took the sick day. But in the back of my mind was this thought: Maybe my supply won't come back (oh no!), and he'll have to go to formula so I won't be a slave to this pump anymore (oh yes!). Turned out my supply returned with no problem, but I was sick twice more in the following couple of months - another cold and the flu (which is one more flu than I normally get in the winter and at least one more cold than usual too).
Then there's the dairy thing. E's family tends towards some food sensitivities/allergies, so we knew we wanted to be careful with the foods that we exposed Salim to once he started solids. But from very early on (even the first month), we noticed that he seemed to react to breastmilk whenever I had dairy products. It was nothing terrible, primarily reflux, but it made enough of a difference that we thought it best for me to avoid cheese, milk, ice cream, even yogurt. Now. This too is not a terrible thing. Cutting dairy out of my diet is probably healthy. But I love cheese. My go-to relax/celebration meal is a glass of wine with pizza or really cheesy pasta. And have you noticed how many work lunches involve pizza or other cheesy stuff? I've mentioned on my other blog that my (former) workplace has a history of awesome potlucks, and when you eat neither meat nor cheese (this was in the South), there's often not much left to choose from. My coworkers threw me a fantastic going-away potluck (a few days after I had the flu), at which I wholeheartedly enjoyed many cheesy foods (they were kind enough to go light on the meat dishes, but I can certainly forgive them for not giving up the cheese). Salim was clearly uncomfortable for the next two days. I did have one truly delicious cheese-free pizza at Oliva in Amman earlier this year, but otherwise I'm just dreaming of all the food that I'll have access to once I stop breastfeeding. I would count the days if I had any idea how many are left. Yes, this sounds like a very, very First World problem, but here's the real point: trying to keep Salim off dairy creates a ton of pressure to keep breastfeeding until...what? I don't even know. Some kids outgrow dairy allergies pretty early in life, and I think he'll be able to handle it at some point, but given the family's digestive history, I'm not sure dairy will ever be a great idea for him. In the U.S. there are non-dairy formulas (although I don't think soy works really well for him either), but we don't have a lot of options here. So am I supposed to do this indefinitely? What happens if/when I start a new job here? Do kids truly have to have some form of milk in their diets, or can the nutritional benefits be made up in other ways? And at what point would it be safe for him to start relying on non-milk foods for that nutrition? Not a clue.
This has to be considered a breastfeeding success story. Salim is nine and a half months old and has had no milk forms other than breastmilk. Pause while the breastfeeding purists (I opted against using a more loaded term there) chalk that one up. Oh wait, the purists may not give me credit until we make it to at least one year. Anyway, moving on. Breastfeeding, on the whole, has gone really well for us, both at home and with pumping after I went back to my office job part-time when Salim was six weeks old and full-time when he was ten weeks.
BUT:
I had some really important things working in my favor. There are the obvious, but absolutely critical things, like a supportive husband, a really good breastpump, and a baby who didn't mind taking breastmilk from a bottle. And the also obvious, but more detailed things, like a very supportive boss at work, having my own office with a door that locked, and having coworkers who never complained (either out of consideration or oblivion; who cares which?) about the three times a day (once during lunch break) that my door was closed and I wasn't answering my phone. Then there are fine points like being salaried so that I never had to choose between pumping and income. Having enough supply. No thrush or mastitis. A lot going for me.
AND:
It still wasn't what I would call easy. In retrospect, getting through the initial learning curve, with cracked, sore nipples, etc., was one of the easier, or at least more concrete, challenges. The occasional blocked duct can be pretty painful. Also, sometimes I had to shift my pumping schedule to accommodate work meetings or had to skip lunch gatherings altogether in favor of pumping. A little hit to my social life but not too big a deal.
Then came the first time that I got sick, in late October. It was just a cold, but my milk supply dropped pretty dramatically. Turns out it's hard to work full-time and breastfeed when your rest is based on a baby sleep schedule, and a little virus was enough to tip the balance. I pumped about 30% less than usual at work that day, meaning that, since I hadn't been planning ahead very well with freezing milk, I knew there wouldn't be enough pumped milk to get Salim through the next day (and he wasn't eating any solids yet). So, choice: grab some formula for the next day (which he had never tried and we'd been putting off because of dairy concerns) or take a sick day and stay home to feed him and help myself recover. I took the sick day. But in the back of my mind was this thought: Maybe my supply won't come back (oh no!), and he'll have to go to formula so I won't be a slave to this pump anymore (oh yes!). Turned out my supply returned with no problem, but I was sick twice more in the following couple of months - another cold and the flu (which is one more flu than I normally get in the winter and at least one more cold than usual too).
