A Visit from the President - Sammy's Papers

I was standing in the living room surrounded by boxes, holding my little man, wearing a comfy skirt, t-shirt and no makeup when I saw him pull up in his pumpkin orange car. Eric was in the kitchen helping Costa install my new "kitchen" (CAN'T wait to show you pictures...so far been too busy playing with my sink to take pictures). Accompanying him was the village doctor. As they came marching up toward the house I let out a frenzied cry of "Eric, their coming about the baby." As he headed out the door to meet them, I headed for the bathroom to make myself look more presentable. "Why haven't you registered your baby yet?" he said gruffly with the attitude of 'don't know how you do things in America, but this is a civilized country and we don't have babies at home'. Eric calmly told him that we had contacted the doctor and were just waiting to see what they wanted us to do. "Take your wife and the baby to the hospital right now", he said then left shortly. When Eric came in, Costa asked if we were okay, thinking we must be in trouble since 'the president' stopped by. That was yesterday. (That evening we received other calls asking if we were in trouble since 'the president' came to our house. In actuality, he is just the head of the city council of our village...everyone just calls him that.) That's what started the last two posts. Today, Eric again went to the hospital in Choogooiv (looks SO funny to see it written with English letters) to meet with the head doctor there. (While he was gone, I was again visited by the village doctor. She was quite irritated that we had not obeyed. Eric was able to get things smoothed over with her later though.) The head doctor agreed to let me and the baby leave that day as long as I had an x-ray to check for TB and an ultra-sound. SO, Eric came back and got the girls, Sammy and I. Our first stop was at the hospital where I needed to get the x-ray. We walked in, gave them my papers. The lady there directed me where to go and what to do. Much to my surprise, there was an older couple standing in the little room when I came in. So, I figured maybe I was supposed to go back out and wait for them to leave so came back out. Again the lady told me what to do. I looked at Lina and said, "Am I supposed to change THERE?" "Um, you're supposed to go straight and then to the right", she replied. By that time the older couple had left. I still went straight, then to the right. The nurse there told me to go back to the first room I had entered. When I got back to that room, there was already another lady standing there with her shirt off, just covering herself with her arm. She looked at me like 'stupid Americans', then told me I was supposed to take my shirt off. My facial expression made her smile even bigger as I asked in disbelief "HERE?" Just then, the nurse came in and asked why I hadn't come in yet. The other lady replied smugly/laughingly that I still had my shirt on. I don't think I will ever get used to the lack of modesty here.
After my x-ray, we went to the maternity hospital. The doctor had me not only do the ultrasound, but a blood test for some sexual disease and Sammy had two tests too...poor guy. He did not like being pricked and having blood drawn. Over all, they were pretty friendly. Only one doctor was kinda short with us. She kept saying things like "Don't do that again." and "Look at how nice this room is. Just have your baby here next time." Honestly, they have the nicest hospital that I have ever seen in Ukraine...except for the American clinic in Kiev. They said that they will have the paperwork ready for us on Tuesday. The head doctor had told us that it would have the correct date on it but that one doctor told us that it would say that Sammy was born today. We have decided not to fight it either way. We're just hoping we can get everything settled on Tuesday. After that we have to take those papers to, what they call, the baby palace where we need to get another paper from them. Lastly, we will need to take a trip to Kiev to the American Embassy to apply for his birth certificate, passport, SS, etc. Once we get the paperwork from the baby palace, everything else is easy.
Well, I'm heading to bed...maybe. Thanks for your prayers!