The other side of the joyful moments with your precious baby

• Your baby has finally learned to roll from his back to his stomach.

And you wake up to the shriek of bloody murder because he got terrified from doing it.

• Your baby started eating solids. You take hundreds of photos and your heart burns with love.

Baby does a MASSIVE...well, you'll see.

• Your baby finally said HIS FIRST WORDS!!!!! You can't believe it!!

He said, "Dada." Then he said, "Baba"

• Your baby has learned to take the bottle. You're free to go out!!!

You have more dishes to do then ever. Plus you have to sterilize every.piece.of.the.stupid.bottles.

• You bring your baby home from the hospital and settle him in his beautiful bassinet. You get so excited to have this miracle in your room that you keep checking up on him every two seconds whilst he is asleep.

He knows you are watching. Even when you are sneaking up to his crib, down on all fours and carefully peaking through. He knows. He is staring directly at where you are and TADA he stays awake for a few more hours with you. 

• Your baby finally stopped crying and falls asleep

But that doesn't mean he doesn't stop making noises through the night. You hear every sound. Sorry, you have that motherly instinct and nothing gets past you. Husband is sound asleep though. So, that's...great.

• You captured hundreds of photos of your baby. You will cherish these when he is older

The fkking computer keeps freezing as you try to upload the "hundreds".. Now like THOUSANDS of photos, and you don't appreciate the commentaries from people as you go through the first few days photos. "Methil al jeradi"*

Plus, you are in none of the photos because in the first month you are in your maternity pjs and you look like you were trampled by a bus. However, there are a lot of selfies of you and your baby. The selfies make you doubt your intensions as half of the time when you preview the photos, you realize that you cut your baby off.

• Your on maternity leave and can watch as much tv as you like

Everything on tv offends you. Especially the scenes of kids acting out to their parents. You know your kids will obviously cherish you even when they are teenagers.  If not,  you already concluded to blame the media.


Hope you enjoyed!

Xoxo,

Oum Hasan


*a popular saying in the iraqi arab world. It means : Like a rat. 

The Birth Story

April 14, 2013. It was a beautiful day.  My inlaws decided to take mom and I to Icebergs at Bondi. If you haven't heard of Iceberg, it's a gorgeous bistro/rsl club on the water of the most famous beach in the world. The food is good..but if you are an arab, and they do not provide you with a large oval plate spilling with meat and rice, you say you like it but deep down inside, you really don't think it's worth it. 

But it IS worth going for a light lunch and the view is breathtaking.

Before we went there for lunch we decided to go for a little walk on the bondi-coogee walk. I was doing everything I could to get myself into labour since I was due. I forgot how LARGE some of the steps were. I lasted a few minutes before heading towards Ice berg.

I ordered a chili squid salad.

My water broke.

in Icebergs.

In front of my father in law.

Now, before you freak out. Rest assured. When your water breaks, it's not like in the movies. No one notices anything.

I thought I just had an accident. That's all

So when it happened, I just let out a gasp and my father in law looked at me strangely. He kept asking what's wrong (SHBEEESHH??) and I just muttered that I forgot my cell phone in the bathroom. When I came out of the bathroom he said "what was taking you soooooo long? I kept calling you!!" and my response was "oh, I was washing my hands."

I tried to walk past him to go to my mom and mother in law to tell them what happened but he kept following me and asking me questions. When I finally went to my mom and aunti, I whispered to them "I think my water broke, but I could have just had an accident."

They went from being so excited to completely confused. I ruined a special moment because I was trying not to get too excited and I wanted to save my pride. I thought if I really did have an accident, at least I admit that I thought it might be it. It made a lot of sense in my head at that time.

So we finally tell my father in law that I must be going into labour and we drove to the hospital. They told me to call Amar but I was determined to find out first if I really did break my water. Aunti asked me if my back was hurting and I exclaimed "yessss it's killingg meee" It didn't help their nerve when I started making jokes the entire way there.  

As soon as I saw my midwife and I asked her, she looked at me like I was retarded. We became kind of friends during my pregnancy, so I didn't take it too personally. 

When Amar found out, he called and freaked out on the phone, telling me that he didn't understand why I wasn't calling him. The poor guy had an exam in a week and I didn't want to bother him in case I had an accident! It does happen to pregnant ladies, you know. I'm not crazy.

So, I was finally convinced that I was in labour but the ward already made that conclusion, dressed me up and hooked the monitors on me. 

I ended up needing to do a c-section because Hasouni's heart beat was going down after some of the  strong contractions. We were going to see how far I could go into natural labour but the doctor's said "oh, actually, if you do want to do a c-section, you will need to do it now because staff turnover is happening soon." Of course staff turnover happens around the time I was going into labour. 

Wait, before I go on... I want to tell every woman out there who hasn't experienced contractions yet that I know deep down inside you are hoping that it doesn't hurt as much as people say. When I was still in the ward, the contractions hurt but they weren't that bad. I thought I was such a hero for being able to handle it. I didn't realize I was  just in pre labour.

Couple of hours later when I was getting pushed into surgery, they stopped RIGHT AT THE DOOR OF THE SURGERY ROOM. I was like "WHYYYYYY" The staff had to get themselves ready. We were waiting for my doctor who was having a discussion with my husband. He was telling Amar that  he wasn't the one that was going to perform the operation but someone else was.  After Amar convinced him to stay since he was the one that has been monitoring me throughout my pregnancy, he then tells Amar that he will perform the surgery but will leave after and someone else will stitch me back up.

