Born in the UAE

I swore to myself before Desert Baby was born that I would not become one of those irritating people who thinks they have been there, done it all, just because they have managed to squeeze out a child, and starts dispensing advice to all and sundry. But having a baby in Dubai is one of those experiences about which you find yourself looking back thinking: "If only I had known X, I would have done Y" particularly when it comes to matters concerning health insurance, so I now can't help myself from delivering nuggets of childbirth chat to anyone I think might conceivably conceive.

If I can get the one key bit advice out of the way before I thrill you with my "born in the UAE" experience, it is this: To anyone embarking on the "magical journey" to parenthood in Dubai (apart from never use that phrase "magical journey" again, seriously, have a word with yourself): Shop around, find the right doctor to whom you feel happy and confident talking about your unmentionables, because you're going to have to talk about them - a lot. If this means spending more money than you would like, you are just going to have to loosen your purse strings and go for it, as you don't want to have a flounce and change healthcare providers at 35 weeks when you lose confidence in your ob/gyn, like I did.

So it was that my baby girl was delivered by a Maltese doctor who trained in the UK, and was the second of three doctors I saw during my pregnancy. I had previously ruled him out because the cost of the hospital he works for was above what my health insurance budget would allow (see above). In the end though, the training in the UK was key for me because I find doctors who have experience of the system in dear old Blighty tend to get where I am coming from. Ie, as a patient who has grown up with the NHS - I won't expect and don't want interventions, screenings, tests etc to happen unless necessary, and I don't expect to be handed five different types of antibiotics and hospital grade painkillers at every routine appointment - I just want to turn up, get checked and if everything is fine, be sent on my way.

I switched doctors relatively late on as at 26 weeks, my previous doctor had started making sinister mutterings about wanting to deliver via c section a few weeks early, because of the alleged gargantuan size of my baby according to scan measurements. When I suggested to her that large baby is not a reason in itself to deliver by c section, further sinister mutterings, this time about gestational diabetes emerged, and then inducing before my due date was floated as an idea, and then a random glucose test of my urine revealed a dodgy result, so I was summoned to hospital to have my blood sugar tested on Christmas Day, told no sweets and few carbs throughout the festive season, and sent to an endocrinologist for assessment. I dutifully attended the endocrinologist appointment, and found he could not have been less interested in my very slightly raised blood sugar levels if he tried, and at that point, I sensed a falling out was about to occur with my ob/gyn doctor.

This was all made doubly irksome by the fact that none of this was covered by my health insurance. Despite having the best level of cover available on the scheme provided by him indoors' company, as with most providers, there is a financial limit when it comes to maternity coverage, which in our case did not even cover the whole of the cost of the delivery, so all antenatal and postnatal costs came out of our own pockets.

The even more frustrating factor in this for me was that this desert-born baby of mine is a fairly average size for a baby born in Europe, maybe on the large side, but by no means excessive. She was just under 8lbs 4oz (3.74kg) and 52cm tall when she was born, admittedly a week early, but the fuss that was made about her size during my pregnancy was such that I half expected her to be born 3ft tall, in school uniform with scabby knees and a satchel slung over her shoulder, offering me her first tooth to put under her pillow. Or, possibly wearing a gown and mortarboard ready for her university graduation while engaging me in a debate on Middle Eastern politics.

No amount of my gesturing to my own substantial nearly 5ft 8ins frame, and mentions of the fact that him indoors is just under 6ft, that my brother, dad and two uncles are all well over 6ft, that I have an aunt who is nearly 6ft for God's sake, that I was over 4kg when I was born, and my brother over 4.5kg, would stem the level of concern about Desert Baby's projected size. The tide of whispered tales of the behemoth child that I was carrying seemed to echo through hospital corridors as I waddled to my various appointments.

To be fair, the fact is, if you will excuse the crude generalisation, the majority of babies born in the UAE tend not to be that big, for reasons to do with ethnic backgrounds and other factors. So, the prospect of delivering a large child probably frightens the heck out of a lot of doctors here, as they may not have that much experience of it. Maltese Doc seemed to realise that I had quite enough of people banging on about the size of my baby, and while he admitted he wasn't overly delighted about the prospect of delivering a baby weighing over 4kg, he didn't harp on about it in the way my previous doctor had. But, by the time I saw him at around 34 weeks, he ended up diagnosing me with gestational hypertension. I suspect this was at least partly brought on by various people prior to him speculating about the vastness of my bump, how big the baby was, and how I should definitely have a c section for my own good to avoid being split in half by the birth of the burgeoning beast growing within me.

The thing those thinking about getting knocked up need to realise is, and I expect this applies everywhere, not just the UAE, is that when you get pregnant, random people who don't really know you from Adam will start to advise you on how/when you should give birth, and this is vital piece of advice number 2: Ignore people who start telling you that you should have a c section, unless you have come to that decision yourself for whatever reason, or unless they're a medical professional and have valid medical reasons for doing so. The reason for this is they're not the ones who have to be sliced open, and more importantly, heal from being sliced open, of which more later. However, if you decide to have a c section for whatever reason, good on you. You're clearly much more decisive than I was during my pregnancy. Personally, I hated the idea of turning up on an allotted day to be sliced open as if I was having my tonsils out.

Gestational hypertension, hospital induced or not, meant that I needed extra monitoring, so I found myself attending a routine CTG (cardiotocography) appointment on 5th February, to monitor Desert Baby's heartbeat to make sure the hypertension, her alleged prodigious size and my slightly raised blood sugar had not had a negative impact on her. For those of you who haven't experienced this, you lie on a hospital bed with large bands strapped around your bump, making you look like Humpty Dumpty's internally injured cousin.

I had dropped him indoors off at work and arrived early at the hospital, obediently sitting in the cafe sipping green tea in an attempt to remain calm to try to avoid yet another high blood pressure reading. As I sat there, I started to notice what could be very early stage contractions. "Good," I thought, "this could be the early stages of labour which could mean she is going to arrive of her own accord so medical types can stop dangling the threat of induction/c section over my head."

