Happy 7th Birthday Mehdi Ibn Mansur

Mehdi was born two days before Christmas so the hospital was pretty empty as I stumbled down to the NICU to visit him on Christmas Eve.Mehdi was named after Mehdi Ibn Mansur a famous Muslim leader who united Baghdad and made it the center of the universe. The famous Mehdi also translated 1001 Arabian nights into Arabic from Farsi :)  I was weak and tried from the c section that I had the day before. I had been to see Mehdi a total of six times because he needed to be fed every four hours.  The twins were with my best friend so Mehdi and I were alone for the most part. Mehdi was my fourth child and my baby boy. There were nurses around, but it was silent and there were only a few very sick babies around. Mehdi had briefly lost oxygen because his blood sugar bottomed out at birth. I had tried hard to get my gestational diabetes stable but Mehdi being born a couple weeks early and weighing almost ten pounds had a little trouble.

He did not look like the small frail babies that were his first roommates, he looked healthy and strong. Mehdi was beautiful and very quiet like small angel as he curled his body up in his isolette and slept. I felt better when I spoke with the other moms whose children all had something very wrong. As Christmas day came and went and Mehdi was released from the NICU I felt lucky. Mehdi and I left his stylized toys for Damen a small boy who almost never had any visitors and was born four months earlier weighing a little over one pound. Mehdi was not planned he was a gift that happened while his father and I were trying to patch up our broken marriage. I guess we should have been careful but we were exhausted from caring for the five month old twins Mohammed and Hamzah and having all sorts of marital problems it just was as it should be.

Mehdi was a quiet baby and almost never cried; he would wake up and stare around the room when he wanted to eat. My good friend immediately named him little Budda. She said he was the closest thing to peace that she had ever experienced.  We brought him home to my best friend’s house the day after Christmas. We introduced him to the twins. He was such a sweet quiet baby and never seemed to mind that his eighteen month old brothers were constantly poking and probing at him.

He would sleep for five hours at a time which is unheard of for a new born. I would have to wake him up to eat which was a joy because the twins were so small that they had to eat almost round the clock. Mehdi was a joy and the easiest baby that I have ever been around. In the middle of the night when the twins were asleep which was almost never I would sit and rock him and things were so peaceful. Time seemed to just stand still! This blog was made to showcase the sorrows of having a child abducted but in the meanwhile it has take a whole different turn , I am pleased with the turn that this blog has taken and wish all my lovely readers out there peace in whatever you endure and a very Happy Holiday season :) In memory of Muharem the holy month of my ancestors I have seen fit to add this lovely photo of the Battle of Karballa from the Iranian Art in Tehran as well as this other lovely of Mehdi Ibn Mansur for the Baghdad Art Center. Long live Iraq and May the Suffering of the Iraqi People end soon !