Where to Have Baby?

Where to Have Baby?

Wow, our little apple pip is not only causing havoc to my digestive system but is also part of an ongoing logistical nightmare. Where are we going to chose to have our baby?

As I mentioned previously, we can’t have baby here for various reasons, but primarily that in case anything goes wrong, there aren’t the facilities to deal with it, ie safe blood products, intensive care units etc. So, our options are…

Going back to the UK

Which is lovely on the one hand, it all being very familiar and getting the chance to spend time with friends and family. My mum even has a maternity hospital at the end of her road in Bristol! But it would mean leaving Yangon by Week 34, sometime in November, as that is the cut off for long haul flights. Even if baby shows up on time, DD 16.01.12, it would take easily another month to sort out passports and visas so Alfie and I would be away a very long time and it’s not as if Pete can a) take the time off or b) hop over and visit. Added to which, no matter how much my mum loves me (or Alfie, rather) spending 3 months with a toddler and a baby is above and beyond the call of grandmotherly duties. And who can afford to rent in England these days? So perhaps not.

Going to Australia

A very attractive option as you can get medical visas these days and of course Auntie Susan and the cousins of chaos are having a wonderful time up in Cairns. It would make for a brilliant Christmas! Auntie Susan, for those of you who don’t know, not only has 3 kids of her own but is a GP (formerly a surgeon) so knows a bit about childbirth and all that. But again, the possibility of short term rental in Cairns is quite tricky and it would be a bit of a strange first visit to go and have my baby. Plus the same disadvantages for Pete.

Singapore

Now Singapore has the best medical and healthcare in the world, it is generally agreed, and we are almost on the doorstep so to speak. Pete likes this option because I have a cousin who lives there and he and his wife had a baby earlier this year so a) know what’s what and b) would mean I had family to call on in a strange city. However, it is not quite as easy to hop on a plane as it is to Bangkok and we hear it is a very expensive place to live, even for just a couple of months.

Bangkok

This is my favourite and apparently where most expat mums go if they don’t go home. It has a lovely maternity hospital (likened to a 4 star hotel by a friend of mine) and of course is accessible by an hour’s flight several times a day from Yangon Airport. Meaning Pete could easily come and spend every weekend with us, especially if we can book Air Asia flights early enough (our equivalent to Easy Jet). Not only that, but Bangkok caters to the long term traveller by having oodles of hotels, guest houses and serviced apartments to chose from. I could also hop over to have all my ante natal care and scans done there and so build up a bit of familiarity with the city and my obstetrician and his team. Finally, and this is a bit of a clincher for me, we could in fact spend Christmas anywhere in Thailand as we can travel around so easily by car. Christmas on the beach? Yes please!

We have also talked about Kuala Lumpur and Sweden as options but for me, Bangkok is favourite. Typically baby is arriving in high season, holidays-wise, so whatever we do it won’t be cheap. And naturally Pete’s (dis)organisation are dragging their feet with the provision of full medical insurance, so who knows how much we will have to cover ourselves. They do say having kids is expensive!

Anyway, if you fancy a Christmas break and aren’t averse to babysitting a toddler and a heavily pregnant me, come and see us, wherever we may be!

Pregnant and Abroad

Pregnant and Abroad

So, here we go again! I’m 7 weeks pregnant and Alfie’s little sister or brother is due on 16^th January 2012. I’m already sick as a dog and feel fluey, tired and miserable. Headachey, queasy and VERY grumpy. I don’t recall being in this bad a mood last time round but I’m sure Pete will say different. All I want to do is stay in bed and eat toast all day. Or crisps. Any carbs in fact. I don’t want to drink water unless forced but am constantly thirsty. Everything smells. The house smells, of what I’m not sure, but it’s not pleasant. Aircon smells, cupboard smells, cooking smells. Just not what I want to smell anyway. It all makes me feel sick. I don’t want to eat but can’t stop eating as it’s the only thing that seems to make the sickness abate for a while. That said, whatever I eat can make me feel sick too; nothing too rich, nothing too dairy, nothing too sweet or well, sickly.

Yesterday I went for a lie down at 11am and woke up 2 hours later. I did feel a bit perkier that afternoon but by 9pm I felt dreadful again and was sure I was coming down with something. How can a little apple pip make such a big difference? We had a scan while we were in Bangkok last week and you couldn’t even see our little baby at 1.4mm, just the yolk sac (yuk!).

Having a baby abroad, mmm. We can’t actually have the baby here in Myanmar because it’s not safe. Although there are plenty of hospitals, obstetricians and midwives the blood products (in case of emergency) cannot be guaranteed so most people opt for going home or skipping over to Bangkok. We had booked our trip before knowing I was pregnant but it seemed serendipitous so we checked out the maternity hospital and had some blood tests and scans while we could. We didn’t actually see the birthing centre but I have it on good authority, from ladies who have had their babies there, that it is much like a 4-star hotel. That is one advantage of private medical insurance I guess.

One thing I hadn’t considered was that after the birth we will have to wait for baby to get a visa before being able to return home. Which means we will have to wait for baby to get a passport too. Wowzer, hadn’t reckoned on that. And it took us over 6 weeks to get our visas. Great. What with having to go over a month early because I can’t fly past 36 weeks, we could be spending quite some time in Thailand. Hmmm.

Cultural Differences

20.05.2011 Cultural Differences

One of the most difficult things to get used to here is that to a Burmese person, delivering bad news is considered very bad form indeed. So much so, that they will go to any lengths to avoid it, even outright lies if necessary. This is hard work for a Western brain to adjust to! For example, if a nanny is unhappy in her job she will tell her employer that she has a sick relative in need of an operation and must go up to the mountain region, down to the delta, off to the back of beyond immediately to help out. And never reappear. In some cases she may have been tempted to another employer by more money, which is considered VERY bad form by the expats, obviously, but often she just wants to leave but is unable to say so.

I know of one family who are on their 6^th or 7^th driver and cannot fathom out why they keep disappearing without a word. Now clearly there is something going on for that amount of drivers to be pissed off but the family are blissfully unaware and as such are unable to change whatever it is to improve conditions and thus keep a driver for longer than 5 minutes.

It’s not only domestic staff. Pete’s organisation broke for the Christmas holidays and one chap just never returned in the New Year. Turned out he had got a job with the UN and never thought to let his old employers know. When they did find him of course, they weren’t bothered that he had moved on but a bit annoyed he hadn’t finished the reports he had been employed to do.

We have been looking for a housekeeper/cook for almost two months. In a country where labour is cheap and plentiful it is proving remarkably hard to find someone. One of the most annoying things is that our neighbouring housekeepers know of plenty of people looking for work but won’t recommend them in case something goes wrong. They would be embarrassed if we didn’t get on with the person they had put forward for example, and they feel it would reflect badly on them. To me this is completely bananas! And most frustrating. On we plod, trying to find someone far enough removed from anyone’s acquaintance to come for an interview.

You can imagine how the NGO’s struggle, where most decisions mean bad news for someone, somewhere. One organisation wanted the staff to have ownership over their projects and so spent considerable time and resources workshopping the possibilities for future funding. At the end they were expected to decide which regions would benefit and which would, inevitably, be wound down. They couldn’t do it. The staff dithered for so long, not wishing to be the bearers of such bad news that the management had to step in and make the decisions for them in the end.

I worry that Amber will walk out on us one day so drill her weekly about how we are doing and if she’s happy and tell her often that she MUST come and talk to me if there are any problems. Having been brought up in the American embassy I think she is used to our funny Western ways and I know that she and Alfie adore each other so I content myself with that. Still, if she does end up having a poorly relative I will be on tenterhooks!