I wasn't noticing a whole lot of movement from Desert Baby at this point, but this wasn't unusual, as she often seemed to sleep for significant periods of time, particularly during the day when I was out and about. However, after the CTG, when I took the results to  Maltese Doc, his usually deadpan brow furrowed slightly, because the baby should have been showing more movement than she was, so I was sent back for another session. At this stage, I thought nothing of it, as I had grown used to being sent for repeat blood pressure checks to see if initially alarming results were in fact a problem, and they invariably weren't.

I must confess I was probably naive to be so certain that everything was fine and it was just medical types being over cautious, in the way medical types are meant to be. Now I look back, there was something of a serious mood in the consultation room as I blithely got up and set off for the labour ward once more.

So there I was again, half egg, half woman, marooned like a harpooned whale on the deck of a ship, being CTG-ed to my heart's content, alone in the labour room. Part way through the test, an alarm sounded, and a nurse came into the room. My memory of what happened starts to get sketchy at that point, but I seem to remember telling the nurse: "An alarm just went off, and I am not feeling much movement," at which point she put an oxygen mask on my face and told me to breathe deeply.

A person less stubbornly determined that everything was absofloggin'lutely fine and all a bit of a fuss about nothing, would probably have already been properly frightened by this point, but it was the oxygen mask that finally did it for me. It was at this point, when most people would probably think: "Oh no, please save my baby", or, "Oh no, I must call him indoors", or, "Oh no, something terrible has happened," whereas for me: The cold pressure of the oxygen mask on my flabby, pregnant face really made me think: "Oh, b*ll**ks".

Buttons were pressed, more alarms sounded, and various other medical types came into the room, including a staff nurse, who told me to change positions, which got Desert Baby's heart rate moving again, as it turned out the reason for the alarm sounding was a dramatic dip in heart rate. Then a doctor arrived, who announced, when a second major dip in the heart rate occurred, that we were going for an emergency c section under general anesthetic.

I realise now that most people would have called their partners when sent for a second CTG in one day but all kinds of boring factors like not wanting to waste him indoors' leave and not second guessing there actually being something wrong had prevented me from doing so. So, then began part one of a somewhat farcical preparation for an emergency operation. Nurses dragged my tent-like dress over my head and ripped off my underwear and threw a surgical gown over me while I was muttering into my phone: "They want to do an emergency c section now because the baby's heart rate keeps dropping, they want to do it now, you have to come now.... Come now." Luckily his place of work is five minutes from the hospital, so he was there before Desert Baby was born and sat with her while she was being treated and I was still having my innards sewn up and posted back in.

The bit before the operation was all a bit Middle Eastern Holby City as they pushed my bed towards the operating theatre with the doctor shouting into the phone about what I had eaten for breakfast. This would have all been terrifying, but luckily the theatre staff lightened the mood for me by quickly descending the situation into pure comedy farce as we waited for Maltese doc to arrive to commence the slicing.***

"How much do you weigh? 70kg?" asked the anesthetist

I had already had a pre-med at this point so was dozy enough that I failed to give the snort of derision that those who know me well would have expected at this vast underestimation of my bloated eight and three quarter month pregnant carcass. I am fairly sure I uttered something along the lines of "70kg? You're having a laugh ain'tchya? Try 100kg."

I lay there, pondering silently to myself whether there are people vain enough to vastly understate their weight for the sake of not repeating the true horror of the actual figure in front of a team of medical professionals, thus risking getting less anesthetic than they need, and, horror of horrors, waking up mid slice. I am personally pretty vain, I thought, but not that friggin' vain.

The hilarity continued when when what they call the "sign in" was started, where the medical types read aloud various things like allergies etc, when I heard the anesthetist state: "This lady is not allergic to any medication".

For most people this would not be a worry. For me, this was a point where I think I went from a bit worried and mildly confused due to a pre-med drugged state to downright arsey. The reason for that, dear reader, is that I am allergic to a medication. The medication I am allergic to is in fact an anesthetic, moreover an anesthetic commonly used in c sections.

I tried once to tell the anesthetist, but no one seemed to hear me, so I tried again: "I am allergic to medication, it's an anesthetic, it's in my file," I burbled through my oxygen mask and drug induced haze to which the anesthetist responded: "Oh, what's it called?"

I was pretty bloomin' confused by this point, but I huffed something along the lines of: "I don't ruddy know, it's in my file, I can't pronounce it because it's got about 12 syllables. There's a card in my wallet that tells you all about it."

Perhaps unsurprisingly, none of the highly trained medical professionals in the operating theatre felt inclined to run back to the labour room and start rooting through my abandoned personal possessions, so I muttered something random about "Scoline" (the reaction that I would have if given the drug to which I am allergic is called Scoline Apnoea) and had begun to feel somewhat agitated, before thankfully, Maltese doc appeared like a Mediterranean Doctor Kildare (very ancient TV reference for those not in the know) and knew all about my allergy to Suxamethonium (I told you it was tricky to say, particularly when on drugs) and all seemed to be well. At least, I can only assume it was, because the last thing I remember was a nurse saying she was going to poke me in the throat when they administered the anesthetic and being poked in the stomach before slicing commenced. I then heard the words: "She has a beautiful baby girl" as I came round.

"Beautiful. Alright?!" I thought to myself. "Not massive or freakishly huge. So there," before collapsing into another drug-induced haze followed by four somewhat blurry days in hospital.

Now two weeks and five days old, and nestled on my lap as I write this, Desert Baby could not be more fine, she eats like a horse, sleeps reasonably well at night for one of her age, so I'm told, and has gained around 20 per cent in body weight since she was born.