Then there's the dairy thing. E's family tends towards some food sensitivities/allergies, so we knew we wanted to be careful with the foods that we exposed Salim to once he started solids. But from very early on (even the first month), we noticed that he seemed to react to breastmilk whenever I had dairy products. It was nothing terrible, primarily reflux, but it made enough of a difference that we thought it best for me to avoid cheese, milk, ice cream, even yogurt. Now. This too is not a terrible thing. Cutting dairy out of my diet is probably healthy. But I love cheese. My go-to relax/celebration meal is a glass of wine with pizza or really cheesy pasta. And have you noticed how many work lunches involve pizza or other cheesy stuff? I've mentioned on my other blog that my (former) workplace has a history of awesome potlucks, and when you eat neither meat nor cheese (this was in the South), there's often not much left to choose from. My coworkers threw me a fantastic going-away potluck (a few days after I had the flu), at which I wholeheartedly enjoyed many cheesy foods (they were kind enough to go light on the meat dishes, but I can certainly forgive them for not giving up the cheese). Salim was clearly uncomfortable for the next two days. I did have one truly delicious cheese-free pizza at Oliva in Amman earlier this year, but otherwise I'm just dreaming of all the food that I'll have access to once I stop breastfeeding. I would count the days if I had any idea how many are left. Yes, this sounds like a very, very First World problem, but here's the real point: trying to keep Salim off dairy creates a ton of pressure to keep breastfeeding until...what? I don't even know. Some kids outgrow dairy allergies pretty early in life, and I think he'll be able to handle it at some point, but given the family's digestive history, I'm not sure dairy will ever be a great idea for him. In the U.S. there are non-dairy formulas (although I don't think soy works really well for him either), but we don't have a lot of options here. So am I supposed to do this indefinitely? What happens if/when I start a new job here? Do kids truly have to have some form of milk in their diets, or can the nutritional benefits be made up in other ways? And at what point would it be safe for him to start relying on non-milk foods for that nutrition? Not a clue.
Saturday, March 16, 2013
So...
...So why another blog? One morning I was lying next to Salim so that he would keep napping after he woke up too soon. That worked. He slept for an extra hour and a half. I did not sleep. Instead my brain ran around and around STUFF. Stuff about being here. Stuff about being here with a baby. Stuff about what I want being here to look like. Stuff about being.
Then I thought, I should be writing all this down. I have never been good about keeping a journal. You know, with a pen and a notebook. So I also thought, I should start a new blog to have someplace to put this. And then I thought, why would I try to do that when most of the day is spent trying to keep Salim fed, somewhat clean, and out of tremendous danger, and once Papa is home I'm competing with him for time on the interwebs, i.e. it's not always convenient to try to keep up with typing the things, especially when writing typically isn't my first choice for downtime. But then my Nap-Soaked Optimism said, No No! You can do this! Look: your child has been sleeping for an hour and a half (leaving you SO MUCH TIME for contemplation), and soon - So Soon! - he will sleep better at night so that you don't have to go to bed at 8 PM in order to get a sufficient number of short blocks of sleep! And I thought, Yes! You are right, Nap-Soaked Optimism. This IS a good idea!
So here we are.
It should be noted that this happened about two weeks ago, and I am just starting to write now. Also, no real change in Salim's sleep habits since then. All the same, I think it may be a good idea.
...So why name it Oum Salim? I guess because I am always weighing my still-new parental identity. I'm expecting parenthood to play a much larger role in my identity (or at least in my social identity) here than it did in the States. Frankly, I don't think anyone in the U.S. thought of me as "Salim's mother", at least not primarily, and I don't really even think of myself that way. Yes, of course, for the past nine months there's been an extra person in our house, very small, for whom I am partly responsible and who requires a lot of attention, but I've never defined myself in terms of my relationship to said small person. I thought that at least external opinions here would really seize on the parent role, and they probably do, but, for whatever it's worth, the only time someone has referred to me as Oum Salim so far has been as an afterthought.
Or this: it's at least as plausible that I named this Oum Salim because I find the naming/titling part of blogging to be kind of a pain, so I seized on one of the first things that came to mind.
Then I thought, I should be writing all this down. I have never been good about keeping a journal. You know, with a pen and a notebook. So I also thought, I should start a new blog to have someplace to put this. And then I thought, why would I try to do that when most of the day is spent trying to keep Salim fed, somewhat clean, and out of tremendous danger, and once Papa is home I'm competing with him for time on the interwebs, i.e. it's not always convenient to try to keep up with typing the things, especially when writing typically isn't my first choice for downtime. But then my Nap-Soaked Optimism said, No No! You can do this! Look: your child has been sleeping for an hour and a half (leaving you SO MUCH TIME for contemplation), and soon - So Soon! - he will sleep better at night so that you don't have to go to bed at 8 PM in order to get a sufficient number of short blocks of sleep! And I thought, Yes! You are right, Nap-Soaked Optimism. This IS a good idea!
So here we are.
It should be noted that this happened about two weeks ago, and I am just starting to write now. Also, no real change in Salim's sleep habits since then. All the same, I think it may be a good idea.
...So why name it Oum Salim? I guess because I am always weighing my still-new parental identity. I'm expecting parenthood to play a much larger role in my identity (or at least in my social identity) here than it did in the States. Frankly, I don't think anyone in the U.S. thought of me as "Salim's mother", at least not primarily, and I don't really even think of myself that way. Yes, of course, for the past nine months there's been an extra person in our house, very small, for whom I am partly responsible and who requires a lot of attention, but I've never defined myself in terms of my relationship to said small person. I thought that at least external opinions here would really seize on the parent role, and they probably do, but, for whatever it's worth, the only time someone has referred to me as Oum Salim so far has been as an afterthought.
Or this: it's at least as plausible that I named this Oum Salim because I find the naming/titling part of blogging to be kind of a pain, so I seized on one of the first things that came to mind.
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