Are you living overseas and pregnant? Anyone interested in starting an international Ante-natal club?

[RubiMama]

I thought it would be fun to have a thread for those of us who are pregnant and living outside UK. As people's experience of ante natal care and birth can be so different abroad I thought it would be nice to our own MN antenatalclub. Where I am (Greece) there are no ante antal goups as such where women get together and all birth preparation is mainly on a one to one basis which I find frustrating. But there are other aspects of the care I get that I really like and in a way glad to be here rather than UK. Also I know it can be daunting giving birth for the first time in a new country where the whole system turns out to be so different from how you expected, so we could support each other and share experiences and stories.
I'm 26 weeks pg with DC2. Due at beginning of May.

Is anybody else in?

HI all

Can I join in??

Like the idea of this club as I felt I didn�´t fit in my last classes, only non-villager let alone foriegner. And feel out of UK antenatal clubs as everybody�´s talking about things & Ive no idea what they are.

Im 13 wks (EDD 4th Sept) with 2nd pregnancy, DS1 is 23 mths. Im in a small(ish) village in northern Spain. Had DS1 here by home birth, but the mid wife lived nearly 2 hrs away. I hope to have another home birth and am glad to discover there�´s a mid wife closer to home, although she�´s in Mexico at the moment but hopes to be back for June!!

My regular MW descrided my local hospital as a sausage factory and suggested if it were her she�´d go to the next one which is 1 1/2 hr away.

Hi Patito. Congratulations on your pregnancy . Wow, home birth in rural spain, I bet that's uncommon. It's been very quiet on here lately, I haven't been posting while my mum has been staying.
I went to the Doctor last
week, everything was fine and I'm now appoaching 30 weeks, so will start seeing the midwife soon for birth preparation. Quite excited, as it will be nice to have the attention and time to focus on the baby. Last time I practically spent the whole 9 months trying to cultivate zen like state, looking after myself, yoga, pilates etc. but this time round am so focussed on DS I really haven't come to terms with the fact that I will have another baby in a couple of months , let alone preparing to squeeze it out!
DH and I are also having massive name dilemma atm, and I can't decide if we should decide on the 'one' now, or wait til baby arrives. My old fav is one that sounds weird to Greeks and while I don't want DH's family to find name odd, I am too stubborn to let it go purely because of what they might think.I'd be interested to know if anyone else has cultural issues when it comes to names....

Oh heck yes - has to pass the 5 langauges test...

You have no idea how difficult it is to find a name that sounds good in English, French, Dutch, Arabic and Chinese AND that we like. Sod it sounding weird to other people!

I thought we had it bad trying to find a name we liked that works in both English and Hungarian! We have a girl's name sorted but completely stumped for a boy's name as we used the only one we were agreed on for DS1. I agree, if you both like the name, sod it sounding weird to others.

Hi

Similar thing here too. Everything I suggest non-spanish is seen as wierd or unpronouncable.

Morning

Had my 1st scan this morning and heard heart beat for first time .

I had the scan at the local hospital and they did it in 4D which I didn´t expect. Last time round it was 3D and if you wanted it in 4D you had to go private. Dont know if this regular practice anywhere else. It was a nice surprise, the pictures are amazing.

The woman suggested Im a bit further on than I thought, 15 weeks rather than 12.

Hope everyone else is OK

Wow, that's big difference! Congratulations. My first scan showed I was a week earlier than I thought, at which point all that meant to me was that the end of morning sickness was further away than I was counting on! I've had some cute 4D scans, My Obs just switches his scanner to 4D to see if the pictues are any good and if they are he'll pint them. Had a very sweet one at 23 weeks with her hand cupped to her face. Last appt at 29 weeks though, the images were very hazy. He said as baby gets bigger the images aren't so good. I 'm quite pleased Iwant it to be a surprise when it come out, and not be able to say, Oh you look just like in the photo!

Have to have Glucose test on satuday morning. Dreading it as not good with blood tests or not eating and hate sugary food so worried I'll swoon. Managed to persude Obs to let me do the one hour test though rather than the 3 hour one. Is this standard practice where you are? In UK I thought they only did it on high risk pregnancies.

Hi RubiMama

Good luck with the glucose test - let us know how you get on. I'm having the one hour test on Tuesday morning. It's standard practice here in Oz as well and I wasn't offered it in the UK. I'm not really looking forward to it either, although mainly because I'll have to drag my 2.5 DS along so hope he doesn't start kicking off!

Ooh, forgot to say congratulations patito What a lovely surprise.

Just posting to get this back on my threads i'm on.

All well here, thankfully we don't have the "name that works in different languages" problem here as we're in an English-speaking country. Can't think of any names though...but I still have 19 weeks to decide! Pg going so quick though compared to the first one - I guess it's because I'm busy looking after dd and don't really have the time to think much about the pg.

Congrats to those having scans - I have another (growth scan) in 3 weeks, at 24 wks. I'll have the glucose test too, at about 28 wks, think it's standard here (NZ) too.

Hello everyone, from France.

Our daughter Victoria was born on 10/02/2010 at 10.20am. 12 hours from first contraction to birth and 20 mins of pushing. It all went very well. The care was fantastic too.

The four days in hospital was plenty though - I was climbing the walls by the end. They wanted to keep me in longer as she had lost exactly 10% of her birth weight in the first three days but as soon as my milk came in she put it back on again so I was out of there as quickly as possible.

Hope everyone is well.

Good luck to those TTC.