The reason she suffered acute fetal distress was a thinner than average umbilical cord, which was under pressure as she reached her full term size and basically gave up the ghost and led to her her heart rate fluctuating dramatically and her to fill her amniotic fluid with meconium which can cause babies to "have a problem" according to the pediatrician. Her prodigious appetite and weight gain suggest to me that Desert Baby seems to have recovered with no long-lasting effects. OK, I will admit she is large. But she is now only as large as my brother was when he was born, damnit, leave her alone. Are you trying to make her have an eating disorder?

So, I ended up with the c section that I had resisted all along, but I am reconciled to it, mainly because there does not seem to be a way of diagnosing the particular issue that Desert Baby suffered during gestation, and if she hadn't been delivered as soon as her problematic heart rate was discovered,the outcome could have been very serious indeed.

A key reason I had resisted a c section was cost. I know it's daft to factor in the cost when it comes to healthcare, but this is, alas, one of the more unpleasant side effects of private medicine. Much of the cost can end up being borne by the patient, particularly when it comes to maternity coverage, so you have to think seriously about what you do and don't need in terms of procedures - c sections can easily double the cost of giving birth in UAE.

Another factor was extra time in hospital. I don't like being fussed over, no matter how well meaning and competent medical professionals are, and I hate not sleeping in my own bed unless on holiday. I don't know about you, but I also try to avoid being sliced open under general anesthetic unless strictly necessary. Something that sealed it for me was this article, published in the run up to Desert Baby's birth, and sure enough, I had identified the signs of being pressured into an unnecessary procedure by my previous doctor, and that made me more resistant to the idea than ever. I should add that at no point did I feel under pressure to undergo procedures from Maltese Doc. He was great all the way through and I would recommend him to anyone.

But seriously, habibtis ,we need to talk about c section being considered, the "easy option" that some people seem to think it is, usually those who have not had one, I suspect. Admittedly, you don't have all the pushing, shoving and pain of "natural" childbirth and yes, a c section is over within minutes if you're lucky, as opposed to what can be days of pain for the alternative. Perhaps if you have an elective operation and your surgeon has all the time in the world, the pain is less than that which I experienced, but two days after, I could just about stand in the shower on my own, but doing so made me feel like I was having my abdomen ripped open with rusty blunt daggers.

Five days after, I could just about manage a walk of about 600m, but I stopped on the way back, 100m short of our front door to tell him indoors that I could not make it because the pain was so horrible. After standing around looking pathetic for a bit, I did make it back, but for at least another week, the discomfort would cause me to regularly break out in a sweat if I walked too far or lifted anything heavier than Desert Baby. Yes, alright, she's a big girl, no need to bang on about it. *Sigh*

A c section of this type, for me at least, meant not being able to lift my baby up for at least two and a half days after she was born, and the only way I could feed her was lying on my side in bed. I think I only properly looked at her face on day three, as apart from feeding her, everything else, nappy changes, burping and walking up and down the hospital room to stop her crying all had to be done by him indoors because I was in no fit state. A friend tells me that her c section was fine and she felt OK the next day, so it's obviously not as bad for everybody, but please do me a favour and give anyone who tells you that it's "the easy option" a good kicking.

When all is said and done, I feel extremely fortunate to have made the decision I did to switch to the new doctor. He managed the right amount of monitoring to pick up on Desert Baby's distress without making me feel like he was ordering tests just for the sake of it to squeeze income out of my insurance company or my pocket, which is how I felt with my previous doctor.

Speaking honestly, if my previous doctor had told me I needed an emergency cesarean, I don't know whether I would have believed her, and there, my best beloveds, is the rub. If you don't feel confident in what they are telling you when it comes to matters of life and death, which childbirth is, let's not forget, then you are well and truly screwed. The moral of this particular story is: Think very hard before going for the cheaper option when choosing who is going to deliver your baby. You may think, like I did, that back up from friends' experience and info from Doctor Google is enough, but it isn't.

***NB, dramatic licence may have been used at this point due to memory impaired by drugs and fear.

An immigration story

Oh my best beloved readers, the tale I am about to tell you is probably the very definition of a "First World problem". But, for those of you who are expats in the UAE, you need to know this should you have any foolish ideas about not following instructions regarding documentation required to travel to the letter, as should you do what I did, bureaucracy will make a beautiful mess of your travel plans.

The tale begins with a missing expired passport. The expired passport belonged to me and I have literally no idea where it is. Normally I am quite sensible about keeping these things in safe places, but I haven't really been with it this past few months due to the industrial quantities of pregnancy-related puking I have been doing. I discovered it was missing a few days before we were due to travel to Iceland for a week's holiday, and then on to the UK for a week's familial stomach patting and commenting about the relative giant size of my pregnancy bump.

I panicked a bit, knowing that the UAE authorities prefer you to keep expired passports if they still have your current visa in them. But a fairly comprehensive search proved it was not to be found. Who knows where it is? Possibly stuck down the back of a chest of drawers or piece of furniture, possibly thrown away accidentally, possibly taken by one of those naughty jinns that I so love to read about in the UAE news.

Nothing to be done with three days left to travel, I thought, as I had to work, and surely, as a holder of a current and valid British passport, there was nothing they could do to stop me travelling was there, right?

WRONG. With a capital WRRRRRRRR.

We turned up at Terminal 1 full of boundless optimism about escaping to a cold climate, munching on rotting shark (no we didn't do that, as I would have puked on the spot) communing with Vikings and bathing in geothermal spas. We cleared check-in then got to immigration. The UAE authorities had no record of me having entered the country as I did not have the passport with the entry stamp in it so they would not let me leave. I therefore had to visit immigration in Jafiliyah, then Dubai Courts, then Dubai Police to report the loss of the missing expired passport and visa before they would let me leave. "But I'm a British citizen," I protested, "This passport entitles me to travel without constraint or intervention (or whatever it is her Britannic Majesty requests on the passport)," No dice. The fact that him indoors and I may have muttered something about "it doesn't matter that your computer system has no record, this passport is valid and we're allowed to travel" probably antagonised them further so we were forced to miss the flight and dash round three different government entities.

