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deird1As the suspicious among you might have noticed, I'm rather pregnant.
13 weeks, in fact. Which means I got knocked up just before changing country – thereby managing to hit five of life's most stressful events (job change; marriage; buying a house; getting pregnant; changing country) in a single year.
Do NOT Do This In A Foreign Country
I am:
- away from all friends and family, excepting the husband
- away from all my Aussie comfort food
- rapidly increasing my German pregnancy-related vocab, as none of the nurses speak English
Out of all of these, the biggest issue is definitely the food.
I haven't just had morning sickness; I've had severe enough morning sickness to land me in hospital. It has DRAMATICALLY screwed with my eating habits. There were several stages of this.
Stage 1: Waking up in the morning feeling queasy, being a bit off my game until it passes, and reasoning that, if this is morning sickness, I'll handle it easy.
...HA.
Stage 2: There is nothing in this world but vomit.
This included a total lack of appetite. Imagine that eating involves stuffing food into your ear canal. And you know it's a good, nutritious thing, and you know you should do it – but, dammit, I don't want to put food in my ear. Food shouldn't go in my ear. And the idea of spending my time trying to put even more of the stupid stuff in my ear is just... too much. Don't wanna.
Stage 3: My sense of smell is superpowered and it HATES ME.
This lasted for weeks. It included instances of me banishing the husband to the other room because his cereal smelled noxious, making him stay on the other side of the bed because he smelled of human being, and telling him to turn around because his breath smelled of air.
This is where the being-in-a-foreign-country became a total pain. Because
- my body was rejecting anything that smelled bad (or at all)
- my body was convinced that anything that tasted even slightly different to what I was expecting was poison and should be expelled with extreme force
- my body kept coming up with exciting ideas of foods I could eat ...if I was in Australia where they sell those foods
So the husband was getting sent out on food errands, coming back with the closest German approximation, and having me take one bite, spit it out, and reject the entire packet. The poor man has had to finish a whole lot of leftovers he wasn't interested in eating in the first place.
Stage 4: I feel awesome! ...and now I don't.
I currently spend most of the day feeling fine, and small, random portions of it throwing up with gusto. It's rather cramping my style.
As I say, the food thing is a pain. But the rest of foreign-country-ness is a pain too. I'm suddenly stuck in a situation where I don't know the people, don't know the medical system, and can't really go and tourist.
I console myself with the thought that, if we were living in Detroit as originally planned for this year, my pregnancy plan would be to wait until I was in labour, drive across the border, and find the nearest Canadian hospital. Comparatively speaking, this is way easier.
So... yeah. There's my news. And the reason I haven't been posting terribly much. Hopefully my blogging frequency will increase as my vomiting frequency lessens.
13 weeks, in fact. Which means I got knocked up just before changing country – thereby managing to hit five of life's most stressful events (job change; marriage; buying a house; getting pregnant; changing country) in a single year.
Do NOT Do This In A Foreign Country
I am:
- away from all friends and family, excepting the husband
- away from all my Aussie comfort food
- rapidly increasing my German pregnancy-related vocab, as none of the nurses speak English
Out of all of these, the biggest issue is definitely the food.
I haven't just had morning sickness; I've had severe enough morning sickness to land me in hospital. It has DRAMATICALLY screwed with my eating habits. There were several stages of this.
Stage 1: Waking up in the morning feeling queasy, being a bit off my game until it passes, and reasoning that, if this is morning sickness, I'll handle it easy.
...HA.
Stage 2: There is nothing in this world but vomit.
This included a total lack of appetite. Imagine that eating involves stuffing food into your ear canal. And you know it's a good, nutritious thing, and you know you should do it – but, dammit, I don't want to put food in my ear. Food shouldn't go in my ear. And the idea of spending my time trying to put even more of the stupid stuff in my ear is just... too much. Don't wanna.
Stage 3: My sense of smell is superpowered and it HATES ME.
This lasted for weeks. It included instances of me banishing the husband to the other room because his cereal smelled noxious, making him stay on the other side of the bed because he smelled of human being, and telling him to turn around because his breath smelled of air.
This is where the being-in-a-foreign-country became a total pain. Because
- my body was rejecting anything that smelled bad (or at all)
- my body was convinced that anything that tasted even slightly different to what I was expecting was poison and should be expelled with extreme force
- my body kept coming up with exciting ideas of foods I could eat ...if I was in Australia where they sell those foods
So the husband was getting sent out on food errands, coming back with the closest German approximation, and having me take one bite, spit it out, and reject the entire packet. The poor man has had to finish a whole lot of leftovers he wasn't interested in eating in the first place.
Stage 4: I feel awesome! ...and now I don't.
I currently spend most of the day feeling fine, and small, random portions of it throwing up with gusto. It's rather cramping my style.
As I say, the food thing is a pain. But the rest of foreign-country-ness is a pain too. I'm suddenly stuck in a situation where I don't know the people, don't know the medical system, and can't really go and tourist.
I console myself with the thought that, if we were living in Detroit as originally planned for this year, my pregnancy plan would be to wait until I was in labour, drive across the border, and find the nearest Canadian hospital. Comparatively speaking, this is way easier.
So... yeah. There's my news. And the reason I haven't been posting terribly much. Hopefully my blogging frequency will increase as my vomiting frequency lessens.
no subject
Date: 2014-04-29 03:49 pm (UTC)b) you've made absolutely sure no monks and/or satanic nuns were involved (to the unitiated check Buffy S5 and Good Omens by Terry Pratchett and Neil Gaiman)
c) you need people to smuggle contraband Australian food in?
d) you need a definitive list of Australian food shops in the greater German area ie. the EU (at least if you read the Daily Mail.
Congratulations btw... er, I think ;-)
no subject
Date: 2014-04-30 04:38 am (UTC)a) Yes. Assuming Australians count as foreign from your perspective. :)
b) As far as I can tell...
c) Some should be arriving soonish, I believe.
d) So much. But Stuttgart hasn't been terribly helpful in that regard.