Getting the right vitamins and minerals (keeping things flowing)

Am I the only one that thinks its hard to get a balanced diet of vegetables in Thailand?

Food here is sublime but when your baby bump has decided it can't stomach anything more spicy than Margaret Thatcher's nightie what do you do in Thailand for vitamins and fibre?

Knocked up...now what? Chromosomal Testing

Having lost 3 babies, one of which we know was due to Trisomy 21 we knew we  wanted to have Non Invasive Prenatal Testing (NIPT). From the moment we found out we were expecting again we were counting down until we got these results and were treading on eggshells until we got to the 11-13 weeks window.

"Will power" my arse - How men are not superior

I'm not sure about other relationships but ours is a constant battle ground of proving who is more intelligent, who cooks the best food, who is the best at mindless trivia, who empties the dishwasher the most, who changes the cat litter and who has the most will power.

To be fair my husband probably tops me at most of this but nothing surprised me more than my husbands recent demise at completing a 3 week detox programme.

It sucks to be pregnant sometimes

OK, I've had enough now...can we fast forward 7 months where I get to hold the pink, smiley, thing that smells of "baby" and that will coo and chirp at me.

Yeah I know I'm dreaming, but for anyone else wondering what it really feels like to be 11 weeks pregnant:

1. You can't decide if the small podge on your waist is the start of a baby bump or simply chocolate biscuits. Either way your clothes are getting tight and uncomfortable
2. You can just about function in a vertical position for 2 hours, then you need to recharge. You've lost all of your Duracell abilities and are forced to re-hydrate, on not much more than water, and of course, chocolate biscuits, in an attempt to carry on with your day
3. Your mood swings are more apparent than schizophrenia
4. You work calendar is impossible to manage around your strange and unpredictable urges to either pee or stuff your face (normally with chocolate biscuits). I had to excuse myself the other day from a management meeting to inhale a chocolate brownie, it suddenly became a life and death situation, it was the brownie or my baby was going to start eating me from the inside out
5. You feel like a walking multi zone wine fridge, only you can't keep each zone at the right temperature. Your head will suddenly seem too hot, whilst your feet are freezing and then all of a sudden your feet start jumping around with irritable leg syndrome whilst your shoulders start shivering
6. Your favorite food has become the enemy, giving you at best only "wind" but at worst, nights full of heartburn and sicky burps
7. Your dreams have turned from nothing important, or memorable, into Brad Pitt orgies in birthing pools, with Brad Pitt holding the poop scoop
8. A conversation with anyone about your woe's is impossible because your friends without babies don't understand, your friends that are trying for babies are envious and your friends with babies can only remember the "baby smell" and "how it's all worth it"
9. Your husband can't associate with your problems because you don't look pregnant and he still thinks that life will be a bunch of roses and that nothing will change when the baby arrives
10. And your brain has just started the process of turning to mush, so you may have already forgotten what you read at the start of this post

Anyway, nothing I can do about it now, I got myself into this and hopefully my baby will come out of it (as it were). But I will happily admit that I don't think I'm going to be good at this pregnancy malarky...

TIT - King Bhumibol the Great

My husband first taught me the meditative technique of quietly repeating the word "TIT" to yourself over and over again.

It stands for "This is Thailand" and is sometimes the only way you can explain things here when all common sense seems to have evaporated, or may not have existed in the first place.

Tonight I am sitting at home praying to the internet god for his wonderful ability to send me internet television in Thailand.

It is a sad time in Thailand as we have lost the very dear father of the nation, Bhumibol Adulyadej, known as King Bhumibol the Great. He is so revered that it has hit the nation incredibly hard and we have started 1 year of official mourning, where Thai TV has banned all "entertainment shows", and we have to wear black for the foreseeable future.

Selfishly, up there in some of my first thoughts, was how on earth will I cope with my growing baby bump with only 3 black work dresses, 2 black maxi dresses and 2 black cocktail dresses in my wardrobe, and what if I can't find black maternity clothes in Thailand???!!! 

I then panicked about what television I would be able to watch whilst I'm lying on the sofa trying not to vomit most nights.