So, we left our luggage checked in, knowing full we would miss the flight but if you don't show up the at gate they offload it anyway, so no worries there, and dashed off in an attempt to miraculously get everything finished in time. It was never going to happen. An airport policeman was initially quite helpful, as him indoors has a reasonable relationship with them through his work, but confirmed it was three different offices that we must visit. We climbed into a succession of taxis to start the dash because it was Thursday, and not getting it finished by the end of working hours that day would mean at least another two day delay over the weekend. And having not had a proper holiday since July 2013 (see, I told you, First World problem) there was no way that was happening.

Off we went in our clothes chosen for landing in Iceland, (ie trousers, long sleeves, sturdy boots, carrying coats) in temperatures in the late 30s, me, more than five months pregnant and already experiencing hormonal-related steaming hot flushes, him, already in a state of nervous anxiety due to his general lack of enthusiasm for getting on planes. First, home to pick up multiple paper copies of our documents. Then, on to Immigration, which was irksome, I was dispatched to the woman only section where I got to speak to the most sensible one on duty, who seemed to still not really have any idea what I needed, but AED 120 was taken from me, documents stamped. Meanwhile, her colleagues sat at their desks chatting and ignoring various other fraught looking women who clutched immigration documents, choosing instead to chat on their phones and show each pictures of their various kids.

The deed was done with only a little sobbing on my part, with sandwiches and pastries and juice consumed on taxi rides to ward off bouts of stress and pregnancy-related puking, as we sped off to the court, and then to the police station, which are thankfully next to each other, where I received two more stamps for my trouble. The great thing about getting stamps in the UAE, which one is always assured are COMPLETELY NECESSARY and IN NO WAY ARBITRARY, is that the people who bestow the stamps barely glance at your documents before bestowing the required stamp and biro squiggle.

Off to the airport we charged, by now smelling like some kind of disease infested swamp bog due to the dashing round in winter clothes in the heat, and we rocked up to show the friendly airport policeman our stamped documents. Yes, we can travel, he agreed, but after some discussion with a airline ticket sales dude, it became obvious we were not going to get a flight that day, so we motored home once more in taxi number seven or eight (I had lost count by now) to try to rearrange the flights ourselves.

We could get from Dubai to London the next day easy enough, but as the flight on to Iceland was with a different airline, that was a no go, as only business class seats were available. So, while it was only a matter of paying airline charges (AED 250 each) to change the London flight, we had to buy a business class seat each to Iceland at vast expense in order to complete the trip. Either that or wait a week. Well, that wasn't happening for reasons previously mentioned. (It was the second time in my life I have gone business class, and we ended up on a flight with Iceland's president. I didn't notice though, as when it came to it, I collapsed in a state of exhaustion waking only to demand a blanket and put my stinking boots as far away from myself as possible without gassing the banker in the seat in front of me).

Prior to this, after a few hours sleep in Dubai, we got up at dawn's arse crack to catch the only available flight to London that day. We cleared check-in once more, with the check-in man thoroughly bemused at my combined state of rage and hypertension, persistently telling me to smile. He even finished with a little speech about how "piece of mind is expensive" when we explained a little of what had happened the previous day. "Yes, especially in Dubai," I grunted, to which he gave a nervous laugh as I charged off towards immigration.

"So we can go, then," I forcefully told the immigration desk dude, waving my stamped bits of paper. No, we couldn't, go and speak to the immigration office again, we were told, and then told that we still had to cancel my visa at the airport immigration office in Terminal 3.

How we managed not to descend into hysteria at this point, I am not exactly sure. But we ran off to the other terminal, catching an airport shuttle to speed us along the way, still wearing our winter clothes, and me preventing him indoors from punching a well-meaning men who told us we had plenty of time to catch our flight.

We surged into the airport immigration office, which is mercifully, open 24 hours. By now, him indoors had gone into some kind of catatonic state, so I explained our request to the somewhat irate man behind the desk, paid some more money into a bank to get something typed out and received more stamps on various documents to have my visa cancelled.

It all looked like it was going to be OK. The documents stamped, the money paid, the "hlases" stated in clear and certain terms with him indoors sitting silently planning our escape to a remote beach shack in a Northern Emirate to complete a retreat from society should anything go wrong.

After all that, after I had gone around on a bureaucratic nightmare, done the explaining, not lost it, not descended into a quivering wreck, not wept and retreated to my bed, not complained that, "you know, is this really that necessary for a five months pregnant woman in late 30s heat?"

After all that, as I held out my hand for my passport, the man behind the desk handed MY PASSPORT back to him indoors.

I can only assume that for people who are less patient than I (and I am told there are such people in the world) there are souvenir pictures and evidence of faces and national dress covered in official stamps - the handiwork of those less patient people who at such provocation, have grabbed the official stamp and beaten the official to death with it.

Honestly.

I ask you.

I didn't do it. There was no "my Dubai prison hell" story to tell on this occasion, because I kept my cool, and yes, we ran back to Terminal 1, because no shuttle was in sight, shoved the final bits of paper in the face of the immigration official, and dashed as fast my now blistered feet would carry us to the departure gate. And we were gone. Away from the heat and away from national dress wearing stamp waving officials for two weeks, and with one mere slight incident of me giving a hefty shove to a woman who would not get out of my way fast enough for me to get to my seat.

So, the moral of this story is, don't assume like I did that as a British citizen, you are untouchable as long as you have a valid passport. I think I knew in the back of my head that I would need to report the passport missing at some point, but it did not in a month of Sundays occur to me that it would prevent me from travelling. Now, I am in the unenviable position of needing a new visa, which is not so bad as it was due to expire in February anyway, but will mean once again surrendering my passport while it is processed. Again, it is no biggie as I am two weeks away from my third trimester when travelling is not such a hot idea anyway, but after several months being bound to the UAE earlier this year by the debacle in the British passport office, it is not a prospect that fills me with joy.

