Peruvian Conversations Parts I & II

Part I

I have been reading on the internet about the Nesting Instinct, “the name given to the distinctive urge to clean, tidy, and organize that occurs at the end of the pregnancy and is a sign that your baby is about to make its appearance”.

All true. My father-in-law’s got it. He’s been cleaning the house from top to bottom for the last two days. I get up at 5.00 am to use the toilet and he’s scrubbing the sink. I try to make breakfast and he says “don’t use the stove, I just sprayed oven cleaner all over it.” He’s been bustling around like a maniac with his trousers tucked into the top of his socks, crawling behind furniture with dust cloths and carrying buckets and mops up and down the stairs to clean up whenever anyone walks past.

This is a good thing because it looks like we’ll be living in the pumpkin until after Smuggitos is born. We’ve found an apartment and our shipment has arrived from London but a few problems have cropped up.

First, it is not easy to cram a three-story-townhouse-with-back-garden’s worth of stuff into a three bedroom second floor apartment (no elevator, no balcony). Six sturdy Peruvians stoically dragged boxes up and down the stairs, calling out the contents at the door so they could be stowed in the right room. (As an interesting aside, it is fascinating how many different inflections of dismay and disbelief can be infused into the phrase “more books”.)

Secondly, the container arrived with a large dent in the side and corresponding damage to a number of bits of furniture. Not, unfortunately, the ones I would have liked.

If memory serves, it was V.S. Naipaul in A House for Mr Biswas who introduced the concept of ‘insuranburn’. In my case it was a matter of insuranhope. With any luck my ancient TV and the more hideous of my accumulated 'artworks' would be ruined and I could buy myself a nice flatscreen with the insurance money. Unfortunately, the TV survived but my California King-sized mattress arrived with all the springs sticking out. If you have ever seen the size of my husband you will understand what a problem this is. And until the insurance claim is approved by the company in London I cannot throw out any of the damaged stuff. This means that at the moment there is no space to organise anything, let alone install such basic necessities as fridge, stove and washing machine. So for the moment, the future is orange.

Last week I took advantage of the nesting instinct and had my very first solo taxi ride. It was cunningly done. I had an appointment for my weekly check-up with the obstetrician and I omitted to remind anyone until I was fully bathed and dressed, then I waddled nonchalantly down the stairs and out the front door saying breezily, “voy a la clinica” before anyone could stop me. Of course, my mother-in-law was not home at the time. She had left my father-in-law in charge of my welfare and he would no doubt catch hell if anything happened to me, but he was safely ensconced under the refrigerator at the time.

Getting to the clinic was no problem, it's well known and on a large avenida. I was a bit nervous about getting back in case I had to give complicated instructions in Spanish, given that my sense of direction sucks. I once tried to drive to a shopping mall 15 minutes from my cousin’s home in North Miami Beach and ended up in Boca Raton. In London, even with a Tom Tom navigation device I got consistently lost. (That was not my fault however – the Tom Tom had one of those supercilious female voices which you just know belongs to a woman better looking than you and who is obviously giving herself a manicure rather than paying attention to where you’re supposed to be going.)

Anyway, on leaving the clinic I followed all my suegra’s taxi-taking advice to the letter: “Don’t take the smaller taxis, don’t pay more than 7 soles, and you must look at their faces first.” She always walks along a line of waiting taxis, craning her neck into each window to scrutinize the driver minutely before deciding on the 3rd or 4th in line and opening negotiations. I did all this but realised that she had never got around to explaining what I should be looking for in the faces, so I chose the best looking one and jumped in.

And had a most Peruvian conversation.

I asked to be taken to the junction of avenidas Canada y Rosa Toro. “Ah” he said in instant recognition, “the street with all the cevicherias”. I had noticed there were a lot of restaurants devoted to this favourite Peruvian dish near to the house so I confirmed the location.

“So,” he said, letting in the clutch and inserting himself into the traffic, “you’re going to eat ceviche”.

“No, I’m going to my house.”

“Oh, you don’t like ceviche? There are lots of chifas on Rosa Toro as well” (chifa is Peruvian for a Chinese restaurant).

“I know, but I’m just going home.”

“So you like ceviche?”

He was obviously irretrievably ceviche-focused so I confessed that raw fish in lime juice is fine but that I’m not a big fan of onions. Clearly I was a foreigner.

“Where are you from? The Caribbean? Don’t they have fish there?” (yes, and onions) “What else do they have? Fruit? They must have fruit. Fruit is good, I like fruit, we have good fruit in Peru.”

I admitted to fruit and to fish but gave Peru the edge when it came to other seafood and shellfish. He was fascinated to meet someone from the Caribbean and wanted to know all about it.

“So what other food do you have?”

I attempted to broaden the scope of the conversation by telling him about Trinidad’s proximity to Venezuela, the hispanic influence on Christmas music, etc. He listened politely and nodded in a fascinated kind of way.

“So do you have sugar? And coffee? No coffee? What do you export?”

Petroleum and natural gas left him completely cold.

“What about rum? En el Caribe you must have rum!”

