The Parent Trip: Briar Smith and Jafar Maleki of Fairmount

The pancakes should have been a clue.

Usually, Briar felt repulsed by typical American breakfast foods; she craved the savory and spicy, a steak or a bowl of Asian noodle soup. But that morning, at the international buffet in the Budapest hotel, she bypassed the smoked fish and the baked beans, because the smell of maple syrup was suddenly irresistible.

She chalked up her odd craving to jet lag, but once she returned home from the business trip and her period was late, she bought a test kit and ducked into the bathroom at work.

She called Jafar from the stall. "Are you serious?" he said. Jafar, who came to the United States from Iran at 26, always assumed he'd have children. But that dream dwindled once he and Briar married in 2009.

"I never wanted kids," she says. Growing up in Homer, Alaska, she cared for her younger brothers every summer. "Been there; done that. I saw [child-rearing] as a ton of work."

Besides, she and Jafar were building careers - Briar as associate director of Annenberg's Center for Global Communication Studies, and Jafar as a real estate developer - and traveling, including a two-and-a-half month stint in Iran in 2010. They thought about opening a frozen yogurt shop there - "Iranians love yogurt," Briar says - but that fantasy faded fast.

It was Ramadan, so Briar couldn't drink or eat in public, and she walked the hot, crowded streets in a headscarf. The apartment they rented was infested with pigeon ticks. Every item of clothing had to be dry-cleaned.

Back in the U.S., entering her 30s, Briar began to reconsider parenthood. "I had a feeling that if I was 70, I'd regret not having kids. I had to rip the reluctance off like a Band-Aid and get it over with."

Jafar was surprised and pleased to get that bathroom-stall phone call. "It was one of those dreams that was coming true."

For Briar, the dream included some nightmare aspects: She has scoliosis that torques her rib cage a bit, and the baby's rump was wedged under her ribs. "From four-and-a-half months, I could not sit up straight. I had to get a reclining chair for my office. At dinner, I had to lean back and put food on my stomach."

Her craving for sweetened carbs continued. Pre-pregnancy, Briar says, she actually felt annoyed at the sight of cookies and muffins. "All of a sudden, I was like, 'Oh, Mr. Muffin, maybe you're not that bad. Let's get reacquainted.' "

Briar, who was born in a one-room cabin with no running water, had always been a person ravenous for experience. Childbirth was no exception. "This was a big adventure I hadn't had. I wanted to feel what labor felt like. I was going to do it all the way."

But after laboring for 25 hours with no medication, on a Pitocin drip that kept her contractions rapid and intense, Briar felt depleted. "It was excruciating. But also transcendental," she recalls. "I was doing yoga breathing, but I was exhausted and dehydrated." She was also furious at Jafar, who has a habit of "shutting down" when overwhelmed with stress. At one point, mid-contraction, with her mother on one side and Jafar on the other, he fell asleep standing up, slumped over, and hit the bed.

Finally, reluctantly, Briar agreed to a C-section. She remembers the freezing operating room, the searing lights, and her first glimpse of the baby - "crying, covered in goo. Jafar was crying. He took a picture with his cellphone and sent it to everyone," including relatives in Cyprus and Iran.

In the recovery room, Briar recalled how her mother had talked her through each contraction. "You're riding the waves," she had said. "The only thing that came to my mind was 'Caspian.' He was born because of all the waves." His middle name, Roux, honors both grandfathers: Briar's dad hails from New Orleans, where roux is the basis of Cajun cooking, and Jafar's dad, now deceased, was named "Ruhullah," or "soul of Allah."

At home, Caspian cried. And cried - some nights, from 7 p.m. to midnight. "We call him the dinner terrorist," Briar says. She stopped eating dairy. The colic continued. A pediatric gastroenterologist advised her to eliminate wheat, nuts, eggs, and soy from her diet; later, she stopped eating beef, as well.

Those changes have helped, though the baby still has a sensitive digestive system; a taste of pureed squash kept him up all night, gassy and miserable. Briar is loath to give up breast-feeding - both because the allergen-free formula costs $500 for a month's supply, and because nursing is one of the times she feels most close to Caspian. "Breast-feeding is critical to my bonding with him, even though it's fraught now with feelings of guilt, like I'm poisoning my baby with my body."

Caspian's struggles with eating and sleeping have made the early months of parenthood a strain. "It's much more difficult than I had in mind," Jafar says, "having a human being who is dependent on you for everything." And it's lonely, he says, without the close-knit clan that surrounds new parents in Iran.

"I love the baby," Briar says. "But sometimes I go to work on two hours of sleep. I feel more fragile than I have in my entire life."

She pumps milk on the three days a week she works in the office; she scrutinizes labels and grills restaurant servers about hidden milk, butter, or soy. And she dreams of a day when Caspian's digestive system will grow up and the two can cook together: sweet plantains or lamb with red beans and dried lemon.

Someday, she imagines, she and her son will dip into a bowl of Persian yogurt - creamy and tart, herb-flecked, dotted with paper-thin radish moons and nubbly walnuts. Caspian will taste his father's homeland and his mother's love for the earth's bounty. It will be delicious.

If you've become a parent - for the first, second or fifth time - within the last six months, e-mail us why we should feature your story: parents@phillynews.com.

(Giving birth, adopting, or becoming a stepparent or guardian all count.) Unfortunately, we can't respond individually to all submissions If your story is chosen, you will be contacted.