Long-term residents of the UAE will not be in the least surprised by the sheaf of paperwork required to resolve this situation, but, be warned, my best beloved readers - this experience is not for the fainthearted. If your visa is in your old passport, you WILL need it to travel, and if you haven't got it, you need at least a couple of days free to get the situation resolved, so plan ahead. We are back now after the much-needed break, him with a cold, and me with only slight residual stress-related nausea, but cowed by our immigration experience. You may think you're a free passport-holding British citizen entitled to leave the UAE whenever you please, but should you not have the right back up documents, you are not. So, think on.

Here endeth the lesson.



 

Habibtis, we need to talk about "morning" sickness

For those of you I haven't told yet, and those among my acquaintances who haven't guessed what the hell's been wrong with me for the past nine weeks and three days, I've been puking my guts up with "morning" sickness.***

First of all, can I just say "morning" sickness. A ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha!

Whoever came up with that misnomer for it needs a good sound slap round the chops. It should really be called "24/7 overwhelming feeling of nauseous dread that you are about to blow chunks across the room, no matter what you do, eat, or smell, punctuated by frequent episodes of violent retching and projectile vomiting".

I may have been somewhat naive but I really did not expect this. I expected to feel some nausea from time to time and throw up from time to time, but, that I would largely be able to go about my work and my usual day-to-day activities as normal. Those among you who have also suffered badly with this charming affliction are probably laughing hollowly at this, but I can honestly say that none of the people I know who have had kids have mentioned to me that it could be this bad, but a tiny Google of the phrase "help I am dying of morning sickness" will show you just how many people suffer hideously for several long months.

Perhaps it's one of those secrets that mothers keep, along with the true horrors of what childbirth is really like - only once you're safely through it is it admitted to you the full extent of just how sick you can be in the first months of pregnancy.

In case you're wondering, no, it's not very much fun experiencing this when the temperature is between 40 and 50 degrees, in fact that's probably one of the reasons I've felt so horrendous - I can't go outside at all for fresh air because heat makes me feel sick. Not to mention the fact that any smells or odours lingering are worsened by heat, and are, of course, heightened by my hormonally enhanced super-charged sense of smell.

In the past couple of weeks, I have had reasonably OK days of only a small amount of chucking up and an hour or a two at a time when I don't feel sick, but that will retreat back into impressions of the child in The Exorcist fairly shortly if I try to do anything like eat anything with any flavour or go outside in the heat. I'm now 15 weeks, three days up the spout, and I'm still pretty much a useless ornament if required to do anything but sit, type on the computer, or consume plain food. Luckily today is a positive day though so I do see light at the end of the tunnel. On not-so-positive days, I assume I will be puking solidly until Sand Baby makes an appearance in February 2015.

In some ways, I feel incredibly foolish for not anticipating the fact that having morning sickness in the Dubai summer heat would be a hellish form of torture, but, on the other hand, I have a very understanding boss who let me work from home for a few of the worst weeks because summer is an incredibly quiet time in most offices in this city. I think, had I been this sick during the busy winter period, particularly on the back of my long leave of absence to be in the UK with my Mum, there was a strong possibility that I would have ended up getting fired.

In case, for some bizarre reason, you're interested, there's a list below of things that have made me puke, followed by things that have been suggested as cures and how effective they were. It's largely useless if you're suffering the same thing as everyone is different - one pregnant lady's cure is another's barf trigger, but, you never know, you might be entertained, or find a handy tip.

Things that have made me sick

1. Standing up or any kind of physical exercise, no matter how gentle, including walking round the flat.
2. The smell of cooking.
3. The smell produced by the oven when switched on.
4. The thought of the smell produced by the oven when switched on.
5. Assorted cooking smells coming in through air vents from neighbouring flats.
6. The thought of said cooking smells, including a particularly noxious stale oily garlicky smell.
7. Cleaning my teeth.
8. Hot showers.
9. Warm showers.
10. Cold showers.
11. Heat.
12. Any food with flavour, exempting nursery food such as plain pasta, tinned soup, baked beans, yoghurts designed for children, and jacket potatoes.
13. Sudden loud noises.
14. The sound of a colleague doing that horrible snorting sniffing thing so beloved of men from the sub-continent.
15. The smell of a garlicky lunch being eaten by a colleague sitting 10ft away.
16. Being in a car.
17. Being in a taxi.
18. A taxi driver's body odour.
19. The thought of a taxi driver's body odour.
20. The scent of one of those horrible pine tree air fresheners that hang in taxis.
21. Ice cream.
22. The thought of puking again.
23. The smell of brewed coffee.
24. Drinking water that isn't ice cold.
25. Tea *weeps*.
26. The lingering after taste of cucumber.
27. The smell of eco-friendly cleaning fluid.
28. The smell of aftershave or perfume.
29. The smell of assorted personal hygiene products including shampoo, face wash and shower gel.
30. Bananas.

Things suggested as morning sickness cures and their efficacy

1. Eating every two hours. Sounds fun but when your diet is restricted to that of a nutritionally challenged five year old, gets old pretty quickly. Efficacy level - 6/10.

2. Eating dry crackers. For anyone suggesting this, go away, eat some dry crackers, decide how enjoyable that is, then report back to me. Efficacy, 1/10.

3. Ginger, in its many curs-ed forms. Tried eating raw ginger? Thought not. It's a bit sharp and will probably trigger vomiting. Real ginger beer? Ditto raw ginger. Schweppes ginger ale - probably contains no natural ginger but has a subtle sour flavour which is less barf-inducing than some sweeter fizzy drinks. Ginger tea - it's a strong flavour and will therefore make me barf. OK, WILL YOU JUST GET LOST WITH THE GINGER???!!! Efficacy - 2/10.

4. Wearing sea sickness bands. Fecked if I know if they make any  difference. It doesn't involve stuffing something down my throat and bringing it up again so I may as well persist. Efficacy - hard to say as I've barfed with and without them. 4/10.

