The greatest adventure

(Before reading this post, please note that I am currently on a grad school exemption from PregnancyWatch and adjust your conclusions accordingly.)

Is it totally weird that I am jealous of American women who give birth in foreign countries? Because I totally am. I've had a lot of great adventures in foreign countries, some of them even health- or hospital- or kid- or kid-in-hospital-related. But I've never had THE great adventure.

I feel so robbed that Miriam wasn't born in Syria. She was due in mid-September, and Jeremy's PhD program at the U of A started at the beginning of September, so it wasn't too hard to do the math and see that it wouldn't work to birth her in Damascus. Still, we thought through a few scenarios. None of them were possible, so we ended up just staying in Syria as long as possible and then moving to Arizona, where Miriam was born a month later. To this day, when people ask me where she was born, I have to think twice before answering, "Tucson." Miriam herself has told others that she was born in Syria. She also told me the other day that she is part Syrian. (Wishful thinking on her part to help her fit in more with the Arab kid crowd here, I think.)

And now the University of Sharjah just opened up their brand new hospital down the road, and it has a fabulous maternity ward (or so I've heard) and it seems like the majority of my friends are pregnant and I just get to thinking about what an adventure they're about to have. It's like a club that I don't belong to.

One more thing: I wonder sometimes if this strange jealousy I have is because I had such a terrible experience giving birth to Miriam in Tucson, and there will always, always be that question in my mind: how beautiful could it have been in Syria?

I guess I'll never know, and so the jealousy continues to eat away at me.