24 week check-up in Pokhara

We thought we would do this one locally as it is not really a big check-up. I feel great, the baby is moving around all the time and we will go to Kathmandu next month. It hit me walking up the stairs to the second floor out-patient ward why we are definately not having this baby in Nepal - anywhere in Nepal. There is just this all pervasive feeling of chaos in the corridors, of people not knowing where to go or what is happening to them, who is supposed to be in charge and hours spent looking at the filth in the corridors.
People in Europe find me strange because I do not have a great trust in medical personnel, in fact I tend to use them to perform the tests I want done and supply me with medication I know I need, feeling that the general responsibility for my own well being and health lies with me and no one else. This mistrust is bred by the attitude of third world doctors to be fair and I am not putting all medical personnel on the same level. But it is hard to give up the reigns to someone else even in first world countries when I am used to feeling that if I don’t pay attention and check up on all the procedures suggested I have only myself to blame if anything goes wrong.
The first question asked by the Ob Gyn in attendance was when my last period was: my reply of 26 June, prompted her to repeat as she was writing in the book:  "26 January?" Making me the most pregnant woman in human history, but this anomaly did not particularly perturb her.
A few prods and listening to the baby's heart beat later and her only suggestion was that I go downstairs to take a tetanus shot and am I taking my re-natal vitamins? I informed her that I had had a tetanus shot 2 years ago and as I have adverse reactions to the shot I only take 75% of the doses and do not want to subject the baby to the chance of anything going wrong now so I will decline. I did however want a glucose screening test I said and she sent me on to another room. This should be a semi controlled test where you consume a quantity of glucose, wait an hour while sitting still in the waiting room and then have some blood drawn to test your blood sugar levels. Here however they proceeded to draw blood right away as I was and said to come back in an hour and a half for the results. Making the whole exercise generally pointless - in terms of picking up on gestational or pre-diabetic conditions. They would be able to pick up on it only if my levels were squarely in the diabetic category. I could have consumed 4 Mars bars 10 minutes before and they would not have a clue. So I did go back for my results but did not wait to have them interpreted for me...79 is well within the normal range - I don’t need a doctor to tell me that. I will however have another piece of liquorice!

Yes, you are seeing it right - she is talking on a cellphone!
We will try again at the CIWEC clinic in January, until then I can trust my general diagnosis of being just fine!

24 weeks and counting

Something shifted about 2 days ago and I now feel decidedly pregnant while before it was just me and the bump somehow. The dancing, wagging of happy feet, kicking bump is still very much there only slightly more in the way when I am typing, putting my shoes on, moving my chair back and getting up or bending down. I feel I am now bending my back back to walk upright and it is hard to sleep without putting a pillow beneath my feet. But it is a happy bump, I can just feel it is!

I still do not have any feelings one way or the other if it is a boy or a girl - and I was really expecting to actually. But I am getting increasingly curious as to whom this baby is going to be personality wise, regardless of its gender. I remember my friend Salim said that while she was carrying Zoe that she was so curious as to whom this baby she would be taking back home from the hospital was going to be. And I remember thinking that I had never thought about it in that way before - but now I definitely do.

Thanks to Wenche and Gordon the baby now has a brand new pram awaiting it in Europe. Thanks also to Jan for braving the snowy London roads to get the car seat part sent to Norway where from it will be brought to Nepal in order for us to bring it with us to Thailand where it will be safely carrying the baby from the hospital. Somehow this baby is making the word smaller already!

We need to be better at taking bump pictures as it is changing so quickly now. Scary to think about that the baby is actually potentially viable if it was born now - but I am quite happy to have it in there for several more weeks to come.

A few weeks have gone by since I last wrote a blog and every time I put it off I felt bad. So I hope this is the beginning of us writing every week again...

I will hand the court over to Scott now:

Having Scott at home

Having Scott at home wasn't my 1st choice, but in the 70s if you already had one child and it was a normal birth then you had to have the second and third baby at home, the forth you had in hospital for reasons I never understood. But it was the best decision in the end. Because of having Justin I knew what was happening and I didn't have to leave him to go into hospital. Scott was a planned baby I didn't want to leave a big age gap between the two of them, all though I didn't quite plan for a Xmas baby.

I had a bit of morning sickness in the early months then the rest of the pregnancy went pretty smoothly, I had a little bump the size of a football and weighed 10 stone at 9 months We didn't have scans then, there were baby books but they didn't have much information I didn't already know. I had to go to the hospital for anti natal and blood test appointments and the hospital booked the midwife. Scott was due on the 21st Dec 1971 so I knew who the midwife was going to be. She also brought another trainee midwife with her. She had delivered many babies before and was very qualified, she was an Irish Midwife and very lovely.

I went into Labour on Thursday the 23rd Dec 1971 about 6.30 am, just after Bob left for work on the last day before the Xmas holidays. He had severe back pain and no one could get hold of him. Bob’s mum came over to look after Justin. We lived in a tower block on the 12th floors and we didn't have a telephone so someone, I can't remember who, went to phone the midwife. She had to cycle from the other side of Barking and climb 12 floors, because the lifts had broken in our building, so she was knackered when she arrived. After her examining me she told me that the baby would arrive at 9 o’clock that night and would come back later with the trainee midwife. I think she did pop back at some point in the afternoon but went off again. In the mean time I was pottering about at home in labour trying to organise Xmas.