5. Plain cheese sandwiches. Reassuringly plain, though avoid mature cheddar or any strong cheese, the smell may make you hurl. Efficacy - 7/10.

6. Plain bread. Interesting one, the difficulty of forcing this down may have the effect of making you hurl, useful if you've been feeling awful for a while and just want a big healthy vomit to give you an hour or so before you start feeling like death again. Efficacy - 6/10.

7. Drink plenty of water. See plain bread. It might be OK if ice cold.

8. Assorted caffeine free or herbal teas - Lipton make a lemon tea called Lemon Melissa. I don't know who this Melissa was and why she puts up with being ground up and made into tea, but this does make me feel better so I don't care. Efficacy - 9/10.

9. Getting plenty of rest by taking naps. Fine if you can wake yourself up in time to eat every two hours, if not, you wake up feeling worse than ever for a big messy vomiting session. Efficacy 4/10.

10. Go to the doctor. I was prescribed Navidoxine which made me feel slightly worse, then horribly drowsy and I would then wake up with what felt like a hideous hangover with the inability to work or function in any useful way. Apparently it works for some people, but for me, 3/10. My doctor then suggested Pregnaplan MS, a specialist vitamin for morning sickness, containing, you guessed it, effing ginger. What happened? Well, when I threw up, it was just really lovely and gingery. At that point, I changed doctor and was put on something called Premosan which helped get me through the worst of it. Efficacy, 6/10, because I stopped taking the new drug because it also made me somewhat zombified and I realised I would have no idea if I was actually getting better or not.

11. Plain crisps - pretty depressing after a while because they're so bland. Salt and vinegar have always been a favourite with me, and for some reason, they seem to help, possibly because they're comforting as a favourite, and possibly because this particular sharp flavour helps cut through the weird taste that one gets in one's mouth, which is caused by over-active hormones. Efficacy - 7/10.

12. Eat before you get up and late at night before you sleep. You need a pretty patient partner if you've been as immobilised by sickness as I have to do this. I've found a glass of milk and a slice of milk before bed helps, and the one thing that doesn't routinely bring about barfing first thing is plain oats with sultanas soaked in milk like a breakfast cereal. The hard oats have been best for me, the soft ones develop a texture which is like slime and brings about chunk blowing. You need to eat it 20 minutes before getting out of bed, so you're best beloved has to prepare it and bring it to you. Then before you actually get up, sit on the bed for five minutes to prepare your system for the shock of the day's first standing up while full of baby-growing hormones. If you still feel ill while getting ready for work, stop and sit still for two minutes when you need to, this can put off vomiting until, oooh I don't know, at least 10am to allow you time to get to work without soaking yourself, fellow public transport passengers, your car or a taxi driver, in puke. Efficacy - 7/10.

***I am actually happy about being pregnant, but, I have had to put that on hold until a later date when I'm not spending most of my time feeling sick or conversing on the great, white telephone.

The next fascinating installment will most likely be my adventures with maternity cover on health insurance. I bet you're waiting with bated breath.

There's humour in everything... And I mean everything...

I haven't felt much like writing for a long time because I have spent a substantial part of this year learning what it's like losing a parent to cancer while living as an expat.

Sorry to those of you who I know well but haven't told, but it's not something I felt like shouting from the rooftops. Not because I'm ashamed, or anything like that, but, unusually for me, I simply didn't know what to say.

My mum died of Multiple Myeloma on May 30th. She was 65, not exactly youthful but still too young to die. She had been ill for four and a half years. Like most things in life, she handled her illness head on, determined to carry on with as close an approximation of what she always wanted to do during her retirement as possible. If anyone stuck two fingers up to cancer, it was my Mum. If there was anyone entitled to self-pity, it was her, as there is no cure for MM, your number is basically up, and from the day of your diagnosis, all you can do is get treated and try to live with as best you can. But, she very rarely felt sorry for herself, and when she did, it was not because of the illness itself, but usually because it was stopping her doing what she wanted. To put it simply, my Mum had balls. She was far braver than me or anyone else I know would have been in her circumstances.

Compared to many expats in my situation, I am pretty lucky. I was able to take six weeks off to go and be with her in her last few weeks and for her funeral. When I initially went, I expected it to be for a short visit, then to come back again and return within a month. When I arrived, I knew I would not be able to say goodbye to her knowing that it could be the last time I would see her, so I stayed. Fortunately for me, I have an employer who was understanding about that.

While I was there, I thought a lot about people who have families who depend on them for financial support in Dubai and who simply don't have the luxury of doing what I did. I know of at least one person who didn't make it home before his own mother died. And, then, of course there's the thousands of low-paid workers here who rarely get to see their families during key life events - births, marriages and deaths go on without them as they're working away to pay for the trappings.

I promised myself I would keep this post reasonably short to avoid getting maudlin, so I will. The "humour in everything" I am referring to in the title is about an email I received from a well-meaning colleague who I had to tell when Mum passed away.

"My her sole rest in peace", she wrote.

As comedy English as a second language errors go, it's not up there with "tragically located" or "comfortable and non-violent lodgings" (non-violent should have said peaceful) but it certainly lifted the corners of my mouth on what was probably the most difficult day of my life. And for that, I am extremely grateful.

A brush with death, or imbecility, depending on your view

I had a gun pointed at me yesterday. My first instinct, five minutes after the event, was rush to social media and tell everyone I know, so horrified was I by the sheer idiocy of the event. But my Mum uses social media and the thought of giving her that kind of shock stopped me. I am not actually sure if it was a real gun and it's important to say so as not to over dramatise the event too much, that I am 99 per cent sure there was not really any violent intent, it was just two utter pillocks seeing if they could scare a bunch of women who they pulled up next to in traffic. I don't know if it was real because my experience with firearms amounts to 1. My dad's shotgun, which spent its life safely looked in a tall metal cabinet in the back porch of our family home, and 2. Seeing him indoors being shown how to fire a machine gun on some kind of Viet Cong tourist experience when we were on holiday in Vietnam.

