Good morning MENA! It is Caturday thank God we all made it through the week. I hope everyone is doing fine and has a great weekend. If you have any cute cat pictures please feel free to post. I like to make my kitty jealous that I'm looking at other cats, lol.

meow!

Happy Caturday! Shabbat Shalom!

Where are our other official insomniacs? They are not present and accounted for!

Yohoho and a bottle of rum! Arrr!

Hey Julianna do u like ur new job?

S and S I am here. Where rrrrrrr uuuuuu? Echoooooo.

g'morning everyone.

I'm here. I was just looking at some other site, lol. You caught me!

Nice to see Charles is up too. Now where is Jackie? She is a part of our night owl club.

morning charles.

Yeah, it's OK. I'm more counting down teh days until I get to STOP WORKING outside the house. WHat a dream that will be.


You at work too?

I dunno where jj is. Haven't seen her nearly aaaaaaaaaallllllll day long.

Oh, that would be nice! Not to mention the gas that could save.

ur working at home?

no, i'm actually at home and trying to stay up late because we're going to 12 hour shifts on sat night. this time around i drew the 1900-0700 shift.

I know! Yay!

Do they pay you less because you save on gas? Mom's work wants to send them home to work but pay them less? Does that make any sense to do seeing as it saves them electicity and internet bills and phone bills, ect?

No, right now I work a "job." But, see, as soon as we get close to paying off my student loan I get to QUIT WORKING which sounds awesome. I;ve worked for enough years now. I said stop working outside the house because that coincides with babies and when he has some kind of schedule for me to keep things immaculately clean so that's kinda a job... but it's a job where i don't have to see idiots.


So will you work 3-12 hour shifts or do you get overtime? I saw you said overtime in another thread. My husband's work is thinking about moving them to 4-10hour shifts to try to cut costs on overtime. What do you do?

Sounds like they are looking for a way to cut budget.

I was hit the other day surprisingly with envy and sadness when Waleed told us a mutual friend of our got married two months ago and his new wife is already pregnant. I was finding myself wishing it was us. Waleed told me "They are in a position where they are ready for that." I know it's true but still couldn't help the way I felt about it.



Yeah probably.

I want babies so bad myself. Problem is I kind of need my husband, say, less than 6000 miles away to accomplish such a goal, lol.

He says a transatlantic international relationship is one thing but babies are outta the question till we're settled with our feet under us. I understand all that and sometimes convience myself of that and then my nature gets baby fever.

I think we all hit a certain age where the need to have babies comes and we have a hard time pushing the feeling away. Right now my neighbor is pregnant, my former neighbor just had a baby, my sister just had her baby a few weeks ago, two of my cousins are due within the next 6 weeks, a couple of girls at work are pregnant, and one of my close friends had her baby a couple weeks ago. I swear it is everywhere I look and makes me feel sad that I haven't had that experience yet. A syrian woman at work made the mistake of telling me I know nothing about children because I am not a mother and I blew up on her. I felt bad for doing that, but she said it in a rude way like I was lacking or something. She knows I'm waiting for my husband to come and there is nothing I can do.

Welcome to the story of my life. I know he wants them too but he refuses to have them now because of the SL. No ammount of talking to him is going to change that.

I guess I should put on a disclaimer: I don't envy other people and I certainly don't want their babies. I want my OWN baby. It realy has nothing to do with others.

I'll borrow your disclaimer. I am always happy for others who have babies. I think it is great to see others and their joy of having children. I just want my own child too.

Oh, I hate that. I also hate it when they look at you with pity and say, "it's OK, you still have some time." I had a friend call me who is pregnant for the 4th time and lecture me on the number of children we want versus my age and how unless I do them back to back I am going to get past that magic 35 age. Like i don't already know that??

In fact, I got so worried about it that I went and did all the fertility tests just to make sure I could have children. I came back good other than I didn't ovulate on time one month. The doctor said if I had any problems the only thing I would need is some medicine to make me ovulate regularly. Thank God I shouldn't have any problems and have that reassurance. I drove my husband crazy with those tests, but I was married once before and never got pregnant (though we weren't really trying).

Ya I want my own babies. Ooooooh but nearly everytime we talk we go rounds on how to raise them which puts off having them even longer. At first I was willing to raise them Muslim but now after everything I've learned from ppl on here, and converts, and independent research, and stuff his sister sends me I'm thinking it's better not to have them at all then raise them Muslim. He's willing to just have me if this is the case but it's very sad for both of us when we both want them. He tells me to consider the sources where I learn things and is hopeful that after six months living in Egypt that I will have a change of heart and see a different side of Islam then what I have learned about. I admitted to him I am still young at learning about it but there are things I just can not accept and would never want my kids to learn those things. When I point out does her really want his kids to learn that it's ok to have more than one wife and it's ok to beat your wife it becomes a mute point. I don't know what to do.