I havent solved the clothing dilemma yet, but thankfully we do have internet television with some channels that do not seem to be affected by the entertainment blockade.

All our thoughts are with our Thai friends and colleagues, the King was a great inspiration for the Country and will be truly missed.

Knocked up...now what? Chillin

Maybe the Thai's have got something right about this pregnancy lark.

I find myself once again in the early weeks of pregnancy. This is the 4th time and of course there is a lot of trepidation. But this time I am doing things a little differently, I'm doing it Thai style.

My doctor, at the moment, is Dr Somsri (Bumrungrad). She specialises in high risk pregnancies, she is very chilled (for a doctor), she smiles and laughs and talks about her family (even when you would prefer to be talking about your expanding family) but she is lovely and her English is excellent, and she even has a dose of empathy and cultural understanding.

But Thai doctors, and therefore Thai people, can be a bit worrisome and tend to air on the side of caution, with basic advice amounting to "don't move", 'don't think' and forget about having anymore fun.

As with the previous non viable pregnancies I was planning on toughing it out as I meant to go on...this baby has to fit into my regime, not the other way around, and it might as well start now. Especially after having our first scan (6 weeks and 1 day) and finding a good heartbeat, and that for the first time I had some mild morning sickness which is the one thing that has probably made me the happiest for months and months...at last, maybe, hopefully, I am having a normal, healthy pregnancy.

But then it happened.....

That dreaded little drop of blood on the toilet paper (that toilet paper that all us TTC women are now so accustomed to studying in more detail than a mother looking for lice after an outbreak at nursery school). We were about to fly to Singapore the same day for a fun filled (now sober) weekend with friends and I didn't know what to do, less than 24 hours earlier I had seen my babies heartbeat, could it have gone so horribly wrong so quickly????

I called Dr Somsri and her advice was effectively "don't move", 'don't think' and forget about having anymore fun. She doubled my dose of Progesterone, but told me not to worry and scheduled me for a scan in 7 days, she also told me not to fly and that I should move as little as possible and have bed rest, I guess in this type of situation gravity definitely isn't your friend.

I have been finding it hard to focus on work, and to be honest my boss is a prick, plus the nausea and cramping had been genuinely getting a little worse, so for the first time ever it was easy for me to follow doctors orders, and I am currently on a full weeks sick leave doing nothing but lying down and watching TV box sets.

For the first few days I was genuinely worried. I don't know if it was mind over matter but my cramps and nausea were getting much worse, and the cramping was really worrying me. 3 days in and I tried to sit up to type some emails and 30 mins finished me off and gave me every justification I needed to lie back down and finish Season 6 of Game of Thrones. 

I'm now 6 days in to doing not much at all (with 2 days until our next scan) and I am starting to feel less worried, although even a walk to the toilet seems to set off unexpected cramps and once again provides me with all of the justification I need to sit back down on my arse and stretch out with a warm hot water bottle.

I still feel like a fraud though. I've watched most of my friends battle their way through early pregnancy as if it was nothing more than a hangover, seeing them prep themselves for the real shit that happens after 9 months, when they will have no excuses or time to think about themselves. And here I am, lying on the sofa, now working my way through every episode of The Wire (because I missed the hype the first time round).

But, this is my 4th chance, and I don't want to mess this one up. I do want to be able to look back and think that I did anything wrong, I want to start putting my baby first, to get used to the idea that life is no longer about me and instead is about protecting something innocent.

So here I am, being and thinking like a mum for the first time ever. Work is almost out of my mind, the condo is tidier, dinner is prepared on time and I've even made ice cream and baked a cake...this shit is getting real and I want it to keep getting "real".

I want as much "real" as humanly possible, so I'm gonna chill and I'm gonna chill and I'm gonna chill some more, because I'm in Thailand, because I am lucky, because I have worked hard up until now to make some of that luck, and because I can....and because it's how the Thai's do it.

Knocked up...now what? Choosing a Doctor

So you've confirmed in your own mind that you are pregnant, but how do you find a doctor that you can trust and that speaks enough English to communicate with you effectively, and with some empathy?