A pearl of wisdom I often bore my fellow UAE baby mamas with is that, in some ways, this country is the best place on earth to have a baby. Parenthood, particularly of tiny babies is revered - everyone wants to know your baby's age, gender, marvel at their cuteness and cuddle them if you'll let them. Babies are welcome in most places, no one tuts when they cry and no one makes you feel like a nuisance. If you have decent insurance, you get to give birth in a beautiful private hospital and it's very unlikely that during the antenatal and postnatal stage that you will experience long waits in clinics for a brief appointment with an over-worked and under resourced midwife or doctor.
However, it can be pretty hair-raising - navigating private health insurance for prenatal and maternal care can be intimidating if you're used to a comprehensive public health service, as can weeding out providers who are more interested in your insurance money than your welfare. Obviously it can be a stressful and financially ruinous experience for the uninsured, particularly if you experience complications such as premature birth. And then during pregnancy and after the baby's born - the advice, oh the advice, the unsolicited advice, from seemingly every quarter. It would try the patience of a saint.
This blog has been bubbling away in my brain ever since I started puking my face off last year, but was too busy puking, then giving birth, then looking after an actual baby and baby's big sister to do much about it. I think it's really arisen from the fact that I felt appalling for most of my two pregnancies and pretty much anyone who spoke to me annoyed the hell out of me. So, here are the top five annoying things people see fit to say to you when you're pregnant, and why they're so very, very irritating.
Thinking about commenting on the size of a woman's bump or lack thereof during pregnancy? Whether you think she's truly massive and can't possibly be less than 10 months pregnant, or, you think her bump is tiny and neat and you feel like congratulating her on (vomits) holding on to her figure. Please don't.
I had my second baby at the age of 39, and it's fair to say I didn't exactly hit the gym hard after the birth of the first, so my stomach muscles gave up the ghost with zero resistance when I got pregnant with Desert Baby 2. While I wasn't exactly small with Desert Baby 1 due to her being a reasonably large baby, I was MASSIVE this time, at least, I believe I must have been, because literally everyone I met saw fit to comment on it.
I started saying from around month four, when it was becoming obvious that I was pregnant and not just had a big lunch, that "yes, it's a big bump, yes, it's a big baby, yes, it's my second, the first was a big baby, no, there's definitely only one". Good defensive measure, yes, but five months of being basically told what a great big biffer I was every time I was out in public got old pretty quick.
Just think, non-pregos, how you would feel if someone felt the need to comment on your size every time you went out in public (and yes I'm aware this happens to very thin and very fat people, and that is appalling too. If you do it, you should seriously have a word with yourself). Think about what that does to your ego, on top of whatever grim symptoms or side effects a pregnant lady may be dealing with.
However, the weekend before DB2 was born, for some peculiar reason I cannot remember now, we felt it necessary to go to IKEA, and a nice lady went out of her way to come up to me and tell me I had a beautiful belly. That cheered me up on a day when I had reached the delightful pelvic pain stage, and walking felt like swinging two large painful hams below a watermelon made of solid lead. I'm not usually the kind of person that needs such validation, but, after months of "gosh, are you sure there's only one in there?" a compliment had me weeping with gratitude.
I'm sorry to be a party pooper, but it's really none of your business, particularly if the person you're accosting about their pregnancy is someone you don't know that well, or even a total stranger. I had various people telling me with DB2 that I was DEFINITELY having a boy, they could tell by the size/shape of my bump the way I was "carrying" and my symptoms, and it was all nonsense.
People like to think that they can tell what you're having through a variety of old wives' tosh and most people, knowing I had a girl already, assumed I MUST want to have a boy, because I must want the "perfect" Peter and Jane family of one boy one girl, or because, boys are still considered the preferred gender among certain cultures in the UAE, or, because, you know, having another girl would be "boring".
Well, fiddlesticks to all those people. I'm grateful for and happy beyond measure with my two girls. They're both magical and brilliant in their own individual ways, and considering what a grim time I had during both pregnancies, I was pretty damned pleased with what I'd achieved by having them at all. What I certainly didn't need after 18 combined months of vomiting, social isolation due to illness and awful dietary restrictions, was someone telling me it would be nicer if I could just manage to achieve a bit more variety.