Oh God, I know what you mean. I hate hearing the clock tick. My husband wants lots of kids and I keep saying that as I get older this will limit my ability for that. Then again, his mother had her last one at age 45 and he came out healthy though much younger than the rest of his siblings.

You can try those ovulation predictor thingies too. I just used them long enough to pair my really obvious symptoms with my schedule.. so now I know when it's about to, is happening, and is past.

The biological clock is also the other factor. Women in my family have their menopause earlier than most. Plus one side of the family has difficult births. Hopefully I didn't get that side.

I'm going to try doing things natural for the first few months he gets here. If that doesn't work I will try the ovulation tests. I just don't want to stress us out in the beginning. As for the fertility tests, I discovered too late that you must be desperate to go through all of those. Some of them are rather invasive and painful!




I hope you didn't get that side either. Hopefully you can resolve everything and have a baby soon. I think it will be such a wonderful experience no one should miss out on.

Then we will get to see S and S rotating baby siggy pix! I love watching the mena babies grow up.

Yeah, you have got to agree on how to raise them before having them! We agree, but it would cause a flame war up in here lol so I'm not talking about it. Anyway, it's not going to be an issue.

That would be nice. Yes, I love to see the baby pics too. So many of the girls have such adorable babies here in MENA.

We haven't had a good flame war lately. I was just commenting the other day that VJ seemed slow lately.

Yeah, Ammar is the youngest and his mom had 13 (2 died as children) and had him at 46. He thinks we have loads of time.


These are pretty easy-- just wee on the stick. If you have obvious signs each month, it can be totally useless unless you jsut want to confirm them as what they are... otehrwise yeah, I can see there being a use for them if not paying atention doesn't work.


Unless baby pics are banned. I haven't asked that yet for me and him. I bet they are!

Yeah, raising children definitely requires some compromise and discussion. Me and my husband have had to battle out a few issues. One of the more simple ones was about earrings. I know most women in the middle east pierce their baby daughter's ears. I am against this. I don't care if they do it, but I don't want to do that. I feel like I'm doing a luxury that could hurt my baby and it doesn't even get a say. I told my husband I would rather wait until she is old enough to make that decision herself and take care of her ears herself. He said I was being silly and that it is better to do it young while they will not remember. God, I pierced my own ears before so I know it isn't that bad. Yet some people get infections and I would be heart broken if I caused my baby that. He still thinks we should get our daughters ears pierced as babies (God willing we have daughters). I said fine, he can take them, but I will have no part of it. Not even caring for the ears. He is a doctor, he can deal with it! He gave up and changed the conversations, lol.



I was just thinking my husband might not let me post baby pics. We will just have to see. Maybe if it is just the baby since no one is going to recognize it anyway. That will be up to him though.

Ooooh Noooos!



Ooops. I had mine pierced as a baby and to this day I wish my Mom hadn't because I'd like to have made the choice for myself when I was older. On the other hand I see his point. Gotta love those Doctor hubbies and changing the subject.



Oooooh Noooos! Not u 2!

lol, yes, my husband can be good at that. Like I said, I compromised, he can take our daughter(s) himself if he wants it so bad, lol.

Oooo, we had the same discussion... especially since I was highly allergic to gold up until recently when it calmed down some. I told him it is NOT a good idea to pierce our daughter's ears young... I don't like it and I am afraid they will have my same allergy to metals (because it's not jsut gold for me-- also stainless, surgical steel, titanium, etc-- everything except sterling silver).

Is it the germanic genetics julianna? Just wondering coz this fair skin of mine gets rashes easy.

Glad I'm not the only one who feels this way. Most people don't understand my point. I don't see what the problem is with waiting until they are older.

I don't know... I'm pretty good about not getting an allergic reaction to anythig on teh surface of my skin-- only metals I ingest or that are pierced inside or certain things like beef... I am sensitive to poison ivy at the moment, but that's because i had a bad break out years ago.

OK, word is (since I just called):

"What kind of present is the winner getting?"

"A gift."

"What kind of gift?"

"A present."

*Sigh*

"Can I post pictures of our babies on the itnernet?"

"Only to show close friends."

"So I can post them."

"Yes..."

Oh, lucky you! I think I'll wait to ask. Once we have babies he will be so excited maybe he will not care.

Awe! Yeah!

As for the gift, he could at least give a hint!

He hasn't decided. lol

Well, by close friends I admit I know he doesn't mean here.. he is thinking I mean like to email them out. This would count as "public." But at least he's thinking we can do private showing which means he will be more open to a few public pictures in time... maybe...

lol, you sound like how I'm thinking