What happened was this: I was in the passenger seat of a colleague's car on the way back from lunch, when a pair of local looking guys in a very ordinary looking white saloon pulled up next to us. I would not have noticed what was going on had another colleague, who was sitting in the back, not yelled: "He's got a gun!" And I looked over and sure enough the guy in the driver's seat had a very real looking hand gun. For reasons I'm not sure about, I was 90 per cent certain that this was not a dangerous situation, just two completely idiotic pillock-brained inbreds showing off because the colleague who was driving is a very attractive girl. I turned away, but my colleague who was sitting in the back tells me that he took off what looked like a safety catch, and, aimed it first at the back seat passengers, and then at me and Attractive Driving Colleague, and pretended to fire.

Attractive Driving Colleague, who is not local but was born and grew up in the UAE, seemed to think it was all a tremendous laugh, and play acted being shot, before they drove off. Shouting Colleague protested loudly, "it's not funny!" and I was inclined to agree. Shouting Colleague was particularly furious about it because she said it didn't matter whether it was a real or fake gun, or, whether there were actually bullets in it or not, they were deliberately trying to frighten us, or, thought the idea of shooting people dead is some kind of hilarious joke. My instinct is that we were in no danger, as for all I know it was a pellet gun used for keeping stray cats out of someone's garden, but, knowing what I do of local attitudes to firearms, I can't be 100 per cent certain. Stories like this one, about someone being shot during celebratory gunfire at a wedding, are not exactly every day here, but they appear way more frequently than they should. And, there is the fact that locals seem to have access to real guns with relative ease, because there is something of a hunting culture here, as this story  shows.

If it were the UK rather than on a sunny day in Jumeirah 1, I would have acted differently. I am fairly sure in the UK, I would have perhaps have made more effort to get down the car registration and report them to the police, because pointing even a fake firearm at someone in the UK can lead to criminal charges. But, I have no idea if attempting to frighten the absolute bejesus out of a bunch of women in a car with a firearm that may or may not have been fake and may or may not have had bullets in it is an offence here. It might have been just too much effort to explain it to the police. I suspect the response would have been: "Hlas, no real harm done, so why are you wasting our time, sister?" And, there was the fact that at least one person in the car seemed to think it was all totally hilarious, so getting the boys in khaki involved seemed something of an over reaction.

I wish I could say I wasn't afraid, but I was. My reaction to it all was to turn away, avoid eye contact, thinking, "if someone is stupid or mad enough to play with what could have been a loaded firearm in broad daylight in the front seat of a car to try and impress or scare the crap out of a car full of women, they are stupid or mad enough to accidentally or deliberate put a bullet straight between my eyes, so, while I am not going to do anything as dramatic as duck down, I am not going to be accidentally or deliberately shot in the face".

Being afraid feels stupid, because it was an incident that lasted seconds, and which Attractive Driving Colleague thought was "just so funny". Perhaps, as someone who was born here and grew up around such people, she has experienced such things before and thinks there is no cause to be afraid. I am anti-gun anyway, because of, oh, you know, incidents like this and, you know, this and, you know, the fact that guns are used on a daily basis to maim and murder innocent people, and, the fact that you can read daily in the newspapers at the moment about the damage done to Reeva Steenkamp by a firearm, apparently "accidentally". All factors considered, perhaps my reaction is not so stupid.

You only have to look at the way people drive here (tailgating, speeding, cutting across lanes with no notice at high speed, WITH their small children on their laps in the driver's seat, with eight or nine people stuffed into cars meant for a maximum of five), to realise that human life is a lot cheaper than it should be. I've never actually met anyone who is willing to say it out loud, but I am told the attitude to seat belts in cars among many is that, if God wills it, you will die in a crash, to wear a seat belt is to interfere with God's will. I suppose knowledge of that kind of attitude is what makes me afraid of some utter oxygen thief waving a firearm around in the front of his car. Nothing like that has ever happened to me before in the UAE, and I am hoping that it won't again. Even in a country where life is cheaper than it should be, there can't be that many molecule brains who think that waving a firearm around is "funny", can there?










 

Rent!

It may not have made the international news yet, but believe me, it's pretty much all anyone is talking about in Dubai at the moment - the fact that a combination of financial recovery, optimism brought about by Dubai's Expo2020 bid win, and, sheer determination by a lot of investors to earn absolutely pots of money, mean that that property market in Dubai has once again gone completely berserk.

Dubai landlords can be an excitable bunch anyway, but of recent, there seems to have been a herd mentality that has led to them to once again start asking for absolutely bonkers rents for properties in Dubai, as this story will show you. In case you can't be bothered to click the link, we're talking 50 per cent rent increases, with the area that him indoors and I live in, Downtown, one of the worst affected. We had a rather stressful battle with our Averagely Revolting Landlord who tried to impose a giant rent increase on us last year. Averagely Revolting Landlord reluctantly realised the law was on our side and accepted a small rent increase, then, sulkily sold the apartment to Profoundly Revolting Landlord, who has behaved like a repulsively putrid, fulsomely foul swamp toad of the highest order in order to get us to leave without giving him any bother. This post is a bit of an indication of what he is like. He has won. Mainly because the old landlord wrote enough pseudo-legal caveats into our current contract to make sure we have to leave unless we agree to pay whatever ludicrous rent increase the new one feels like charging, but also because we would actually like more space than our current place has, and, to not live in the 22nd floor for a while.

Another reason that I've relented is that this man is such a gruesome, foul, turd of a man, that the idea of giving any more of my hard-earned cash to him makes me want to hurl myself from aforesaid 22nd floor. I refuse to speak to him any more because I feel that anyone who has the kind of attitudes to women that this man has displayed isn't worth the effort it would take to summon enough spit to gob in his face. But, he hangs around on a sofa in our lobby, suppurating like Jabba the Hutt, because he manages several apartments in our building and is often here taking care, or not taking care, (if his attitude to maintenance of our place is anything to go by) of business. So, unfortunately I have to see him fairly regularly.