So, next time you're thinking of probing into the sex of someone's baby and commiserating or congratulating them depending on what you perceive they will want to have, don't. You don't know what they've gone through to get where they are. They could have previously lost a child of the sex you've just told them they're definitely not having, they could have longed for the sex they're not having and be dealing with it in their own way. Seriously, just don't go there.
Seriously, person I've only just met, get your head out of my downstairs department, what is WRONG with you? Would you demand such intimate detail about any other kind of medical event and profess expertise? Did you want to know the kind of pain relief your uncle received when he had his kidney stones removed? Or your best friend's husband when he went off for the snip? Oh, so you had a baby yourself? I'm all for women bonding over shared experiences, but you are not an expert on every kind of birth ever, thanks.
DB1's birth was what they call traumatic, and it took me a long time to mentally process what had happened to us both, and my main coping mechanism, was to laugh about it, and recount it in amusing fashion for the entertainment of others. But, the physical scars healed from the emergency cesarean under general anesthetic, a long time before the mental ones. And it would all come rushing back when more than three years down the line, in the early stages of pregnancy with DB2, when my unflappable Scandinavian doctor stopped taking notes, put down her pen, and said; "You know, I would describe your first child's birth as 'very traumatic, rather than simply traumatic'.
It's true that the cesarean rate in our part of the world is reputedly among the highest, so you are statistically more likely to end up with one here than if you have your baby elsewhere. I have pondered the reasons for that, chief among them is, I suspect, a revenue-fueled, private insurance system means c sections = more money for hospitals, so of course they are going to push patients towards them if they can get away with it.
There are other reasons too, and that's a post for another day, but I know from experience that it can feel like a struggle to find a doctor who isn't going to lead you in that direction. I'm not knocking those who choose cesarean by the way, it was just that having done it once, I was keen to avoid doing it again, as I found the circumstances under which it happened hard to get over, and the recovery a lot harder than I was prepared for, and certainly a lot harder than I was prepared to go through again having an active four year old to look after already.
As it happened, DB2 was born "naturally" or had a physiological birth, as I understand the Royal College of Midwives in the UK now refers to it, but to birth "naturally" or not, to epidural or not, to water birth or not, to have a doula or not, to get an elective c section or not, are all deeply personal decisions that I would say most women put a great deal of time, effort and thought into weighing up, and so, random stranger who has realised I'm pregnant and for some reason has started interrogating me about how I'm going to give birth, the chances are I have a better idea about what is best for me and my baby birthwise than you do. Thanks for your interest and everything, but get lost.
Controversial one this, as I am sure many would think it churlish to be churlish about a compliment, but this would be my reply had I had the nerve to honest when people said that to me: "Well, I feel awful, unmentionable parts of me hurt, my ankles are the size my thighs used to be before I got pregnant, my thighs are the circumference of the earth, my feet feel like they're going to burst, I can't put my own shoes on, I have been sick every day for at least four months, and there's no sign of it abating, so stop ignoring the fact that I feel like I am dying because it's made my hair and skin look nice."
You know what? In the highly unlikely event that I get pregnant again, it's probably best not to speak to me at all until the baby is born.
No, no you can't, unless you are one of those unicorns I am assured exist who experience no problematic side effects of pregnancy and gain weight at exactly the right rate that their doctor recommends and internally serve on a silver platter all the burgers, cakes, sweets, glasses of full fat milk that people proffer to them to their gestating offspring with no ill effects to them or their child.
That most respected of organs, the Khaleej Times, reckons that as many as one in three pregnant women in the UAE experience a degree of gestational diabetes. Other conditions frequently experienced by pregnant women here are gestational hypertension (high blood pressure) and low hemoglobin levels, or anemia. If, like me, you've experienced two out of three of those in both pregnancies (blood pressure and blood sugar with DB1, blood sugar and low hemoglobin with DB2) then you can eat what you want, provided it's low sugar, low salt, low carb, high iron and not too many calories because extra weight gain could exacerbate gestational diabetes. In other words, eggs, spinach, lean red meat, that's about it.
And for the record, yes pregnant woman can and do drink non-decaff coffee, because funnily enough, they've researched it, and found out that they would have to drink a large amount of coffee every day for it to have any effect on their baby, so the odd latte now and then is unlikely to be a problem. So leave them alone to marginally elevate their blood pressure with caffeine once in a while rather than by annoying the heck out of them with your unsolicited advice and interfering.
