20 week pregancy scan full of surprises.

Today I had what was meant to be my 20 week ultrasound for the baby.  Turns out it didn't go as smoothly as my previous 2.  I arrived early and the doc went to measure the fundal height and listen to the heartbeat, but when they put the Doppler on my stomach she couldn't find the babies heart beat at all.  I didn't start stressing as when I was pregnant with Lillie they sometimes had trouble finding her heart beat as she was always pressed up against my back and in awkward positions.  So they trotted me off to the ultrasound room where they then left me waiting laying on my back for 10 minutes all alone to ponder the possibilities of what this scan might show.  Note to the wise, never leave a pregnant woman alone who could be facing terrible news.
The Doc finally came in and proceeded to squeeze jelly on me and probe and push around my tummy, starting off the heart was very obvious and beating strongly so my relief was immediate but it didn't last long.  She noticed that my placenta was too low and may cause some issues closer to delivery time if it doesn't move further away from the opening of the cervix, I may end up with a C Section, something that I am desperately trying to avoid.  This wasn't great but it is manageable so I carried on feeling positive, however that it started to change when she then began having alot of trouble finding the babies stomach location.  Apparently it is supposed to be below the heart but she looked and looked for 20 minutes and then called in a second opinion from her superior to confer.  In  the end they found something that should be the stomach but it was in the wrong place so she advised me that another follow up scan will be required to monitor it.  I still didn't feel too concerned at this point, but I was making plans in my mind that if there was confirmation that the baby may need some sort of surgery or medical treatment then I will be on the first flight back to Melbourne to birth the baby there where everyone speaks clearly and honestly and where I feel safe in the knowledge that the baby will get the best treatment.  I am sure they do infant surgery in Thailand but to be honest it is still "Thailand" and I would feel much more secure if we were home, safe and around friends and family. 
Every other body part was present, arms, legs, fingers and the highlight of my morning was that again after much searching and conferring with each other they were able to tell me the sex.  Much to my delight I am pleased to announce that we are having a BOY!  I saw his little pee pee before the docs did, it was clear as day to me but they still weren't 100% sure so you never know, but I have a good feeling that it is definitely a boy, a strong little guy that is sure to be a fighter and whatever obstacles confront him I am sure he will pull through.
After waiting an eternity to see my obstetrician again she whisked through the scan results and vaguely told me that there may be some sort of problem with an opening in his diaphragm and the location of his stomach and that I should come back in 4 weeks for another scan but I asked for 2 weeks as I need to know if this is going to be a problem and if I need to start making arrangements to return to Melbourne.  Also according to his size I am only 18 weeks along not 19 like she first thought and she is concerned that I have only put on 2 kgs in 4 months and I need to eat more.  I was already overweight before falling pregnant, I am sure that I have enough weight on me to compensate the baby.  But if Doc says eat then I must obey. 
The problem I find with the Doctors here is that they are even faster to get you out the door than they are in Australia, I can barely understand her accent as it is let alone understand the medical jargon she talks about.
I always leave there with unanswered questions and I worry constantly about how this pregnancy and birth is going to turn out.  With my last 2 I always felt relaxed and nurtured with my midwife carers and my labours were relatively easy and very natural.  I know I can survive natural childbirth but in Thailand they are much more inclined to fill a person with medicine and drugs before letting nature take its course and now with this placenta being in a problematic position this may be all my doc needs to intervene. 
Overall I feel OK about what has happened today, I am concerned greatly but I know that medical science has done wonders in the last few decades and I know that whatever the problem is with my little guy I will get whatever help he needs to fix it and keep him healthy.  I am focusing on the good news of today rather than the bad otherwise it will stress me out and in turn stress him out which wont be any good for either of us.  Best to just wait and see what needs to be done.

It's been a while

I must first start with a sincere apology to my loyal readers, I will be honest and say my only excuse is I have been too tired to even consider trying to write.  This pregnancy has really knocked me about this time, it is probably no different to my other 2 pregnancies but I think with the added stress of the 2 little kids and the underlying stress of living as an expat just plain wears me out. 

Alot has happened since  I last posted, I had a trip back to Australia with the 2 kids to visit family, I will sum it up to say that it was a confusing trip.  As soon as we landed in Melbourne I knew I wanted to stay forever and not return to Thailand, I even went as far as to look at properties for sale.  But as the trip wore on and we headed north to Townsville the stress of being on holiday with the 2 kids by myself began to wear me down and I started to long for the extras we take advantage of here in Thailand ie; my husband for a start, I have vowed to never travel without him again, as well as having schools and maids to help entertain the children and allow me to rest.  Don't get me wrong I thoroughly enjoyed visiting family and friends and the kids really enjoyed seeing their grandparents and aunts and uncles.  Judd made my homesickness for Melbourne stronger as he kept saying for the entire trip that he didn't want to return to Thailand, he wanted to stay in Australia.  He would say to me "mummy I don't want to go back to Thailand, I want to stay in Australia" and I would ask "why?" and he would reply "because they only speak Thai and we speak English and I want to stay where people speak English".  He broke my heart as he was really sincere with his wanting to stay and I started to contemplate the options we had for returning. 

