An unscheduled hospital visit

For a while now I've been getting nervous every time my husband has gone away on a trip, because something bad always seems to happen while he's away. Past examples include a car accident, a nasty fever and falling over and ending up in A&E. I've even taken to joking that I'm going to ground him until the birth!

Now I'm almost serious. Just one hour after he left for a four day trip over the weekend, I started vomiting, and before I knew it, I had full blown gasto-enteritis. It lasted all night and well into the next day, and eventually I realised I just wasn't getting any better - in fact I was feeling worse. I also realised I just wasn't able to keep even water down, and aware that this couldn't be good for the baby at all, I finally decided to call the hospital.

The ambulance came immediately, and they put me on a drip and took me to hospital. At A&E they diagnosed severe dehydration (there were signs my muscle was starting to be used for energy, as my body wasn't getting anywhere near enough nutrients) and admitted me overnight.

This was my first ever overnight stay in hospital, and with my husband away, it was a very scary experience. Luckily a couple of wonderful friends took shifts staying with me unti bedtime, one of them even bringing me a "care package" of something to sleep in, some warm socks and even her ipod, pre-loaded with lots of British radio podcasts. I was so touched by their amazing generosity.

I shared a room with just one other woman (a real improvement on the NHS in the UK, where I'd probably have been in a ward with a minimum of four beds!) and bump and I were well looked after, but there's no getting away from the fact that hospital is NOT home. The bed was slightly uncomfortable, the room too light, I missed my duvet, my pyjamas, my own shower (in fact ANY shower - I couldn't use one as I was continuously strapped to my IV - I even had to take it with me to the toilet!) Most of all, though, I missed my husband. He called me as often as he could (luckily, there's no problem with the use of a mobile in hospital here) and I was so glad just to hear his voice.

The medical staff actually wanted me to stay a second night, but I took the decision that I would feel much better at home, and after some persuasion they discharged me yesterday afternoon. The relief of getting back to our apartment was incredible.

My friends here have rallied round, too - I got back to notes under my door offering help, and friends have brought me books, DVDs, things to drink and just wonderful company. Another made me an Easter meal last night (as much as I could eat of it!) and I was immensely touched. When you're this far away from home and your husband is thousands of miles away, things like that are so important.

Thank God my husband is back tomorrow morning. I've missed him so much. It's at times like these when you just wish your husband did a 9-5 job in an office just 30 minutes away, rather than an international, 24-hours a day job with an office mile high in the sky...

Almost parents...

I'm now 35 weeks, and the big news here is that Bump is still breech, and refusing to move. We had a scan last week and the doctor told us that Bump's legs are "deeply engaged", and that in her experience, babies don't generally turn from this position at this stage in pregnancy. So, we're probably going to be scheduling a c-section for the last week of April! We can't believe we're going to be parents so soon. We are extremely excited, and nervous too, of course. Note to self: definitely, definitely pack your hospital bag this week!

I'm suddenly starting to panic about all the things we haven't sorted out yet. For example, I realised the other day that we haven't bought any baby socks yet. Hardly something to keep you up at night, is it? Hormonal pregnant women are irrational at the best of times.

The upside of needing to have a c-section is that my husband can arrange to definitely be at the birth, which is a very precious thing. He's managed to move his leave request from May to the last week of April so, if Bump still won't turn, he'll have around 10 days at home with us after the birth, which will be wonderful. Of course if Bump DOES turn, he'll have to try to move his leave again, and who knows if the rostering department will oblige!

Nevermind, we'll put our trust in God on this one, and just go with the flow. It's all we *can* do, after all.

One born every minute

I'm feeling rather emotional after watching the first couple of episodes of a British documentary, One Born Every Minute, which follows the everyday goings on of a labour ward in a British hospital. These episodes showed a natural birth and two c-sections, and it was completely fascinating, and made me cry, of course. The very idea of the beginning of a new life, and therefore the start of a new family, makes me feel like welling up nowadays. I blame the hormones.

What I did think was interesting, however, was the behaviour of the Dads during birth. One kept playing practical jokes (including trying to lock his wife in the toilet during labour!) Another one just sat in the corner silently, and refused to go in for the c-section and let his partner's mother go in instead, and yet another just looked at his girlfriend with a rather blank expression as she faced her fears over the birth of their baby, which had a known physical disability. I can only hope that these men were acting this way to mask their true feelings - anyhow, it was uncomfortable to watch them. I know I'd be distraught if my husband didn't seem as focussed and involved in the birth as me - but then, everyone's different, I suppose.

We made an annoying discovery last week. It seems the way British passports are being processed in the Gulf is going to change at exactly the moment we need to get Bump's first passport. Instead of being printed here, ALL our documents (including both our passports) will have to be sent to Europe for a process which could take up to four weeks. Which of course is brilliant when a) You're a pilot and need your passport at all times and b) You are under time pressure from the government of the country you live in to get your child's residency sorted asap. Brilliant, eh?

My husband is therefore going to have to apply for a second passport (which we're told is at the discretion of the Embassy!) and we're also going to have to engage in a mad scrum when Bump is just days old to get the birth certificate (which takes a week here), a passport pic (that will be a cracker!) and then to the courier to send our docs off for the passport. Oh, and we're having to order new copies of our full birth certificates from the UK, because we need those, too. To say I'm annoyed about this would be an understatement. Just what you need when you've just had a baby, eh!

Anyhow, rant over. What watching the documentary certainly did make me think about is that I need to pack my hospital bag! I've got six weeks to go until Bump's due date, which incidentally is likely to be the day of the general election in the UK.
As one friend said to me last week, that gives new meaning to getting through the pains of Labour...

A year in the Gulf

I've just passed my one year anniversary of expat life. So much has happened since I arrived here. It's been one hell of a ride on a crazy rollercoaster, lots of ups, lots of downs. I'm not sure I'd like to do it again! But I AM proud to have done it, and I'm very proud at how well my husband and I have made it work, despite all the things life has thrown at us in the last few years - redundancy, infertility, moving continents, and a terrible bereavement. I'm glad we couldn't see any of it coming, I must say. Sometimes it's just better to live day by day.

It's also sometimes the small things that make life better. Today, for example, I managed to buy Marmite at the supermarket (clumsy pregnant me managed to break my last jar!!) and then a friend came round and brought me British cakes and chocolates her pilot husband had just bought specially for us on his latest trip to Heathrow. I was so touched.

Anyhow, one year on, and we're still here, about to become a family of three. It's an amazing miracle which we will never fail to be grateful for. I had a check-up this morning, and the baby's still breech (so what's new?!) but apart from that, things are fine. I am SO grateful for that. My husband took a picture of me at eight months pregnant which I put up on Facebook, and I was amazed by how many lovely comments people have been kind enough to leave! Clearly I don't look as much like a beached whale as I think I do...

One inevitability of being pregnant is that people will come up to you with all kinds of unsolicited advice. My mum has been feeding a lot of it to me via her friends back home. Yesterday, she came up with a real cracker. Apparently, someone she knows also had a breech baby, and had such a brilliant suggestion for how she managed to get her baby to turn, that I thought I'd leave you with it.

Apparently, she played loud pop music in her pants...