OK, I feel better now.
Next week, I'll deal with all those people who stick their big heads into the pram of a slightly grizzling baby and shout "what happen baby, why you crrrrrying?!" causing said baby to start screaming their head off from fright. I say next week, it will probably be in six months, if I'm lucky.
However, it can be pretty hair-raising - navigating private health insurance for prenatal and maternal care can be intimidating if you're used to a comprehensive public health service, as can weeding out providers who are more interested in your insurance money than your welfare. Obviously it can be a stressful and financially ruinous experience for the uninsured, particularly if you experience complications such as premature birth. And then during pregnancy and after the baby's born - the advice, oh the advice, the unsolicited advice, from seemingly every quarter. It would try the patience of a saint.
This blog has been bubbling away in my brain ever since I started puking my face off last year, but was too busy puking, then giving birth, then looking after an actual baby and baby's big sister to do much about it. I think it's really arisen from the fact that I felt appalling for most of my two pregnancies and pretty much anyone who spoke to me annoyed the hell out of me. So, here are the top five annoying things people see fit to say to you when you're pregnant, and why they're so very, very irritating.
1. "Madam is very big now" (coupled with mime of a massively distended stomach).
Thinking about commenting on the size of a woman's bump or lack thereof during pregnancy? Whether you think she's truly massive and can't possibly be less than 10 months pregnant, or, you think her bump is tiny and neat and you feel like congratulating her on (vomits) holding on to her figure. Please don't.
I had my second baby at the age of 39, and it's fair to say I didn't exactly hit the gym hard after the birth of the first, so my stomach muscles gave up the ghost with zero resistance when I got pregnant with Desert Baby 2. While I wasn't exactly small with Desert Baby 1 due to her being a reasonably large baby, I was MASSIVE this time, at least, I believe I must have been, because literally everyone I met saw fit to comment on it.
I started saying from around month four, when it was becoming obvious that I was pregnant and not just had a big lunch, that "yes, it's a big bump, yes, it's a big baby, yes, it's my second, the first was a big baby, no, there's definitely only one". Good defensive measure, yes, but five months of being basically told what a great big biffer I was every time I was out in public got old pretty quick.
Just think, non-pregos, how you would feel if someone felt the need to comment on your size every time you went out in public (and yes I'm aware this happens to very thin and very fat people, and that is appalling too. If you do it, you should seriously have a word with yourself). Think about what that does to your ego, on top of whatever grim symptoms or side effects a pregnant lady may be dealing with.
However, the weekend before DB2 was born, for some peculiar reason I cannot remember now, we felt it necessary to go to IKEA, and a nice lady went out of her way to come up to me and tell me I had a beautiful belly. That cheered me up on a day when I had reached the delightful pelvic pain stage, and walking felt like swinging two large painful hams below a watermelon made of solid lead. I'm not usually the kind of person that needs such validation, but, after months of "gosh, are you sure there's only one in there?" a compliment had me weeping with gratitude.
2. "Is it a boy or a girl? You don't know? What do you have already? Well, I hope it will be a boy/girl/pumpkin/sweet transvestite from Transylvaniaaaaah/kitten (delete as appropriate)"
People like to think that they can tell what you're having through a variety of old wives' tosh and most people, knowing I had a girl already, assumed I MUST want to have a boy, because I must want the "perfect" Peter and Jane family of one boy one girl, or because, boys are still considered the preferred gender among certain cultures in the UAE, or, because, you know, having another girl would be "boring".
Well, fiddlesticks to all those people. I'm grateful for and happy beyond measure with my two girls. They're both magical and brilliant in their own individual ways, and considering what a grim time I had during both pregnancies, I was pretty damned pleased with what I'd achieved by having them at all. What I certainly didn't need after 18 combined months of vomiting, social isolation due to illness and awful dietary restrictions, was someone telling me it would be nicer if I could just manage to achieve a bit more variety.
So, next time you're thinking of probing into the sex of someone's baby and commiserating or congratulating them depending on what you perceive they will want to have, don't. You don't know what they've gone through to get where they are. They could have previously lost a child of the sex you've just told them they're definitely not having, they could have longed for the sex they're not having and be dealing with it in their own way. Seriously, just don't go there.
