talk to me about having your baby back in the UK

[PrincessSnowLife]

How many of you have gone home to the UK to have your babies? And if so, how do you go about that?

I just know I would feel so much more relaxed and safe to be having another baby back at home rather than here. For so many reasons. I don't know any expats here to run this by, or to find out any birth stories. Obviously, women have babies all the time and I haven't heard of anything going wrong for anyone in the time I've been here. But something in me says that I would much rather be at home for another birth.

Paying for a private birth in the UK is not an option. So I'm guessing that I would have to move back for a while to be registered with the NHS again? Anyone know how these thing work? Any experiences?

I'm not pregnant btw. Just that we would actually love another LO now but it feels like there is too much stacked against us for it to be that realistic. So I'm thinking that if I at least know whether or not I can go back to the UK for a birth, then we can take it from there.

I rambled, didn't I?

no, dd was our first. how old is your ds?

4

that would complicate matters....

Yes.
I had a friend who did just that Frau.
Was driven in labour from London to Newport.No way was she having that baby on foreign soil.

Your dh being abroad shouldn't make any differnece. All my MWs knew my dh was abroad at every ante natal appointemnt.Good god PGL,you're a Welsh girl and entitled to this care!

I believe this to be the case: under current rules your baby will have UK citizenship if born outside the UK. However your baby's babies will then HAVE TO BE BORN IN THE UK to have British citizenship and if they are not then they will lose it. However if you go back now and have baby in UK, its babies will have British citizenship.

moondog

you're right!
the things my parents have done for wales

yep, can see how having a 4 year old would add a whole new dimension to your situation...

moondog - problem is, our idea of entitled and the bureaucrats' idea sadly don't match

Quite.
I have never forgiven my mother for having the audacity to give birth to me in Africa.
How dare she?

I'd say the hen wlad owes me a baby at least

thanks tovik, I hadn't thought that far down the line. Perhaps, romantically, I had thought that my DS (or DC) would end up living and reproducing wherever they wanted, with no thought to citizenship!

As far as schooling here goes, he is not expected to start school until he is 6 or 7. He goes to nursery now but that is because we choose to send him there. But if he came back with me to the UK then he'd have to be attending school at the age of 5+, wouldn't he? And then there's the whole big sticky question of disrupting his little life.... whether he moved temporarily to the UK with me or stayed at home with dad and didn't see mam for a while

I can see where this is going.

oooooooohhh get you!

do you know, it has been popping in to my head since your post, califrau, and I do like that motto. [Storing it for future reference]

You really have a problem with the English, don't you, Moondog?

Well, here's my opinion. If you want to move abroad, have your baby abroad. If it's good enough to live in, it's good enough to give birth in.

Surely.

I was referring to Moondog's post of 23:19:06.

England is foreign, although it's perfectly OK to live there.

No Desiderate I don't!
I'm half English myself and very proud of it.

Desiderata, sorry if it what you read came across as offensive, it really wasn't the intention. This wasn't an anti-English thread, it is just the type of jokes that have existed between two areas/regions/counties/countries/religions since forever. Like between Devon and Cornwall for example. I know that some people take the jokes further sometimes but it really isn't the case here.

I hear what you are saying about "If you want to move abroad, have your baby abroad. If it's good enough to live in, it's good enough to give birth in" and you are course right. It's just that I am scared, if I am quite honest. I want to look at other options available to me as a British citizen, since I am lucky enough to have those options. As you can see from the way the thread went, thanks to some great advice from other posters, it looks like moving back to the UK is not a realistic option for me anyway because of having a school-age ds.

Princess,why don't you come home for a few weeks/months and put ds into a Welsh medium school? It would do him the world of good!
This is what my parents did with us. We would come back to Wales every year from PNG and spend 6 weeks in a school.They were delighted to have us and it gave us a 'language booster' which we really needed as we only spoke Welsh with my father.
In fact,I was 22 before I really spoke it to anyone else and now I speak Welsh 80% of the time.

I do it myself with my own children (just 7 and 3).For the last few years we have bobbed back and forth between wherever dh based and North Wales.School very supportive.

There is always a way.

Yn hoffi y syniad yn fawr iawn. Diolch yn fawr.

Big coffee conversation pending tomorrow with DH I think. See, I had been thinking a bit more positively about it this evening and thought that maybe we could all three of us move back for a while over winter (out of tourist season). It would save having to buy and cut our winter wood for a start!!!

Cawn gweld...

tra la la la

I think the UK is tightening up a lot on the NHS. We've been told that you need to be resident in the UK for at least 90 days a year to qualify for any treatment beyond emergency stuff.

Also, it seems to be the one area when one govt dept talks to another (eg Inland Revenue, National Insurance, Child Benefit) so I don't think you can bank on just fetching up and using someone's address. When we moved abroad we were mysteriously de-registered within weeks from our GP, whose list we'd been on for many years. Big Brother is watching us.

A friend with a difficult pg had problems flitting back and forth from abroad to the UK and had to pay for scans. Also one of dh's colleagues wasn't able to take his pg Nigerian wife into the UK and they ended up paying for the birth in Sweden, where she has a sister.

I'm sure there are ways round it, though. You'll just need to be one step ahead.

hi Suedonim! I had meant to ask this Q on the beaten track thread too. Will post a link in a bit.

Thanks for the info. That's exactly the sort of situation I have been worried about tbh. IR, NI, and CB have had a lot of difficulty processing the rather simple information we gave them (i.e. that we have emigrated) I wouldn't be surprised if govt depts would be a lot quicker in discovering any shady business. But if it is the 90 days rule then at least that gives us something to work with.

So, I wonder... What would be our local welsh GP's position if I re-registered with them, say, at 30ish weeks and told them I had moved back home permanently? Would I be billed until I had spent 90 days there? And presumably the 90 days rule doesn't apply to schooling? I've never heard of anything like that.

I don't know much more than that, PSL. People seem to have had varying experiences, which I suspect is due to how much notice their local health authority takes of such things. I'm going to an expat lunch tomorrow and will try to ask a few folk there.

Sorry suedonim, the probing questions weren' directed at you, they were just me putting my thoughts down in the hope that someone would come along with some answers

It'd be great if you could ask around tomorrow. Only if you get the chance obviously. Expat lunch, eh! Get you!

PSL,what you suggest is the best thing.
Just come back and say you are staying.
I flit back and forth all the time (as I said) and it has never been questioned.