The good news about staying up all night waiting for babies that never come is it gives you time to catch up on your reading, and I finally finished Stieg Larrson's The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet's Nest last night. It made me think about what else I've read here, and how when I travel I always end up reading strange things at strange times.
I read the whole of Graham Green's Our Man in Havana, picked up off the community bookshelf in the living room, a few nights ago waiting for a woman to go into active labor (when you can actually do something for them--before then, here anyway, there's nothing to do other than check progress every 4 hours or so). I always want to like Green more than I end up liking him, I think because I'm intrigued by his subject matter but never fully engage with the plots.
I spent several early evenings on the roof watching the sun set and reading Marion Moteleno's remarkable A Shield of Coolest Air, about Somali National Movement-affiliated Somali expats in London during the late 1980s, helplessly watching from afar as Somaliland was being destroyed. I also found this on the community bookshelf, and I don't know where I would have stumbled onto it elsewhere, since it seems to be out of publication after only a small print run in the early 1990s.
I read Azadeh Moaveni's memoir Honeymoon in Tehran: Two Years of Love and Danger in Iran thousands of feet above the Atlantic on my way here. Though I don't always like the narrator, her take on Iranian politics is spot-on and very interesting. And it made Iran jump even higher on my list of "must-see" places (it was already on this list because of the Trans-Asia express train from Istanbul to Tehran, which includes a ferry ride across the lake that separates the two countries). If you follow that link, to one of my favorite trip planning websites of all time, just ignore the part where it mentions the army searching the track ahead to make sure it is clear of Kurdish separatist bombs...
Sloane Crosley's funny essays on travel in How Did You Get This Number? were just what I needed after a couple of the more, shall we say, challenging days.
Allegra Goodman's Kaaterskill Falls was just the right pace for my days here, slow and gentle in contrast to my busy, chaotic days at the hospital, but it was strange to read about the city where I live from thousands and thousands of miles away (a large part of it is set in Washington Heights, where several of my good friends live). Likewise, Alexander McCall Smith's second-to-latest in his 44 Scotland Street series, The World According to Bertie, had just the right laid-back pace to even out a few days.
Birth Emergency Skills Training Manual for Out of Hospital Midwives wins the award of most useful book I downloaded onto my Kindle prior to this trip (as in, sitting at the gate at Dulles waiting for my flight to Nairobi). I have referred to it many, many times and may do something I haven't done yet and buy a hard copy of it when I get home.
In that same genre, I found in the library here and read the La Leche League's The Womanly Art of Breastfeeding. Though it has some useful practical information, I found its tone grating and was pretty unhappy with how strongly it pushed women with children to quit their jobs and stay home with them. I feel like the combination of those two can be pretty alienating to women who might otherwise be open to breastfeeding. I think it was an older edition; maybe newer editions are more accommodating of different choices.
I.M. Lewis's A Modern History of the Somali (signed by the author with a special note to Edna), also pulled from the bookshelf downstairs, was much more of a page turner than the name might suggest, and definitely helped me understand this country's unique past better.
I'm saving Chuck Thompson's To Hellholes and Back: Bribes, Lies, and the Art of Extreme Tourism to read on my Kindle on the way home, as well as the second half of Doris Lessing's Martha Quest.
Unfortunately, I didn't get around to The Complete Novels of George Eliot. Next trip overseas, I guess!
Note the absence of Congo Nurse on this list. I might read whatever I can find on bookshelves when I travel (though the Kindle has greatly improved that situation), but I still have some standards.
Despite the non-appearance of the twins, this one did appear veeeery early this morning, on the small side and now receiving oxygen but doing okay. She was an emergency c-section, after it was discovered that she was transverse lie (sideways across the uterus, very rare), the only position that is basically always undeliverable without a c-section. Because very late at night the only person who can do spinals is generally not available, these women get general anesthesia, which isn't great for promoting bonding because it knocks the mom out hard for a long time. It also means you have to rush to get the baby out because it takes a very short period of time for the baby to be getting a very significant dose of anesthesia, which can lead to some grogginess at best and respiratory failure at worst.
Later in the morning, another one made an appearance. He had some things to say about it, too.
Also, Edna found her pictures of her pet lynx, Pixie. I have officially added "lynx" to my list of much-desired prospective pets.
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