Both the midwifes turned up about 7 o’clock I think, by that time the pains had stopped temporally of course so we sat around drinking tea and coffee for the next hour. By 9 o’clock Scott was born, no complications everything went well. I had gas and air the last hour to help with the pain. Both the Midwifes were brilliant, especially the trainee she came in every day for 2 weeks. You wasn't aloud out until they discharged you. She would stay and wash and dress Justin for me and leave the flat nearly drunk having a whisky every time she came round.
It was a strange feeling having a baby over Xmas we had our Xmas dinner in the bedroom, Scott asleep in his cot, Justin in the high chair, me in bed and Bob with his dinner on his lap.

Scott weighed 6 pounds & 14 ounces and was 20 inches I still have all the anti natal books for both of them. I didn't know what sex it would be, they didn't know back then and I didn't particularly want any girls although I'm glad to have a granddaughter and a grandson would be nice.

Half Way Point

Yes, we are there, we have reached the halfway point! The first part went by so quickly! I am looking forward to the second half - the bump and I are developing a relationship! Although Scott and I have found that we can not really hug properly any longer - it ends up being a sort of halfway sideways thing. I have also found a greater understanding for why fat people always have stuff down the front of their shirts and cleaning our small floors with a floorcloth on all fours is now not quite the quick thing it used to be, but apart from that we are all good!

I can feel her or him move but you can not detect the movement from the outside yet, but any day now I think. Scott keeps on putting his ear close to the bump and saying: "Nah, I can't hear anything!".
I am just hoping we will have some quiet time in the afternoons soon so the baby can hear Scott play the guitar finally.

Thursday we are flying to Kathmandu for the 20 week check up at the private CIWEC clinic there. It is a long time since we have seen the baby now so I am looking forward to it. An ultrasound scan for the home must be the next new pregnancy accessory.

As we returned to Nepal the weeks have just been flying past as we have been extremely busy getting the season started, the monsson cleaned out of the hut, the garden in shape and the birds trained for the start of the commercial season two days ago. In fact it looks like we are going to have the busiest November ever so no let up any time soon. We are an excellent Parahawking Team this season which makes all the difference, Heather has just fitted in perfectly and we could simply not do it without the Mota team. With everyone staying at Maya Devi this season including Jess and Ivan dinners at homa at Maya Devi have turned into a mini event. In fact even Graham now orders a banana lassi when we go out for dinner - fitting in with the rest of my great pregnancy companions. So we feel we have the support we need for stressful events like being told we will be banned by the local paragliding association. Still not resolved - so updates to follow, but we feel we have a handle on it now!

Promise it will not take that long before we update the blog next time around - as that does sort of defeat the purpose of this blog. So until next week....

Last blog from Spain

This will be the last blog from Spain. Baby and I are traveling to Pokhara leaving Barcelona on Tuesday and hopefully getting into our great bed at Maya Devi by midnight on Wednesday some time. I am thinking about that bed as the bump gave me the first sleepless night last night...well it was not all the bumps fault, the rain and lightning did not help either. Before I would wake up and then effortlessly fall asleep again, but last night getting comfortable again after every time I woke up got increasingly more difficult.

We had a thoroughly rainy Sunday today so most of the packing is done already, just some final things to sort out tomorrow before we are off! Wet clothes hanging everywhere - hope they dry before we leave!

Jess and I went to Barcelona on Saturday for the last European shopping bonanza, it was quite an involved affair I am telling you...we did not get back to Can Ballus before 11pm! Did manage to find some pregnancy jeans and another even larger bra which by the way the bump is growing, I will be needing in less than a month or so.

There is no hiding the bump now, even if I wanted to. Definately can not sleep on my stomach any longer either...

And baby's first outfit...with "I believe I can fly" on the front, which I thought suited a baby of ours. The other top is made by Isca's mother. All the furry birds are from Cim d'Aligues, where our Harris Hawks will be spending the winter- we are going to make a mobile with them...some of them even emit a lifelike sound when pressed.

We have been doing some pram or rather 3 wheel travel system research of late...in fact we have become quite obsessed by finding the perfect one for our slightly unique set of circumstances next spring. Not that I think there has never been parents looking for a baby pram before but I am certain that most of them had a place to live first! Scott and I find ourselves looking at every pram that rolls past and believe me in Berga there are quite a few of them. We think we may have found the one: a Jane Slalom Reverse Matrix - stylon, with a back or forward facing stroller part and more importantly for us, for the first few months, a carseat that turns into a pram at the press of a button. It seems to be ticking all the boxes. Now it has become more of a logistical problem of finding the Jane at a good price somewhere, where from we can get it to where we are. And if we decide to have the baby in Bangkok then how do we get the amazing carseat to either Nepal or Thailand?

I am so looking forward to getting back to Maya Devi now and getting going on our Nepali part of the season. Next week's blog from Pokhara!

