Jet lag is hard. It seems like it gets harder, too, as iola gets older. She is more tightly tied to daylight rhythms, so the 12 hour change between California and Abu Dhabi creates a strong biological lag. I read a couple months back that there are hundreds of biological processes that operate on a diurnal schedule, some are quick to adjust and others take up to ten days. We are on day four now, and it has been the first semi-normal sleep day. It's harder here, too, because we don't have the external rhythms of a tight community to keep us going, so sometimes a seven hour nap seems like the perfect way to spend the day. I tried to plan things for our days, but I kept accidentally sleeping through them.
 
Until this afternoon, when we went to a "Breastfeeding Tea." We walked from our apartment to OnetoOne hotel, where they'd set up tables in the garden and had sandwiches and tea for hundreds of breastfeeding moms and their babies. We got there just before it ended, due to napping. As soon as we arrived I spied the woman who had been our lactation consultant the day we were discharged from the Corniche hospital 15 months ago to the day. She spied me and John too, and said she remembered us, and I totally believe her, though there are 900 births per month at the Corniche. John was the only man in attendance but she said it was ok, so he helped himself to four sandwiches. She said she wanted to make us a breastfeeding certificate, and was being followed around by other moms eager for their certificates, and when she turned to fill theirs out I cracked jokes with John about adding the certificate to my resume, under "awards and certficates." Eventually she filled mine out, and I took it and chatted with her and another midwife that I remembered from my many visits to the Corniche. Pretty soon iola wanted to leave, so we started walking back home, cracking more jokes about the certificate, which I was carefully holding. As we were walking I opened it to read it and suddenly started bawling. So much for all my jokes. It's nice to have a certificate for something that has been a lot of work. I'm grateful to the Corniche for making it. Here it is, everyone: