What this blog has been skilfully avoiding for the past months is that I’m five months pregnant. This meant that whilst we were bashing dunes and getting dehydrated back in April, I was feeling a little fragile. And upon our return from a trip to London, the combination of an overnight flight, tiredness and morning sickness meant I vomited at the side of the road at 7am directly in front of a line of surprised workers waiting for their bus. I haven’t done that since an ill-advised night of drinking some years ago, and then my only audience at 2am was a drunk Irishman who expressed his disgust.
Anyway, whilst I will try to avoid the blog becoming a detailed diary of developing stretchmarks, birthing techniques and swollen feet, there are a couple of things about being pregnant in Doha which may be different to being pregnant in the UK. Perhaps not, since I haven’t incubated a child anywhere else, but maybe…
- I have been going to a private hospital for scans, check-ups and tests which is more like a hotel or office than a medical establishment. You can’t have a scan without having a check-up, and you have to pay for both of those, and then the Doctor sends you for blood-tests that of course mean handing over a credit card first. An afternoon there can set you back about £200, and that doesn’t include the refreshments between appointments at the stylish hospital café (peach smoothie while we wait for the scan results, anybody?). Nothing has made me appreciate the NHS more.
- It is officially illegal to engage in “intimate relations” with members of the opposite sex in Qatar, let alone have babies, out of wedlock. So it is assumed that you are married when you go to antenatal appointments (though we’ve never yet actually had to produce our wedding certificate) and therefore when the nurse wants to know how long you’ve been trying for a baby, she asks ‘how long have you been married?’. Which reminds me of being in Syria where every taxi driver would ask whether you were married, how long for, and how many children you have. Trying to explain that you hadn’t quite got round to kids yet elicited a look full of pity since you had presumably been focussing on nothing else since your wedding night.
- No-one warns you in advance that you’re not meant to drink too much caffeine when you’re pregnant. That means no more endless cups of tea which is, in my view, a tragedy especially since any child of mine will be brought up on the stuff. On the upside, if you haven’t had any alcohol for months then Holsten non-alcoholic beer tastes like the real thing.
- As I was lying on a bed waiting for the nurse to spread gel on my stomach for our 12-week scan (the one where we found out if everything looked normal), the doctor started telling Mr A and I that sometimes when she does this scan there isn’t a heartbeat and then the woman comes in bleeding a couple of days later. She is UK- and American-trained but perhaps missed some classes on sensitivity. It may be a Doha thing: a friend of ours here told us that at the same stage their doctor clapped his hands and announced jovially, “…and now we shall see if the baby is alive!”.
- At a later ultrasound scan, a hijab-ed Arab doctor who didn’t have great English told us the ‘tallness’ of our baby and giggled at the size of the bun’s willy. At the end, she thanked us for the beautiful baby, gave us some test results including how much ‘liquor’ was swilling around in my abdomen (apparently just the right amount) and a CD with lots of totally unfathomable pictures.
- Pregnant women aren’t meant to change cat litter trays which is obviously leaving a huge void in my life.
- Mr A’s employer doesn’t recommend giving birth here so will pay for me to return to London for my ‘confinement’. I’m wondering whether an elaborate gown is supplied for this 19thCentury style practice?
- I didn’t tell anyone at work I was pregnant for the first 3 months (though really it’s only two months since you’re already one month pregnant when you find out, what a cheat). In order to stall impending conversations about career plans, I had made up a story about not knowing when we might leave Qatar. In the end no-one minded about this subterfuge. In fact the senior Qataris were uncharacteristically excited by the prospect of a child, and at one point threatened to buy cake for the whole department in celebration (I was incredibly relieved when this never in fact materialised). Qatari ladies quiz me in the toilet about my birthing plans, and reveal that they are 28 and already have four children.
- When we were in Damascus, we told the man looking after the decrepit old-town house that I was expecting and he began ululating, imitating how the baby would be greeted in the Arab world. He was very clear that the little one should be born in the UK so that it is ‘white’ rather than ‘brown’.
- Syrians say that you can crave sleep rather than food. That’s what my pregnancy is all about.
- A Philippina woman at work who I’d only met once before was talking to me when she stopped to ask ‘Is there…? I mean, is it….? Are you….? Is there someone in there?’ before stroking my stomach for longer than was strictly necessary.
- Last week I was at home when the fire alarm was going off intermittently. I ignored it. Then it started going off more insistently so I opened the door to our flat, smelt smoke, and headed out. Grabbing keys and phone, I walked down 36 flights of stairs to the ground floor where there was predictable chaos with a few fire engines mixed in and lots of people with pet boxes which made me feel incredibly guilty for having abandoned the cats to impending smoke inhalation. I walked around to the back of our building in order to be in the shade (midday, 40+ degrees, no sunglasses) and saw plumes of smoke coming out the second floor. Luckily Mr A’s car was sitting in the car park so I sat in there with the air conditioning on full power, trying to ignore the aroma of his old Chicken Tikka sandwich which had been gentle warming for a while, awaiting his return. Then we went straight to the hospital for a scan where the woman looked at me wearily when I explained that I didn’t have my appointment card because there was a fire in my building. Apparently the men’s sauna went up in flames, which is probably divine retribution for anyone thinking they needed a sauna in Doha in the first place. Our spare bedroom retains a faint whiff of barbecue.
- The American book I have about pregnancy began measuring progress in fruit and pulses. A zygote the size of a pinto bean became a medium green olive, a large lime and then a peach. Obviously they ran out of inspiration for large fruits at that point because disappointingly since then it’s been a fist and a softball.
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