Chiang Mai Chronicles: 2015

Wednesday, December 9, 2015

Max's Entry

Introducing...

Maxwell Khalil Ahmad Raines

Born November 13, 2015

1:28 am

Bogota, Colombia

7.3 pounds 21 inches long

And oh so handsome!

In the days following Max’s birth I found myself wanting to linger in the details. While nursing him in those first few days, I would replay his birth in my mind and when Fuad and I had a few private moments when both boys were asleep, we would talk about his birth and how it felt to bring this life into the world.

It’s not really fair to compare the arrivals of my two sons, but it’s hard not to...For reference, you can read about Dylan’s birth story here.

Like Dylan, Max also took about 24 hours to exit the womb. He kept me waiting, not too long, but long enough, as his due date was November 7th. Since Dylan came 2 weeks early, I kept hoping Max would come early too, but he came at exactly 40 weeks, 6 days after his due date.

The first contractions came in the very early morning hours and felt so different from what I experienced with Dylan that I spent at least 30 minutes looking up the difference between Braxton Hicks contractions and the “real thing”. I spent the early morning hours experiencing these contractions by myself. I had been sleeping in Dylan’s bed because I was so uncomfortable and needed so many pillows. Eventually, I woke Fuad up to let him know...it’s happening!

I was in labor all day, with just a brief pause in the mid-morning. It felt like I labored all over, starting at home, then in my doctor’s office, then in the waiting area of the ER, in the restaurant where we had lunch, in the park, and finally in the delivery room.

Here's the Timeline:
Around 3am Thursday, November 12th, contractions started.

Noon- I went to an appointment for fetal monitoring-results showed moderate contractions 3 minutes apart.

1:20 pm-Appointment with my OB (Ana Lucia)-exam shows I’m dilated 1 centimeter and she’s concerned that my blood pressure is high. She asks me to head to the ER (which is right across the street) for blood work and urine tests.

3:00 pm-left the ER to wait for the results (we were asked to come back in 2 hours). We had lunch and walked to the park.

5:00 pm Back to the ER. Everything looks fine with the tests, more fetal monitoring, we got checked into the hospital. Had a comical exchange with the pain guy, who was in total shock and surprised that I didn’t want any pain management.

7:00 pm -We finally make it up to our room, where our doula Isabel meets us and we get to work with labor. I think at this point we’re dilated 3 centimeters.

10:00 pm-Ana Lucia returns to check in, she’s off to deliver a c-section and will come back when she’s done.

11:00 pm-Ana Lucia checks in once more and fetal monitoring shows a potential problem. She explains her concern that the cord is potentially wrapped around his neck and she offers 2 solutions, that we deliver c-section or she ruptures the membrane (the water still hadn’t broke) to check that the fluid is clear. She gets a 2nd opinion from the ER Doc and he agrees. We decided to rupture the membrane, at this point I’m dilated 5 cm, the fluid turns out to be clear (thank goodness!) and I quickly begin to labor much faster! Within minutes I’m dilated to 7 centimeters, contractions are flowing one right into the next and all of the sudden I’m left alone to labor while my “team” leaves to change into scrubs for the delivery which will take place on a different floor in the OR.

Now I’m in heavy labor and we're moving beds, going downstairs in the hospital elevator where I'm placed in a common room with other women laboring while the OR is prepared.

I start to feel like I’m going to pass out...I’m super thirsty...At this point my husband says to me “I want to tell you that you’re a badass”, which makes me smile every time I think about it. Ana Lucia steps away to wash her hands and I feel the urge to push, I can feel his head coming out, they move me really fast (legs wide open for the world to see) I yell “he’s going back in!!!” We get to the OR, and in 2 quick pushes he’s out! I didn’t even get to move to the delivery bed until after the cord had been cut.

It turns out the cord was wrapped around his neck twice and was tangled up in his hands. He came out the most horrifying shade of purple, all the way down to his toes.

I delivered my son Max completely naturally, with no drugs involved, and I’m proud of that. It’s what I wanted. There is no experience like it in the world. In fact, writing this birth “story” I’m at a loss for words to truly describe the experience. It’s a flooding of sensation and waves of pain that result in the most expansive feeling of love you can imagine.

My husband says it over and over, the female body is amazing...the male body doesn’t do anything close to what a woman does while pregnant, and then through the labor process and then nursing.

I find myself wanting to linger in these early days of bliss, I'm falling in love all over again. This time around, I know what to expect, and I know that it does go fast. I especially love the moments when I’m nursing Max and Dylan wants to cuddle up next to us. It moves me to the point of tears. I want to box up those moments, for I know that far too soon, they will be teenagers.

Day 1, just about to leave the hospital

Dylan holding his new baby brother for the first time...

Monday, October 12, 2015

Final Days of 2nd Pregnancy...

I’m laying on my bed in our home getting a massage...35 weeks pregnant with son #2, my body begins to relax and surrender as Marta works her magic, then my mind begins turning.

