Number of days in Amsterdam – 125
Number of days without a bike theft – 122
Days since it last rained – 0
When you’re in our situation, Google Translate is your friend.
My ability to read Dutch is getting better, even if my ability to speak it is not. In general, I can now read some things and get the basic tone. But when it comes to details, I spend a lot of time each day with Google Translate, typing in our mail so I can tell what the insurance company or the bank is saying, and when we’re making dinner, I’m typing in the directions from packages. Specific instructions, whether they’re for filing an insurance claim or cooking a meal, are the places where one doesn’t want to miss the details.
Sometimes, things can come across rather funny in translation, like this last step from a jar of concentrated chicken stock:
Verwarm het geheel zonder te koken en u hebt een krachtige bouillon natural.
Which Google tells me means:
Heat it without boiling, and you have a powerful natural broth.
That almost sounds like a recipe for a magic potion, or a mystical brew.
Then there was this, in a letter from the insurance company:
Wij wensen u een voorspoedige zwangerschap en een prettige kraamtijd.
Which Google tells me means:
We wish you a successful pregnancy and a pleasant childbirth.
I thought that one was even funnier. A pleasant childbirth? Surely, something is lost in translation?
But then, the more I thought about it, the more I realized they probably mean exactly that, as much as an insurance company can wish anything.
It’s part of that whole Dutch perspective on childbirth.
It’s not an illness.
It’s barely a medical procedure.
It just is. And it’s natural.
And hopefully, it will be pleasant.
For all the pain, it still should be pleasant.
This is, after all, a wonderful thing.
Google almost got it right. Kraamtijd refers to the first weeks after the birth. Which of course are more pleasent if you had a problemfree childbirth.
By the way, the first translation is correct. It’s the Dutch sentence that’s weird.
As long and as hard as mine was, I don’t regret a thing, and looking back, I might even say it was pleasant… I loved the labor and especially the delivery — a beautiful and magical time, albeit a long weekend, and incredibly difficult at times, but so worth it, and what a miracle when you hold your child to your chest….
You can read about our experience giving birth here: http://jkcoffeyfamily.blogspot.com/2011/08/pura-vida-part-one-l-d.html
Like every other joy in life, pain is relative.
The neat thing about labor is that if there is much pain, the memory of it vanishes quickly — within moments. Seriously.
Pain often seems to correspond with anxiety/fear level, and, frankly with comfort level toward/need for drama. (Smack me later for putting that so bluntly, but I was raised by a mom who rolled her eyes at every ear infection and a dad who offered to behead me if I ever complained about a migraine. So. I’m just a buck-up kind of girl.)
I once flew ass-over-applecart when my bike tire hit a tiny boulder in a gutter. I tore the ligaments in my left wrist; had to wear a splint for weeks. I once went from the high position on the teeter-totter to the low position, lickety-split, because my playmate decided without warning to dismount from the bottom position: lots of blood and three stitches in my upper lip which made smiling a dicey proposition for the entire healing time. I’ve had anesthesia wear off before the root canal was over, only to face an extraction when the root canal went bad three months later, and, because of the smoking, I suffered the fucked up pain of dry socket.
I can’t imagine the pain of fucking up your shin in a cattle grate. Maybe it’s somewhere between dry socket and ripped up ligaments, or maybe it’s dry socket plus ripped up ligaments times ten.
Childbirth pain, at its worst, for me, was like gutting out a long, hard run. At its best, it was like … goddammit, am I going to miss lunch for this kid too?? (Missed lunch for kids 1, 3, and 4. Dan (#2) had the (not often repeated) consideration to make his hasty, intense entrance at 2:30am, and the nurse promptly gave me toast after I fainted in the john. It was the most delicious toast EVER. Keep an eye on post-partum BP; if it’s low-ish, she might feel a little faint during first trip to the potty.)
I just think TFN is going to be fine, so fine, just fine. Compared to the cattle grate incident, this ain’t gonna be no thang, and when it’s over … she’s gonna have an amnesia-inducing Kitten! AND she’s going to have the ability to sleep on her tummy again, if she wants to!!