However I was once again put into a confused spin as the day we were to leave Australia my husband left a message saying that his employer has offered us the opportunity to stay in Thailand as long as we want.  And to top off my busy, confusing and tiring trip I came down with a terrible cold which made the 9 1/2 hour fight to Bangkok miserable as the pressure in my head was almost unbearable.  The kids travelled well though, they sat through all of their fights, watching movies, colouring and sleeping, I was very happy with them and it was me mostly that was uncomfortable and exhausted.

When we returned to Pattaya it took me nearly a week to completely unpack and catch up on sleep, it was nice to be back in our house but it still doesn't feel like home.  The fact that we rent bothers me, I am always worried we will damage something and loose our exceptionally high bond.  The kids have taken to sharing a bedroom now so we have had to make some changes to our sleeping arrangements which is a good thing actually as it frees up a bedroom for the baby when he/she arrives. 

I also had to deal with the influx of people in Pattaya evacuating Bangkok ahead of the sever floods that was working its way down from the north.  I returned home from our trip to the surprise of the shops having run out of bottled water, noodles, beer, milk and sometimes bread.

The flooding up north is terrible, just a slow never ending barrage of water destroying homes and businesses and displacing thousands of families.  I must confess though to not following local or international news very much, we live in a sort of bubble over here and unless we make the effort to buy a paper or search the channels for a English news channel I really have no idea what events are taking place here at home or anywhere else for that matter.  In some ways it is nice to not have the constant barrage of shocking news updates and current affairs programs constantly reminding me what a scary and unstable world we live in.  The plus side is that there has been predicted an end to the flooding in Bangkok and hopefully alot of the visitors to Pattaya will be able to return home (to whats left anyway) and life down here will return to normal.  Sounds selfish but there is not much I can do for such a large scale disaster.  We have attended fund raising functions to raise money for water purifiers and food. 

Everyday I have conflicted emotions about living here, some days I am OK with it and others I can't stand being here for another minute.  For instance my maid came running in Monday morning yelling madame! madame!  and pointing to the pool which was overflowing in gushes into the street and down into the drains.  Apparently the ball thing that triggers when the water level drops too low and allows the pool to refill itself broke and water just kept pouring into it until it had nowhere to go except over the edge and down the street.  I had to turn the water supply off to the entire house while waiting for my pool maintenance man to come and repair the problem.  Luckily there is a reserve tank underground out the front which allows for about 2 days worth of rationed water so thankfully I still had running water while I waited.  Waiting for a tradesman in Thailand is like watching grass grow, painfully slow and frustrating.  They say they will come but then wont show up for 4 days.  I rang Marcus at his work and asked him to have one of his workers who speaks both English and Thai to call him and ensure that he was on his way.

Another mini drama I had was while grocery shopping in the local supermarket I went to pay at the checkout and discovered that Marcus had taken all my money out of my purse and put it in the safe without telling me, so I tried my Visa debit card and was embarrassed to be told it was declined.  I had to stand there with everyone watching me and listening while I phoned Marcus to ask him to transfer some money ASAP.  I was almost in tears with embarrassment.  Then while in the car park I was furious to discover that some twit had parked so close next to my car that I couldn't even fit between the two.  I had to climb through the passenger side.  What made me most upset was that this happens frequently in Thailand and I cringe to wonder what will happen when my stomach grows so big with my baby that I will be unable to squeeze myself in and my temper is so short these days that I may end up making a hugely embarrassing scene in the car park.  Back in Melbourne if someone does something to you like that you can leave a nice little cranky note on their windscreen telling them what stupid idiots they are, but here I just have to swallow my temper, take many many deep breaths and walk away.  It is a real knock on a persons pride.

We have had some good days though, we had the Halloween Fete at Horseshoe Point.  The kids got to get all dressed up and ride the merry go round, jump the bouncy castle and play random games to win prizes.  Lillie had her very first pony ride on a lovely white horse.  She handled it really well just as long as I didn't let go of her hand.  Lillie insisted in dressing as a fairy princess for the night even though she had a gorgeous witch costume that she wore for a Wiggle Town Play group Halloween party the previous day.  Judd dressed as a scary ghost and he had so much fun and didn't want to leave.

We have also recently had the Loy Krathong festival.  As Lillie is in school this year I had to go shopping to buy her a Thai Costume to wear for the celebration ceremony they were holding at their school.  I was a bit late in getting it so all the pretty one shouldered costumes had been sold so we got a more simply outfit for her.  She looked so pretty and Judd was so handsome wearing the same Thai outfit I bought for him for last years festival.  That evening rather than going down to the lake where the big parties were being held we just went up to our private lake in our village to light and release our Krathong's that I had purchased off a toothless old lady on the side of the road not far from our house.  Another Thai family was there as well and they were releasing lanterns into the sky and we hung around to watch and then the night sky filled with orange lanterns from all the revelers around our area, it was a pretty sight.

I have my ups and downs as usual and I try to look at the more positive side of life here but some days it just wears me down to the point that I want to pack my bags and fly home, but then I remind myself that I don't have a home in Melbourne anymore and I would be starting all over again with moving, unpacking, settling the kids in and reconnecting with all our old friends which may not be as easy as it sounds as alot can change in 2 years.  So I just take the good with the bad and carry on taking each day at a time and not raising my expectations too high.  It is a fabulous opportunity we have been given and I would be a fool to waste it.