Oh and in case you have been missing my cravings...ribs anyone?
Just for clarification, the second plate is Scott's.

Positive is good... right?

Yep, I've hijacked the blog this week. Gone are the intelligent musings of a happy and glowing expectant mother, you'll have to put up with my un-insightful account of this weeks events.

As Anita said last week, everything was going so, well, normally. You could in fact say that up 'till now it's all been pretty much positive and I've always believed that positive is good. Anita is feeling good, the baby is doing what it should be doing, I'm just doing what I always do, considering the life we lead, it was all just skipping along nicely thank you very much. I started to think that I could even get used to this normality, stay normal, stay positive. What could possible go wrong.

Well, anyone who knows me knows what happened the last time I said that, I ended up in a Nepali jail arrested on drug trafficking charges. Obviously the allegations were false, the real culprit was caught and I was released without charge but it did make me think twice about ever using that phrase again. Until now that is.

Following our 12 week scan, which was all normal and good, we had an appointment with the Doctor. We find out that Anita is blood group A- which is pretty rare by all accounts, in fact, on finding out this information, Anita did her research, she's good like that:

"Only 7% of the Caucasian population have the blood type A rhesus negative and only 0.5% of the rest of the world. In Europe 15% of us are rhesus negative which is a recessive gene, meaning that chances are that the baby will be rhesus positive and we will have different blood types. If mine and the baby's blood mix my blood will produce antibodies to the rhesus positive element of the baby's blood, which will mean that these antibodies can cross the placenta in subsequent pregnancies and attack a potential next baby's blood production which can be dangerous. I will therefore have to receive an Anti-D injection later on in the pregnancy and in conjunction with the birth in order to prevent my blood from producing antibodies in case my blood mix with some of the baby's. Then the baby and I will be totally safe. However, in the rest of the world less than 2% of the population have blood I can receive in a blood transfusion."

Here's where it gets a bit complicated for us since we choose to live in Asia and we're looking into the possibility of having the baby in Thailand, again more research by the missus was needed, here are her finding:

"I did some more research and found that outside of European and American populations only 9 out of 10000 Africans are rhesus negative and 1 in 10000 Asians. For all my adult years if anything had happened it would have been very difficult for me to get a blood transfusion and I never knew. Some think that Europeans became rhesus negative after leaving Africa as a response to differing CO2 levels in the air"

Some "people" also believe that Rhesus negative blood types have super natural powers, that would go someway to explain that strange flash of light I once saw when she was standing in our bedroom at the summer house, but that's another story. I knew she was special, now I'm starting to see why.

We were told not to worry, as long as she takes the required drugs at the required times then there should be no risk to  her or the baby, at least not for this baby. But it could pose a risk for any future pregnancies. This also made us rethink about having the birth in Thailand or even whether the clinic in Kathmandu would have the drugs or the facilities we needed. Suddenly, everything was all a bit different, we may even have to change our entire plans. Unless of course if I had a blood test and it turned out to be Negative, what are the chances of that, certainly the same chance of being negative as Anita but surely that percentage drops significantly when you're talking about the both of us. If we are both negative blood groups then the baby will also be 100% negative so there will be zero risk and everything will be back to, erm normal again.

Today I went for a blood test, a mere formality I'm thinking, just to be told that I am positive blood type like the majority of the worlds population. How wrong I was when the results came back. It turns out that I am O-. Not only will Anita and the baby be OK, now we have our very own blood transfusion unit.

So, it seems when it starts to go a bit wrong, all you need is a double dose of negativity to get things back to normal again.

End of 1st Trimester

So today we are 13 weeks pregnant and have reached the end of the 1st trimester! I don't know quite how that happened...it seems to have gone by so fast. But I guess the answer is slowly and surely one day at a time, like how most things happen! I feel great, have gotten all my energy back over the past two weeks and can now make it through an entire day without a nap...

Scott proclaimed last night: "Your boobs are huge!" so I guess that means they have gone through another growth spurt but he did not at all seem disappointed - so I guess that is ok!

It is definately harder to bend down now as this "ball" in my stomach can not be moved or bent in any way, but I am enjoying my stomach and everything feels like it is supposed to - so I guess that is ok too!


Everything is indeed ok - they told us at the hospital yesterday that everything is normal with the baby.  They did a Nuchal Translucency scan which was normal, so no need for further or other tests. And the baby had grown 12mm in a week since the last scan we did. So size wise he or she is totally normal too. In fact I do find it quite amazing that they can make a measurement on the screen and tell you that the baby is 12w 6 days old, so in 3 months the baby is right on the target...not even one day lagging behind or a day bigger than she or he is supposed to be but entirely normal? Surely it can't be normal to be that normal? I am finding I need to get reaquainted with normal...see it in a different light than I have done for as long as I can remember. I have never really felt normal like I presumed everybody else to be, and as far as I know that seems to be the case with Scott too. I have learnt to enjoy the good sides of that and live with the bad sides and have given up trying to be normal a long time ago. And here growing inside me is this totally normal baby and I find I am overjoyed at the normality of it all!