I realize that I don’t often have time to let my mind turn and ponder, I begin to realize how different my mindset has been during this 2nd pregnancy. I'm so much more relaxed this time around. I lay there and take time to consider this question that I can’t seem to wrap my head around...how will it feel to love 2 sons? How will the arrival of Son #2 effect Dylan?

I’m not gonna lie, one of the reasons I wanted to have a 2nd child is because of my experience as an only child. I openly admit, there are certain aspects of my core personality that I attribute to being an only child.

How will I facilitate a healthy, loving sibling relationship when I have never experienced that myself? I have always had friends throughout my entire life that I would say I’ve loved like a brother or sister, but even as much as you can love a person in that way...there’s still essential elements missing...the experience of sharing parents, and memories of family events, and vacations and comfort food and so on and so on…

I look at Dylan, whom I completely adore and I can’t imagine loving another as much as I love him!
The final countdown is on! What an amazing life we live...I’m about to have my 2nd birth experience on a 2nd continent. More details to follow!

34 Weeks

Top, 35 Weeks pregnant with Dylan
Bottom, 34 Weeks pregnant with Son #2

Tuesday, January 13, 2015

Rooting Down

The blog Chiang Mai Chronicles became a sounding board and place for me to air out my process of becoming an ex-pat in Thailand...it's hard to believe that was over 3 years ago.
We have since moved on to a new continent, with a much easier process of acculturation...a more familiar language is spoken here & a more amicable climate are a few of the things that have made this move easier than the last. Not to mention, I've done it before. I have Thailand under my belt, I've lived half way around the world and experienced the homesickness and culture shock...and the reverse culture shock, now I know what to expect.
The process of living abroad is still a process though...with new friends to be made and so much work to be done learning the language and although much, much closer, we are still a continent away from our home in the States. Sometimes it's a craving, a yearning, a deep need to go to that home almost as if to see if it still feels like home.
I want my son to know that place, I want him to grow up feeling comfortable calling the U.S. home...today, on his 2nd birthday I find myself nostalgic, reflective, wondering...where did the time go? How can it be so long that we've lived far away? I find myself asking the question if we're doing the right thing...his story is already complicated. Born in Thailand, growing up in Colombia, parents from 2 different cultures themselves, although both born in the States. How will these experiences shape him?
I find comfort in knowing that I'm not alone in my pondering of these questions. We've now joined the ranks of parents who desire the best for their children and hope that they are doing just that.
I want my son to be an open-minded citizen of the world, to be comfortable calling any place home, capable of forming and maintaining meaningful relationships. I want him to stand in awe and know his place in the world...to be grateful for his many blessings, as I am grateful for him.
I'd like to share an essay my husband recently wrote to his mother about his experience growing up moving around the world.

Depth vs Span

Fuad Ahmad

October 2014

“We should have let you have a girlfriend,” my mother says with a shrug, putting down her desert fork as she casually concedes one of the most disputed points of my contentious adolescent years. My brow furrows. Even years later, beneath my thin veneer of adulthood, deep simmering pools of unresolved teen angst still seethe. Hearing my mother unexpectedly admit the failures of the arbitrary laws she once willfully enforced triggers a wave of hormonal resentment. Are you serious?

We are deep into a post-meal conversation and my mother has begun parsing through her life’s regrets, giving free reign to hindsight’s perfect vision and offering up unsolicited prescriptions to remedy a past that my family has yet to come to terms with. As she eyes her three unsettled children gathered before her, all unmarried and in various states of personal and professional disarray, drifting through our twenties amidst confused career choices and a host of messy identity issues, she starts throwing out increasingly bizarre mea culpas in an attempt to diagnose and fix our current issues.

“We shouldn’t have moved you so much,” she says next, leaning back from the dining table and shaking her head with pursed lips and a remorseful expression on her face. While I’m perfectly content to reimagine my teen years consorting with a bevy of foxy girlfriends, willfully overlooking how gameless, broke, and riddled with insecurities I was throughout that awkward chapter of my life, this last statement goes too far. Of all the debatable decisions my parents made regarding how to raise me, moving me repeatedly across the planet is something I’m profoundly grateful to them for.

I cannot imagine my life if my parents had never uprooted me. From campus to campus and country to country, I’ve crossed the world countless times, acquiring essential pieces of myself all along the way. After spending time in almost 40 countries, I’ve become a tapestry of widely disparate experiences, a motley quilt of overlapping cultures straining at uneasy seams. I can see how my mother, looking at the unconventional trajectory of my life, felt inclined to second guess the decisions she made that produced this gypsy man-child sitting before her. But her worries were misplaced. Some of us are not meant to fit neatly into the tidy and predictable niches carved out by nationalism, faiths, and the allegiances we inherit. We are not square pegs in round holes so much as we are shape-shifting nomads whose identities are fluid constructs constantly morphing to meet the demands of new environments. This is a questionable path to those who lack the imagination to grasp the freedom in upheaval, and the liberation that comes from leaving safe and familiar loyalties behind. Some of us are born to wander. We are lucky enough to finally live in a curated age, where our identities can be assembled from eclectic bits; we can choose to be so much more than just our origins.