3. "What kind of birth are you having? Oh, I had a 10lbs baby with only whale song for pain relief because women who opt for elective cesareans or epidurals are WEAK... WEAK I TELL YOU!"
Seriously, person I've only just met, get your head out of my downstairs department, what is WRONG with you? Would you demand such intimate detail about any other kind of medical event and profess expertise? Did you want to know the kind of pain relief your uncle received when he had his kidney stones removed? Or your best friend's husband when he went off for the snip? Oh, so you had a baby yourself? I'm all for women bonding over shared experiences, but you are not an expert on every kind of birth ever, thanks.
DB1's birth was what they call traumatic, and it took me a long time to mentally process what had happened to us both, and my main coping mechanism, was to laugh about it, and recount it in amusing fashion for the entertainment of others. But, the physical scars healed from the emergency cesarean under general anesthetic, a long time before the mental ones. And it would all come rushing back when more than three years down the line, in the early stages of pregnancy with DB2, when my unflappable Scandinavian doctor stopped taking notes, put down her pen, and said; "You know, I would describe your first child's birth as 'very traumatic, rather than simply traumatic'.
It's true that the cesarean rate in our part of the world is reputedly among the highest, so you are statistically more likely to end up with one here than if you have your baby elsewhere. I have pondered the reasons for that, chief among them is, I suspect, a revenue-fueled, private insurance system means c sections = more money for hospitals, so of course they are going to push patients towards them if they can get away with it.
There are other reasons too, and that's a post for another day, but I know from experience that it can feel like a struggle to find a doctor who isn't going to lead you in that direction. I'm not knocking those who choose cesarean by the way, it was just that having done it once, I was keen to avoid doing it again, as I found the circumstances under which it happened hard to get over, and the recovery a lot harder than I was prepared for, and certainly a lot harder than I was prepared to go through again having an active four year old to look after already.
As it happened, DB2 was born "naturally" or had a physiological birth, as I understand the Royal College of Midwives in the UK now refers to it, but to birth "naturally" or not, to epidural or not, to water birth or not, to have a doula or not, to get an elective c section or not, are all deeply personal decisions that I would say most women put a great deal of time, effort and thought into weighing up, and so, random stranger who has realised I'm pregnant and for some reason has started interrogating me about how I'm going to give birth, the chances are I have a better idea about what is best for me and my baby birthwise than you do. Thanks for your interest and everything, but get lost.
4. "Oh, you don't feel well? You look really well, you're blooming in fact".
Controversial one this, as I am sure many would think it churlish to be churlish about a compliment, but this would be my reply had I had the nerve to honest when people said that to me: "Well, I feel awful, unmentionable parts of me hurt, my ankles are the size my thighs used to be before I got pregnant, my thighs are the circumference of the earth, my feet feel like they're going to burst, I can't put my own shoes on, I have been sick every day for at least four months, and there's no sign of it abating, so stop ignoring the fact that I feel like I am dying because it's made my hair and skin look nice."
You know what? In the highly unlikely event that I get pregnant again, it's probably best not to speak to me at all until the baby is born.
5. "You're pregnant, your're eating for two, you can eat what you want."
That most respected of organs, the Khaleej Times, reckons that as many as one in three pregnant women in the UAE experience a degree of gestational diabetes. Other conditions frequently experienced by pregnant women here are gestational hypertension (high blood pressure) and low hemoglobin levels, or anemia. If, like me, you've experienced two out of three of those in both pregnancies (blood pressure and blood sugar with DB1, blood sugar and low hemoglobin with DB2) then you can eat what you want, provided it's low sugar, low salt, low carb, high iron and not too many calories because extra weight gain could exacerbate gestational diabetes. In other words, eggs, spinach, lean red meat, that's about it.
And for the record, yes pregnant woman can and do drink non-decaff coffee, because funnily enough, they've researched it, and found out that they would have to drink a large amount of coffee every day for it to have any effect on their baby, so the odd latte now and then is unlikely to be a problem. So leave them alone to marginally elevate their blood pressure with caffeine once in a while rather than by annoying the heck out of them with your unsolicited advice and interfering.
OK, I feel better now.
Next week, I'll deal with all those people who stick their big heads into the pram of a slightly grizzling baby and shout "what happen baby, why you crrrrrying?!" causing said baby to start screaming their head off from fright. I say next week, it will probably be in six months, if I'm lucky.