ARE YOU SERIOUS??

So, Amar very nicely asked the doctor to not leave when I am opened and to kindly close me up before he goes home for the day. He told him that it was probably not the greatest plan to switch staff between that time.

At that stage, I thought I was going to die from the pain. I made an official conclusion that people who do natural labour and endure these contractions are not real.  

At last, we were in the room and they gave me the sweet sweet drugs.

When Hasouni was getting pulled out, Amar and the doctor's decided to take photographs. They literally adjusting the light (that was supposed to be for the surgeons to see what they were doing), to shine on Hasouni so that Amar has a good picture. Ummm...HELLO!!!

Most amazing moment of my life was when they showed me Hasouni. I was stunned.  I don't think anyone can ever prepare to see their baby. I was so shocked to see that Hasouni was a full grown baby. He had eyes, cheeks, nose, legs, arms, stomach. The works. Before that, I only saw him on the ultrasound and in my mind he was just black and white in 2D.

The next day I asked the doctor if he removed my placenta. He looked me very strangely and replied. "of course I did?." Well, sorry. He just hasn't MENTIONED it.  I just wanted to double check.

A Mom's and Dad's attempt to go on a date ALONE and Hasouni's first solids (fail)

On our 3 year anniversary, Amar got me tickets to see the Australia World Orchestra at the Opera House. It was such a lovely gesture from my husband. We weren't worried about Hasouni because we thought we can just give him a bottle of formula and leave him with our family to baby sit...

How wrong was I?..

Remember when you use to fuss because your wife took ages to get ready for a dinner night. I had to take TWO WEEKS for a 3 hour event.

Two weeks before the event, I went to  Baby's R Us and  purchased the same dairy-based formula that I use to give to Hasouni when he was just born. I gave him this formula once a day for 2 months. Ok, sue me. No, sorry I was not super mom.  No, I did not give my baby breast milk exclusively during that time BECAUSE I WAS TIRED. He was hungry (Alhamdouallah) ALLL THEEE TIMEE ANDDD he was in the 25th percentile so he had a bit of catching up to do. I fed him breast milk throughout the day and just ONCE during the night he had a bottle. Ok fine SOMETIMES maybe TWICE when I was super tired, my mom would kindly gave him a bottle for his first morning feed but that was it. It worked. I got my kid to finally be at the 50th percentile in a matter of weeks. 

Sorry I went a bit off track there. Where was I? O yes, Baby's R Us. So there I was all proud of myself for planning ahead of time. I even purchased some cups and spoons and baby rice cereal to prepare for baby's first solids. 

The plan was to reintroduce the formula that he had when he was a baby and to finally introduce solids at the same time since he was of age. 

The instructions of solids was very simple to the normal person. It said "Spoon 1 tablespoon of Farex cereal into a clean bowl. Add 2-3 tablespoons of your baby's usual milk or cooled boiled water to make a smooth consistency."

Now, this was me:

1. What's 1 tablespoon? Is it 1 tablespoon of regular sized tablespoons that we adults use or is it the size of a tablespoon of one of those kiddy plastic ones?
2. Can I use my measuring spoon sets or do I need to buy one exclusively for baby foods?
3. Do I have to sterilize my measuring spoon?
4. Do I need to sterilize his spoon?
5. Do I need to sterilize his bowl?
6. It says that I can't use a sterilizer for his bowl. Can I pour hot water? Will it hurt the plastic? 
7. Bowl instruction paper said that I can use  the cold sterilization method. What the heck is that?
8. If I use formula to add to his cereal do I need to prepare a bottle first and then pour that into the bowl?
9. Can I just pour the formula powder straight to the cereal and mix it with water?
10. Am I over thinking this? Should I just wait another day?

Anyway, I finally figured it all out and I mixed the cereal with cooled boiled water just for the first time. I got all excited. I prepared my camera to record Hasouni's first solids and made sure I was looking at him  as well to really capture the moment in my heart.

I ended up recording half of his upper face. The spoon and his mouth was not even in the video frame. 

The next day I went out with some of my girlfriend's and prepared two bottles of formula for Amar to give to Hasouni. I was so excited because if this worked then that meant Amar and I would be free to go on our anniversary date the week later.

Hasouni developed an allergy to formula. Apparently, babies can develop an allergy even AFTER they had the milk before. 

AND he now completely refuses to take a bottle even if it's filled with breast milk.

I just accepted defeat.

My child is allergic to formula and won't take a bottle. So, what was the solution? Keep him in the city and come out of the orchestra if he needed me. My beautiful brother and sister in law (Yasir and Shirley) were kind enough to babysit him during that time. Amar and I decided to go for a lovely dinner at Sushi-E, a beautiful sushi restaurant in the city with Hasouni before the concert to really make a day of it. We would order some of the finest sushi and appetizers and enjoy the beautiful lounge seating. We were so excited.

Traffic was so bad that we ended up dropping Hasouni with Yas And Shirley and got a quick bite at Mcdonalds.

BUT, we did manage to see the concert!

Hasouni was a good boy with Yas and Shirley but he wouldn't fall asleep unless he was in their arms. We found Hasouni sleeping on Yasir who didn't dare to move because he was scared to wake him up. Poor guy was holding him for a long time. 

Hasouni woke me up several times that night.

The End.