From July, 2016
[I'm giving this one a TMI warning, in case you don't want to hear TMI about some pregnancy details.]
I had never been to Uganda before.
I had been looking forward to this trip for months. I had been to Kenya, Tanzania, and Madagascar, and I was now especially eager to see what Uganda was like and to meet my coworkers there.
But now I had a secret little traveler who would be joining me, I would be about six weeks pregnant when I arrived.
The week before, I had an extra-early appointment with my midwife, just to check in before I would be gone for two weeks. She and Caleb heard the baby's heartbeat, just for an instant. I missed it, but it was real to me in other ways. My midwife once mentioned that sometimes you can hear the baby's little soul calling out to you before they are created. I thought this was beautiful and true. Even before this baby was born, I knew he or she was going to be persistent.
So off we went, my persistent baby and me, traveling halfway around the world and landing in Kampala late at night. For the sake of length, I'll not go into detail about the wonderful work details of the trip. Really everything went swimmingly for day one and the first part of day two. And then it was lunchtime. I had enjoyed the food at all the previous meals. And suddenly mid-lunch, my stomach turned. And kept turning. For the next two weeks.
All I wanted was macaroni and cheese, but cheese is not an easy find in rural Uganda. Or macaroni.
That night, we got back to our hotel. I was extremely excited, because my room had a squatting toilet, and I had wanted to stay in a room with a squatting toilet for a long time. However, when I squatted down, I realized that I was spotting. I tried not to panic, spotting can be normal. Our hotel had no internet and no phone. At the time, I didn't have a smartphone, but my phone did offer the ability to text and call internationally at exorbitant rates. I texted a photo to Caleb and asked him to send it to our midwife. He texted back saying he had talked to her and that she wanted to know if I could call her.
"Many women experience spotting. It could be nothing. But I need you to make a plan for accessing emergency medical care in case you miscarry and start to hemorrhage. Are you near a hospital?"
I very much doubted this, but I knew that I was in good hands. "I will ask the staff tomorrow." I explained. She also suggested that I talk to the baby and ask him or her to stick around. And so I had the scariest conversation with my baby who was the size of a blueberry. (I will stick to "him" as a pronoun since that is what he was, even though I was convinced he was a she at the time.) I told him that based on what I had felt so far, it didn't seem like he was the type to just give up, and that we really, really wanted him to stick around because we already loved him so much. But I also recognized that he was on his own path and that he had to follow that. I tried to hold space for both possibilities. I wished Caleb was with me.
The next morning, I explained what was happening to both my colleagues who were with me on the trip. When we went to the office, I explained the situation to the staff member in charge. She sprung into action. I stayed close to the office instead of venturing out and visiting families for the next few days. I got a snack tray one day that was full of easy things to eat and I was well cared for.
The spotting continued lightly, but thankfully did not get worse. We completed our work in Uganda and flew to Nairobi for the next portion of the trip, a staff conference. My stomach continued to turn. In Uganda, I had eaten all of the one snack I'd brought that sounded good: almond butter packets. Caleb sent some with a coworker who was meeting us in Kenya, but by that point, I couldn't eat any more of it.
During the conference, we had candy baskets on the tables that contained small hard candies. Some were caramel flavored and I liked these very much. So much, in fact, that I would eat all of them from all the baskets. I'd read that if you just keep eating small amounts of whatever you can get, the nausea isn't as bad. The buffets of food at the conference center were incredible, but with so many smells swirling around, I was eating meals that consisted of 3 pieces of broccoli and a pickle. "Surely my coworkers are going to figure this out," I thought to myself. Thankfully they did not.
During the day, I would occasionally send Caleb emails of all the foods that sounded good to me that I could not get, I titled the emails "weird food cravings just for fun":
[I'm giving this one a TMI warning, in case you don't want to hear TMI about some pregnancy details.]
I had never been to Uganda before.
I had been looking forward to this trip for months. I had been to Kenya, Tanzania, and Madagascar, and I was now especially eager to see what Uganda was like and to meet my coworkers there.