You may remember that him indoors and I suspected mental rent increases were about to happen, as we watched the fireworks exploding from the Burj Khalifa on the night the Expo win was announced. The signs were there pre-him indoors' final showdown with Profoundly Revolting Landlord in the form of news stories like this, from Arabian Business, taken from 7Days. Click here.

If you don't click on any of my other links, I would urge you to read that one, as, it pretty much sums up the situation as far as tenants are concerned in Dubai, and, to be fair, Abu Dhabi, and increasingly, the Northern Emirates.

What I mean by that is this: I have been well aware since arriving in the UAE that Dubai landlords are not like him indoors and I, who are also landlords. We have had the same tenants in our Ealing flat since we left the UK more than three years ago. We have imposed one rent increase which they agreed to pay. We asked them to pay another last time they renewed, they said they would leave if we insisted. We decided on balance to keep them on at the same rent: They're good tenants, they don't ask for much in terms of maintenance, they pay on time, we don't want the flat empty because there's a hefty mortgage and so on.

However, flats sitting empty in Dubai for months while landlords chase increasingly ridiculous rent yields is par for the course, it would seem. I suspect this is possibly because many of them bought cheaply off plan for cash, or don't need to worry about the flat being empty because the rent yields are enough to see them easily through a few mortgage payments. And, because they bought determined to make loads of dosh, so they will bloody mindedly chase loads of dosh, whether or not it makes business sense and finally, because they don't care about the tenants who they unceremoniously turf out of their homes on a yearly basis.

What that Arabian Business article has taught me, and this will probably not be a surprise to most of you, is that it's not that those in the property industry here don't care about the people who are being kicked out in favour of people with big salaries who can pay bigger rents, they actively resent us.

In a way, you've got to admire honesty of the man quoted by AB, there's no way his equivalent in the UK would ever say something like this because he would have been PR-trained into submission for fear of being pilloried in the media:

"But I say to that person: You were not supposed to be living in Burj Khalifa . Because if you were working in London, at your salary, which falls in the average salaries of London, can you live in Knightsbridge? You cannot. You will take the tube, live half an hour away from the city and commute - just like all the employees,” he added.

I don't live in the Burj Khalifa, although I have a fine view of it from my lounge window meaning my flat is now considered "very desirable" in terms of Dubai property. So what he's saying does apply to me. And what he's effectively saying is this:

"Gwarn, you low paid people. You people without big private incomes or trust funds, those of you who are not corporate lawyers, oil workers, finance directors, bankers and so on. Get out. You've had your fun living in a posh area in a nice place while the Dubai economy was in the toilet, now will you kindly p*** off to some bland suburb where people like you actually belong. And close the door on your way out so none of you can creep back in. Thanks."

He has a point, I suppose, these buildings weren't built for low-paid journalists, booze salesmen, teachers and the like, they were built for people who can afford something approaching Knightsbridge rents. Although, I can't help but feel there are fewer people that can afford Knightsbridge rents in the world than developers in Dubai seem to think there are... Also, I can't help but feel that likening Dubai, a city that's sprung up in a  matter of decades, with Knightsbridge, an established area of London that has extremely expensive properties in a market that's built up and sustained over centuries, may be asking for trouble.

What can you do? Well, first of all, it's best to have a laugh about it, and thanks to the Pan Arabia Enquirer, it's possible to do that. Once you've been through the stages of grief, hysteria, denial and anger, you come to the acceptance part.

Staying in our place would mean an ugly battle, starting with reporting the landlord to RERA, the property industry's regulatory body. Even if we won a case against him, I hate to think what Profoundly Revolting Landlord's behaviour would be like over the following year. It does mean that he has won by bullying us out of our home, but, when it comes down to it, does anyone really want to live somewhere where the owner of the property wants you out so badly he's prepared to shout threats of getting lawyers on you in your own building lobby? The answer is no. I'm bloody minded, but not that bloody minded.

So what of the future? Well, a lot of our friends are leaving Dubai. For most of them, the rent increases were the tipping point on their decision to leave, as many of them have been here five years or more - a point at which this place starts to send you slightly mad. Some people will fight to stay in their homes in nice areas, then, next year, like us, relent and find somewhere in one of those bland suburbs Mr El Chaar was implying that we should all move to, because the fact is, although rent increases are still capped, the legally allowed maximum of 20 per cent may prove too much for many.

It's not all bad news. The bland suburbs are not as bland as they could be and there is news that, no doubt seeking to cash in on the recovering market, a lot more new residential property will be completed this year than in previous years, so more supply to meet the demand may mean that landlords won't be able to hike rents as much as they did last year.

In the mean time, I feel like the final scene of Lord of the Rings, Return of the King, when the elves and Gandalf, Bilbo and Frodo get on the swan boat into the West, such is the exodus of those of moderate income from Downtown. Except we will be heading not West but in in a sort of South Easterly direction, away from the coast, where the more expensive properties are, and into the desert where new suburbs are being built. And, of course, there won't be any tearful hobbits waving us off, only landlords and property investors, gleefully counting their money, in our wake.

Blink and you missed Champ of the Camp

You may have missed it, but the film I wrote about in this post had brief run in the cinema over the past week.

To get a documentary into UAE cinemas at all is pretty good going as we tend to get only the bustiest of blockbusters screened here, apart from at a few often short-lived arts centre ventures and at the Abu Dhabi and Dubai Film Festivals.

Him indoors and I went to see it at the Wafi Centre and had a jolly time apart from the annoying woman who decided to chat on her phone all the way through. I mean, why? Why would you pay to go to the cinema and spend the duration of the film not watching and chatting?

Sigh.

Anyway. The film is still to be released on DVD and hopefully screened on television too. If you want to help make that happen, you can donate here:

http://www.aflamnah.com/en/champ-of-the-camp/