But this wasn’t always clear to me. When I was younger, the need to belong ruled supreme, and when I looked around and then at myself I always found my life wanting. I was surrounded by people who were seamlessly integrated into their communities in a way I wasn’t, and they had strong foundations and support systems in place to nurture their growth and protect their interests. They seemed primed for success. I, on the other hand, was on the outside looking in.

In high school I came across an essay written by Sister Nivedita, a 19^th-century European transplant who become one of the most revered and influential devotees of Swami Vivekenanda. A line from her pamphlet leapt out at me: “Only the tree that is firmly rooted in its native soil can bear the richest fruit.” Would my makeshift roots suffice? For many years I sought out the kind of anchored permanence I thought Sister Nivedita was talking about. It took a decade for me to realize that while some lives thrive when tethered to a single place or state of mind, some of us are also wired differently.

In my mid-twenties I discovered the prolific work of Ken Wilbur, whose writings provided a coherent framework for how I see the world. In his work, he explores the dichotomy of depth versus span as it relates to your character. Depth describes the level and quality of your understanding of any given community, place, or subject. Span, on the other hand, is about the horizontal breadth of your life and consciousness; it conveys the scope of your experience. This dichotomy resonated with me, as it elegantly captures the struggle of trying to traverse the world while still cultivating deep relationships with people and communities. Although I’ve traveled widely, many of my experiences in the places I’ve visited have been superficial. I struggle to commit and I uproot with ease. I am less a stately tree, destined to loom large over any single place, as I am a dandelion, scattering my spores over vast distances and carried by the wind to points unknown. Coming to terms with this has helped me dispense with the desire to be something I’m not. I still strive to develop a life of depth that bears rich fruit, but I’ve made peace with the limitations inherent in my own choices.

In my son’s nursery in our home in Thailand, our friend Liz Wendler painted a glorious banyon tree against a sky-blue background that loomed large on the wall over Dylan’s crib. As his eyes grew more focused over the first few months of his life, we noted how absorbed he would get while lying in his crib and gazing upwards at the tree’s magnificent gnarled posture, with leaves and vines reaching upwards to greet the sun. Later when he began to walk, he’d meander over to the wall and trace his little fingers over the tree’s lower half, his hands following the broad and expansive root system that dug downwards and branched out in myriad crooked directions.

These are the kinds of roots I want my son to have. I want him to grow up with countless connections to the earth, embedded in many different realities, and drawing strength from every place the tentacles of his consciousness have touched down. In his first two years he’s already been to 7 countries on 4 continents, and he speaks fragments of 3 different languages. As I watch my mother coo at him from a world away through a computer screen, I hope that she understands how Dylan’s life validates the choices she made with her own kids. I’m trying to give my son the opportunities and advantages that only travel can provide. I want him to have a life of scope and consequence, unhindered by borders and broadened by life experiences that challenge common convictions. I want him to build on the kind of life I’ve had. For many years I struggled coming to terms with my role in a lineage that seems destined to drift. I look forward to the day when I can explain to my son both the joy of putting down roots and the transformative, liberating power of being able to pull them up again in search for more nourishing earth.

Monday, January 12, 2015

Dylan Jai turns 2...really???

How can it be possible that Dylan is turning 2 years old? The amount of growth and change that has occurred in our son during his 2nd year is amazing.
Dylan now weighs around 25 pounds and has recently had a growth spurt, so I'm not sure how tall he is...he has recently (like in the past 3 weeks) started talking non-stop and has a strong beginning vocabulary that focuses mostly on modes of transportation with TRAIN! at the top of the list. He speaks somewhere around 60 words.
Dylan learned to walk shortly after his first birthday, he was 13 months old and this changed our lives, there was no holding this kid back! These days he prefers to run and boy is he fast! Sometimes we have to break out in a jog to keep up with him. He runs everywhere. Dylan is experiences the world in a physical way. His motor skills are very developed for his age, he climbs up and down stairs without holding on, he jumps with 2 feet, he climbs like a monkey and loves hanging from trees and doing somersaults.
Dylan enjoys reading books before naps and bedtime and sometimes falls asleep clutching his favorite read of the evening.
Dylan is most excited by "Mas" or Thomas, as in "the train"...he has a wooden train track set that he plays with everyday for long periods of time. He also loves watching Thomas shows.

He has become more of a finicky eater lately, with rice, pesto pasta and crackers being some of the only foods he eats consistently.
Dylan is has now traveled to 7 countries and has been exposed to 3 languages (which is uses bits from all 3...he still uses the Thai word for cat).
In his 2nd year he visited the U.S., moved to Colombia, and was a tourist in both Vietnam & Guatemala. He makes friends with adults wherever he goes and I've even seen him flirt with ladies!

Dylan is a very active and spirited child, and he keeps Fuad and I on our toes. We've thrown a lot at this kid in his short life of 2 years...He is the light of my life, I simply adore my son.

A few picture highlights from the year...