But now I had a secret little traveler who would be joining me, I would be about six weeks pregnant when I arrived.
The week before, I had an extra-early appointment with my midwife, just to check in before I would be gone for two weeks. She and Caleb heard the baby's heartbeat, just for an instant. I missed it, but it was real to me in other ways. My midwife once mentioned that sometimes you can hear the baby's little soul calling out to you before they are created. I thought this was beautiful and true. Even before this baby was born, I knew he or she was going to be persistent.
So off we went, my persistent baby and me, traveling halfway around the world and landing in Kampala late at night. For the sake of length, I'll not go into detail about the wonderful work details of the trip. Really everything went swimmingly for day one and the first part of day two. And then it was lunchtime. I had enjoyed the food at all the previous meals. And suddenly mid-lunch, my stomach turned. And kept turning. For the next two weeks.
All I wanted was macaroni and cheese, but cheese is not an easy find in rural Uganda. Or macaroni.
That night, we got back to our hotel. I was extremely excited, because my room had a squatting toilet, and I had wanted to stay in a room with a squatting toilet for a long time. However, when I squatted down, I realized that I was spotting. I tried not to panic, spotting can be normal. Our hotel had no internet and no phone. At the time, I didn't have a smartphone, but my phone did offer the ability to text and call internationally at exorbitant rates. I texted a photo to Caleb and asked him to send it to our midwife. He texted back saying he had talked to her and that she wanted to know if I could call her.
"Many women experience spotting. It could be nothing. But I need you to make a plan for accessing emergency medical care in case you miscarry and start to hemorrhage. Are you near a hospital?"
I very much doubted this, but I knew that I was in good hands. "I will ask the staff tomorrow." I explained. She also suggested that I talk to the baby and ask him or her to stick around. And so I had the scariest conversation with my baby who was the size of a blueberry. (I will stick to "him" as a pronoun since that is what he was, even though I was convinced he was a she at the time.) I told him that based on what I had felt so far, it didn't seem like he was the type to just give up, and that we really, really wanted him to stick around because we already loved him so much. But I also recognized that he was on his own path and that he had to follow that. I tried to hold space for both possibilities. I wished Caleb was with me.
The next morning, I explained what was happening to both my colleagues who were with me on the trip. When we went to the office, I explained the situation to the staff member in charge. She sprung into action. I stayed close to the office instead of venturing out and visiting families for the next few days. I got a snack tray one day that was full of easy things to eat and I was well cared for.
The spotting continued lightly, but thankfully did not get worse. We completed our work in Uganda and flew to Nairobi for the next portion of the trip, a staff conference. My stomach continued to turn. In Uganda, I had eaten all of the one snack I'd brought that sounded good: almond butter packets. Caleb sent some with a coworker who was meeting us in Kenya, but by that point, I couldn't eat any more of it.
During the conference, we had candy baskets on the tables that contained small hard candies. Some were caramel flavored and I liked these very much. So much, in fact, that I would eat all of them from all the baskets. I'd read that if you just keep eating small amounts of whatever you can get, the nausea isn't as bad. The buffets of food at the conference center were incredible, but with so many smells swirling around, I was eating meals that consisted of 3 pieces of broccoli and a pickle. "Surely my coworkers are going to figure this out," I thought to myself. Thankfully they did not.
During the day, I would occasionally send Caleb emails of all the foods that sounded good to me that I could not get, I titled the emails "weird food cravings just for fun":
grilled hotdog with ketchup on bun
oatmeal
ice cream
pickles
cucumbers
extra crispy fried chicken (this was only briefly)
buttermilk biscuits
donuts
My pregnancy symptoms continued, and I was relieved as things felt less and less scary and more and more... nauseating?
Upon finally arriving back to the US, Caleb took me straight to Arby's to get curly fries, and then to the grocery store. In a jet-lagged stupor, I told him to stop me if I started spending too much money. He didn't stop me. Bless him.
No comments:
Post a Comment