I haven’t actually dropped off the face of the planet, as one might assume by the silence emanating from me these past few weeks. Many things have happened to conspire against me posting a blog piece, starting with pregnancy-induced utter despair and rage.
That first week that I skipped out on writing I did you all a giant favor. I was almost 41 weeks along, huge and swollen and over it. All of the space in my brain was consumed with imagining this baby´s birth. My blog would have been about 5 pages of something like “This is so unfair. I already had one baby at 42 weeks. The second one is supposed to come early. Why didn’t my baby get the memo? Why do all of my children torture me like this? (all being all two of them) I’m never doing this stupid pregnancy thing again! Unless the baby agrees to come out at 38 weeks! But spontaneously! I don´t want a C-section or an induction! This is so unfair!” Etc., etc., etc. So you can thank me later for sparing you from that.
Worst of all that first week I didn´t write, the next day I was going to have to go back to the insurance company to negotiate with burocratic maniac doctors to get my prenatal maternity leave extended. If you read the súper-saga about my dealings with the insurance company https://exiletomexico.wordpress.com/2015/02/01/me-versus-the-insurance-company-doctors-a-saga/, you can imagine how much I was looking forward to the experience. Right up until I walked through the doors at 6.30 AM I had held out hope that contractions would start and save me from having to deal with the evil insurance company. But alas, this child is just as thankless as the first, and did not come out in time to rescue me.
I set baby a deadline after that. Induction was happening Friday morning, ready or not. It would put me at not quite 42 weeks, but I decided it was close enough, especially since my dates weren’t chipped in concrete. Conan and I planned an alone day for Thursday, hoping to naturally induce the baby. So the grandparent schedule for taking care of Lucia was already in place when I woke up with contractions that Thursday morning. Finally! Apparently it takes impending induction dates to make my babies come out. So be it. It finally happened!
I won’t trouble you with all the gory and glorious details (this might be a little too public for me), but it was a pretty fantastic birth. It was about 18 thousand times faster than Lucia’s birth. My doctor was awesome and there were zero interventions of any kind, exactly like I wanted. Conan and I walked along the beach during part of my labor. It was all very laid-back and peaceful, and best of all, “the baby came out of your belly!” as Lucia says. Ta-da! We have a little boy named Khalil Michael. “Now you have a Mexican child and a gringo child,” people tell us, thinking that where you’re born is the only determinante to citizenship. Really they’re both dual citizens. “Now we can have one kid who can be the president of Mexico and one who can be the president of the US,” Conan corrects them. (I’m praying our children won’t be politicians, period, but, you know….)
my two tiny dual citizens
So that week I had a newborn baby! Thus I excused myself from blogging again. Plus my mom, Dee, and my mother-in-law were all still in town so it seemed excessive to make myself work. My mom and Dee were leaving on Monday, so I promised myself I´d get some writing in then.
The next week I got started on two separate posts, but I failed to finish anything by noon on Sunday when my Dad and Karen, my stepmom, arrived. It was definitely not happening then. So this week I continued to work on my two posts, and I started writing down Khalil´s birth story to boot. I was being seriously virtuous about this writing thing. And then my computer went out.
But this is it anyway! No more excuses. (Well, I’m excused from not having more photos because of the computer situation.) I’m posting this little update at the very least. Just so you, dear, lovely reader, don’t think I’ve ceased to exist. This merry-go-round exile in Mexico continues, with a bigger and better family.
exile to mexico 