Whew!

I can breathe a sigh of relief. Today I am 37 weeks pregnant, meaning that there is no chance I will need to go to the government-run, Arabic hospital. On this island, if your baby comes early, no hospital will admit you except for this particular one... and it is a hospital that I visited when I first moved here. I quickly decided that I didn't want to use this place. Everything was written in Arabic, and no one manned the nurse's station in the maternity ward. I stood around for a long time, with nurses walking past me not bothering to acknowledge my presence, because I was not Muslim.

This hospital does not allow epidurals or any men in the delivery room. Meaning, I would have to deliver without any options for pain relief and without my husband. It is the only one on the island with a neonatal ICU, so that is why women delivering early get funneled here. (They also have a policy of not disclosing the baby's sex to expecting parents at the sonogram appts, for fear these families will abort the girls)

I must admit the prospect of delivering in a place like this made me very nervous.