Congratulations flyingcloud

Congratulations on your new LO flyingcloud! Glad you had such a good experience

Congratulations flyingcloud

Hi all

Just wondering how everyone´´s getting on.

Im finally coming out of first trimester slump. Someone congratualted me on the street yesterday without me saying anything, I didn´´t realise my bump was that noticable yet!

COngrats to flyingcloud...I haven't posted in ages cos not much to report from NZ. Pg is going fine, I'm 23 wks and feel great, I really like the second trimester. Growth scan next week just to check teh growth as I ahve high bp (though bp is fine at mo).

Congrats flyingcloud, lovely name too.

Well I've managed to change doctors here in Canada which is good. It's a bit of a funny setup, 3 doctors rotate at their practice, here for 6 weeks, then back to their home country for a couple of months and so on. I will see all three of them at various stages and will have to work out their rotation to see which one will be there at the birth! Doc2 thinks I am not as far along as I thought, and have a scan next week, which should the the 18week scan, hopefully confirming the dates.

I'm feeling very ambivalent about giving birth here, really uncomfortable even though it's both western culture, english speaking, and it's my second. I should just get over it already!

DS (2y9m) is very lovely about the baby. He asks to look at the pictures in the pregnancy book of the developing baby. He'll stroke my belly and say nice baby, and tells me when the baby comes out, baby has lait (milk). I have a feeling his sweetness will continue and it will be lovely to see him being a big brother.

Congrats flyingcloud! I was wondering the other day how you were getting on. Glad it all went well for you.

Congratulations Flyingcloud! JeMeSouviens your DS sounds just lovely! My DS is 24mo and isn't too interested in the idea of a baby just now. DD (3y5mo), on the other hand, is so excited she's surely going to be worn out by the time the baby arrives.

It's funny trying to get used to being pregnant and working out the local way of doing things. My first OBGYN appointment here (USA) a few months ago has surely made me talk of the town: the nurse told me I was to get ready for the doctor, tossed me a couple of little sheets and told me one was for the top and one for the bottom. She then she skipped out of the room. I guessed that I was to take my clothes off for some sort of examination and tried to work out how the sheets worked. One of them had a hole in the middle. Luckily I'd read 100 Years of Solitude and remembered the honeymoon part where the bride has a special sheet-with-a-hole for her wedding night. Bit weird, but when in Rome. So I stripped my bottom half, laid down the square on the examination couch, and put the honeymoon sheet over my nethers with the hole carefully positioned.

Obviously not the right thing to do. I know that now. The nurse and the doctor came into the room, and she immediately about-turned and stood on the OBGYN trying to get back out of the room. Cue lots of snorting and whispering from the corridor: "You go in and tell her", "No you tell her". Finally the nurse came back in and told me the bottom sheet goes over my bottom half and the holey sheet goes over my head like a poncho.

I knew there was a South American connection.

pog {grin]!!

Don't worry the locals here get it wrong too. My friend down in Quebec had an appt and was fully dressed, so the doctor gives her a towel and leaves the room, so she thinks I'm already dressed why'd he leave. So she gets undressed expecting an exam, doc comes in, says urhm what are you doing? Cue much confusion.

Had a scan on Thursday, confirming the dates, all looking good, and another BOY! Will take awhile to get my head around it as I have been scoping out all the pretty dresses and rompers and all things pink, even planning photo shoots around a girl. Plus DH and a friend were telling me, yes def. a girl. Poor little darling, I don't want him to be a hand me down baby, but realise that it's just silly not to use some of DS1's lovely clothes. I've spent the morning sorting out DS1s little things and binning the overly stained, keeping some aside for keepsakes, and sorting some out to sell so DS2 will at least have some new things.

While we had 100% chosen a girls' name, we are again stuck for boys names. Argh!

POG- I actually did just LOL. I started stripping off for my Obs (in HK)on my first appointment as she asked me to jump onto the exam table and I assumed she was going to stick her hand up my fanjo to confirm the pregnancy. Anyway, med tech being the wonderful thing that it was, she was actually just going to scan me, so I just needed to undo my jeans. oops.

It is hard trying to work out "the system" in different countries. For example last week I found out that my Obs will attend/lead the delivery even if all goes to plan - I'd assumed they just called her if it was looking like they might need her or if I requested it.

Can I join in too, please?
I'm in Germany, first pregnancy and it's about 8 weeks now.

POG, I had to laugh about that, sorry!

Congratulations, flyingcloud.

POG you just made me laugh out loud

So i just found out that i am expecting DC 4 beginning of December. We are in the US and so nervous about the whole thing!
So POG any advice on the differences would be great. When do i call and make an appointment? i am only about 4-5 weeks.
My other children are DD 5.9 DD 3.10 and DS 10 months, i must be mad

Can I join? I'm due end Oct in France and it's nice to hear all of your experiences.

POG how hysterical! I had a similar issue when I moved from France to Germany - in France you're expected to strip top & bottom for your smear tests. Judging by my Gyn's face in Germany it's only bottom half!
Well I'm back in France now so still plenty of opportunity for misunderstanding.

Congrats flyingcloud glad to hear it went well. I'm 'looking forward' to discovering the French system over the next few months...

Canoe I'm also wondering whether to dash back to the UK for the birth. It's for a slightly silly reason though, as I was born outside the UK so my child won't have automatic UK nationality (DH is not British). I'm being ridiculous, aren't I?

Fenouille - do you have strong ties to the UK? Can you prove you lived there for a substantial period of time? That way you can apply for your child to have British nationality but I'd strongly advise them to naturalise otherwise they won't be able to pass it on.