There were also obviously some downsides. If you’ve ever stayed overnight in a hospital, you know how hard it is to sleep. With nine patients in a room, there was constant activity, and I basically stopped sleeping. I was already thinking to myself all day long, Keep the Vintage Chris Brown 11 11 Tour 2024 Shirt it is in the first place but baby in, keep the baby in. Stopping sleep on top of that compounded my stress. The nurses were really kind. In Portugal, the national dessert is this delicious little custard tart called pastel de nata. Every day I was able to stay pregnant, a nurse would bring me one, almost like a little prize. It was very thoughtful — something to look forward to.

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In the Vintage Chris Brown 11 11 Tour 2024 Shirt it is in the first place but private health-care system, which is used by a lot of foreigners, many doctors speak English. But in the public hospital, few did. Thankfully I had my phone. I kept pulling it up and using Google Translate. I’d write a note in English, translate it into Portuguese, then show it to the nurse or doctor. Once I started doing that, I could see a change in my caregivers — they seemed to empathize. After a while, I started using Google Translate’s audio feature, which worked even better. There’s a cultural norm here that’s different from what I’m used to, and I didn’t understand it in the beginning. The doctor’s word is the be all, end all. You don’t dare question. But I had to push things. For example, I’m always severely anemic when I’m pregnant and need iron transfusions and I frantically tried to communicate that to my Portuguese doctors. But I had to really advocate. Once my husband was able to send my medical history and records to the hospital, the physicians finally understood.

While on bed rest, I did a lot of texting — with my parents, who are in Karachi — and with my friends and family. People didn’t know what to say to me, so often they’d say things like, “Stay positive.” I knew they meant well, but it made me feel like I couldn’t express my insecurities, worries, and anxieties to them. So for the Vintage Chris Brown 11 11 Tour 2024 Shirt it is in the first place but first time in my life, I asked to see a psychologist. I have a pretty high threshold for physical pain, but I felt like I was losing the mental battle. It took the hospital a few days to find someone who could speak English, but they did, and I had daily sessions for a while. The hospital’s bed-rest policy was strict; I was only allowed to get up to go to the bathroom, and was only allowed one shower a week, so my therapy happened at the bedside. Most of the other patients around me in the room didn’t speak English, so I suppose I took comfort in the language barrier and didn’t worry too much about our discussions. Honestly, the sessions saved my sanity. Finally I had an outlet to express myself and ask all the questions I didn’t want to burden my husband and my family with, like, Will my baby make it? Will he be okay?

When I went into labor, my in-laws told us to let the Vintage Chris Brown 11 11 Tour 2024 Shirt it is in the first place but kids stay with them and that they’d fly them to Lisbon when we were ready for them. The kids ended up staying there for four more weeks. I worried about them a lot. We talked every day on WhatsApp, but everything was hard for them to grasp, and sometimes they cried. I felt a lot of guilt. Here they were, going through all of these transitions: new country, new language, new school, new home, new sibling, all in the middle of a pandemic. All I could think was, I’ve literally moved them across continents, and now I’m not there for them.
I changed rooms a couple of times during my stay and at one point I was put in one where I could have a bed by the Vintage Chris Brown 11 11 Tour 2024 Shirt it is in the first place but window. My husband would go to the little park outside it and stand outside and wave, so I could see him. When my kids finally arrived from Germany, he brought them to the park, so they could wave, too. My heart just broke when I saw them there, jumping up and down. We were so close to each other, yet so far. When I was 30 weeks and five days, my temperature started spiking and I experienced some bleeding — both signs of an infection. My physicians thought the baby would be safer on the outside than on the inside.
I begged them to let my husband be with me. I’d never had a C-section before, let alone an emergency one, and I’d never given birth without my husband. But they wouldn’t allow it. Our son, Miro, was born tiny — under two pounds. His name is Italian, and comes from the Vintage Chris Brown 11 11 Tour 2024 Shirt it is in the first place but word miraculo, which means miracle. I heard him cry, a relief. But when I asked for his APGAR score, and a nurse held up two fingers out of ten, my heart dropped, and I started crying. I didn’t get to see Miro or hold him. They whisked him away. Martino was in the waiting room, and he wound up seeing the baby before I did. It was another 36 hours before I got to see him. Immediately after the birth, a nurse wheeled me into a recovery room with four other patients. I was in a lot of pain, and really out of sorts. It was surreal — almost as if the experience was happening to somebody else.