By this time, if I had had any rum I would have drained the bottle and hit him over the head with the empty.

Until I acquire a Peruvian accent and a non-foreign look, that is the last time I attempt to leave the house alone. Next time I will drag my father-in-law out from under the fridge and haul him to the clinic with me.

Part II

While my suegro behaves like Mr Clean on steroids, my husband, on the other hand, spends a great deal of time poking my protruding belly button in a fascinated sort of way and asking questions like “how do you hold them again?” and “I don’t really have to learn how to change diapers do I?” (He was shocked to discover that a self-cleaning diaper had not yet been invented and I had to explain that it isn’t the diaper per se that needs to be cleaned.)

A few weeks ago his colleague's wife gave birth early and that catapulted him into a whirlwind of activity – rushing around to finish paying the clinic and exhorting Smuggies to help me pack the overnight bag. So he thinks his work is done.

But, as I have mentioned before, you get a lot of looking after here if you are pregnant (not necessarily from one’s husband, obviously).

Having also sampled the medical ambiance in the US and UK, I have reached the conclusion that one of the main differences is that outside of those two countries, medical professionals are more willing to communicate directly with their patients rather than strictly between each other. In the States, if you have good insurance you can – and do – get referred for every test known to man, each performed by yet another specialist. But at no stage will said specialist actually tell you what they find. They hook you up to complicated machines, squirt you with gel, attach electrodes and squish you into claustrophobic tubes, gazing portentously at monitors and shaking their heads dubiously all the while. Then they retreat to a back room, consult with various technicians and write lengthy reports in code. Ask them anything and they say “the report will be sent to your doctor” (Or rather, in the case of the US your ‘Primary Care Physician’ or in the UK, ‘your GP’s surgery’.) Depending on the facial expression or the state of his/her digestion, you then spend the next week thinking you have an inoperable brain tumour or some new and fascinating disease. The Primary Care Physician is no better, so cautious is the diagnosis that you will either end up being sent for more tests or being asked to sign several disclaimer forms before you are told that it’s merely the common cold. It must be the fear of being sued.

Here in Lima, I get sent for loads of tests with specialists who are more than happy to give me their opinion and to explain the process as they go along. I can now tell you exactly what a foetus’s kidney looks like and the possible causes and effects of a misplaced placenta.

Of course, there is such a thing as too much information.

Because the level of my amniotic fluid seemed to be lower than normal, I was sent to have a Foetal Non-Stress Test, which involves monitoring the baby’s movements and heart rate via electrodes attached to my tummy by two elastic belts for about ½ hour. It is to ensure that the baby is moving strongly and can resist the rigours of childbirth.

The test was performed by an elderly doctor who bore a striking resemblance to the mad scientist in Back to the Future. Like one of those specialist players they have in American football who sits on the bench the entire game and only gets called on to punt the ball, he is not in regular circulation, and had to be summoned from the lower floors of the clinic trundling his monitor, to which he attached me, giving us an enthusiastic history of late-stage foetal testing all the while.

According to him, years ago they used to test foetal blood by inserting a needle through the cervix and drawing a vial of blood from the baby’s head. But they found that since the head was being squeezed in the pelvis, the blood wasn’t useful in indicating stress. Then they invented a test where they would insert a syringe directly through the mother’s womb and into the baby to draw blood. 1 in 6 babies died that way. “They never forgive you when that happens you know. I used to do those but then I started telling patients that my arm was hurting so I couldn’t do it. Who wants those kinds of odds?”

“Nowadays” he continued, “all the monitoring is indirect. You can’t take the baby out, check it, then put it back in, so this test is the most important. I’ve done about 100,000 of these. Forget all the stuff you see on the ultrasound screens” he continued, attaching the electrode to where the ultrasound of 10 minutes before had indicated Smuggitos’ bottom was located. “Here’s the heart” he said.

When the monitor indicated no cardiac activity he adroitly slid the electrode to the correct location and continued unabashed. “Yes indeed, this test is crucial. I once had a lady in here – same age as you actually – almost no foetal movement, we had to operate so fast! The baby was born 900 grams. The placenta was the size of a dinner roll and as white a chalk. Another few hours and that would have been it.”

By this time both myself and the baby were wiggling furiously. He continued to regale us with tales of near misses and unintended disasters the whole 30 minutes of the test. “You don’t mean to kill patients you know. Doctors usually don’t but sometimes you try to cure them and it has the opposite effect. You have to be so careful, people don’t pardon that kind of thing.” He unstrapped me, pronounced that we had passed the test with flying colours and accompanied us back to the upper floors. “Look at that” he said as we waited for the elevator, sliding open the window and pointing upward. “About 6 months ago a man jumped from the top floor. He bounced off that air conditioning unit right there and landed in the courtyard below. You could see his feet sticking up.”

“Did he die?” I asked.

“Very much so! He was a depressive and had been diagnosed with severe arthritis. He asked the doctor what the prognosis was and the doctor told him it was incurable so he jumped. Obviously there’s no cure but arthritis isn’t fatal. He thought it was like cancer and he was going to die. That’s the problem with some of these doctors. They have no tact.”