Well, for various reasons around the start of April we got a test and it was positive! It was funny as i'd gone alone to the private Canossa hospital (you pay & get seen immediately) and just sat there in floods with a tiny wee nun patting me when they told me. Pete had to come get me (after a sudden sit-down when his knees went after I rang him)!
The 1st scan was a shock as it turns out aside from being 'old' and diabetic, I have double the normal of female internal bits (too small for babies)so am on the high risk pregnancy list for a 3rd reason. Whoops. At least it explains why we didn't guess before.
Anyway it was very cool to see the inch long squiggler and hear its wee heart. We got to see this all straight away by going to a very nice (and pricey!) private doc. Tho it sounds as if if I have the baby here there is no point paying the cost of a small house in the UK to stay private, as with all problems I would definitely get transferred to the public hospital where all abnormal cases go ANYWAY! ho hum.
So, the reasons for me thinking the boat was being especially rough and wondering why a few weeks of not doing much had made me so fat were explained!!!
What with it starting to get hot, being rough and me having about 4 early doctors appointments a week (before the ferry started), we decided to start looking for a flat. I told all the agents our budget, and that we wanted a proper bathroom (had enough of the chinese style aged toilet cubicle with a hose on the wall and a hole drain in the floor on Lamma) and a proper kitchen, preferably all not grotty.
Wow, what an education! I suppose most flats I have been to have been the millionaires ones - any with more 'normal' lives held their kids parties at venues. Also, we are realising the reason we have not been to anyones houses is its just NOT DONE - you meet up out in cafes or clubs where there is space & facilities, and only the rich have entertaining space at home. Well, I picked all the slightly LESS crowded/ vaguely nicer looking places I knew to go see. Um...
Hmm - flat I went to look at renting in HK. This is relatively UNCROWDED
Originally uploaded by wildcatfin.
So I hadn't realised how SMALL flats really were! Most 2 bedrooms had 1 with a big wardrobe (only storeage in whole flat) and a built in bed which was too short for me but filled the entire room.
hmm. I then added in they MUST have a lift - with a baby on the way I was not going to be climbing up to 15 floors!!! We finally found a nice but tiny flat (as in 2nd bedroom wouldn't fit even the length of a single, and the kicthen was the usual cupboard size but at least looked OK) in the far north-east of Hong Kong Island. New & beautifully decorated, even with some fairly nice furniture! It was an odd very tall very skinny development, so we'd have had windows on 3 of 4 sides (the 4th was the lift shaft) which I expect means it would be roasting in the sun all day. And it was in a very chinese city area - all fish markets - not that that bother me! But, wow, the price - over our budget, over 2000UK a month! But it was the only thing we saw we remotely liked. well, we went home to think it over, when Pete suddenly turned round and pointed out we'd always planned to be living the 'Goode Life' if we had kids, in our wee eco-house somewhere rural. Which is NOT the case in hong Kong - no gardens, pollution so bad they keep school kids in half their playtimes.... so complete change of plan, we would go back to the UK if Sue said it was OK to crash at the farm till we got sorted!
Middle Island Ferry waiting to pick us up as Dragon boaters go off
Originally uploaded by wildcatfin.
So, back to the boat. Then, as its now the season, warning of a bad typhoon coming in - and boy was it windy & bumpy! So the next day I started a mad hunt for a serviced apartment or room we could rent for a couple of months. Nightmare...nothing free and hotel rooms all around 400UK a night in the city. I insisted on being on HK island, near taxi/ transport incase of any baby problems and because of my by now 5 times a week clinic visits. In the end Pete joined me and after a last ditch effort begging for help from the Tourist office, we found Regency Heights, near the central library by Victoria Park in Causeway Bay, with 1 room free. Again pricey, but nice - like a big white hotel room with a sofa, huge shower, fridge & microwave. And tv. And A/C - luxury! Culture shock! I was cold, wet and ill so basically sulked until Pete signed for it. Good job we did - he left just before the start of a Black rainstorm (worst code they have here) to get emergency clothes etc from the boat. Then we sat guiltily in a nice, still, dry bed whilst the thunder & lightning got going, worrying about the cat (no pets allowed so she stayed on board).
The day after, the Saturday, the storm died a bit so Pete drove Naughty Boy around to Aberdeen typhoon shelter before the main storm hit. I was terrified - we were getting chased by huge gusts of sea water whipped up by the wind! I had to do a party at Aberdeen Marina club, and keeping my outfit in bags, changed when I got there, soaked. Luckily the kids birthday had been moved up into a spare ballroom, as when I arrived the gazebos were busily blowing into the pool.
As it was all doors and windows were covered in big X's of tape, like you see in films of the Blitz, as the last typhoon many of them shattered from pressure drops and wind strength! All a bit scarey.... I waded back to the boat with the help of the last brave sampan driver, who luckily waited to collect Pete & I so we could grab a taxi back to our room. The cat was freaked by the new surroundings but had never been very bothered by extreme weather, so she stayed onboard.
The next week I tried to go see the cat every day to feed and cuddle her, but my morning sickness got so bad some days I stayed in bed and other times I'd get onto the boat just to lie on deck, hang over the edge and be ill! She was moulting insanely now it was finally warming up so the whole boat was getting fluffy and I got too hot to send much time packing. So it became Petes job and he dropped to every 2 or 3 days - but Domino still seemed fine, poor wee soul. By then he'd handed in his notice and we were advertising for a home for the cat and trying to sell the 2 boats. So, I got into the luxury of all day inetrnetting in my underwear, whilst being seraenaded by the girls brass band (and accompanying flag twirlers) from the convent school I could see out my window accross the road.
School in hong kong from out bedroom window - flag twirlers as band plays 'i Love you Baby' - just after poor Heath Ledger died
Originally uploaded by wildcatfin.
mum arrived and Pete slept most nights back on the boat if it wasn't stormy, so Mum & I had the bed. Not that I slept much, feeling ill and having lots of hypos all night! Poor mum didn't see much except the Tin Hau temple around the corner from us
and the inside of 3 different hospitals her first week. The 2nd week, the 1st time I got seen by a public obstetrician, I was ordered against my will into the public ward as she thought my daibetc control was bad. I was mad - my original diabetic specialist, dietician, AND the private Obs/ gyn had thought I was Ok and were working to sort my sugars out with me at home.
Thus began 3 days of them taking blood from me every 2 hours, which i HATE as my elbows kill and as its a teaching hospital some of them really gouged my veins! After that they just copied down my own blood test results, so i started asking if I could go home. i hated the food, especially the fish congee slime at breakfast, and was so ill I wasn't eating much anyway. Also the lack of sleep from screaming babies/ labouring women and chattering staff did not help. Pete & mum came in 1 night for their whole 2 hours visiting (maximum allowed, 6pm every night - I was so bored I read 16 books in 1 week), found me in tears (had been all day, tired & depressed) and finally got me a night's leave. After that I was allowed home every few days overnight. But I hated it - the staff were generally lovely, and the ward bright & pleasant enough, but they treated me and most women like idiots. Despite being checked by the diabetic nurse, soemone decided I was not allowed to do my own injections, and also needed to have a professor tell them the dose I should have before every jab, based on my sugar results. Which meant instead of having sliding scale (ie if sugars are 10, inject 122, if 6, inject 8 etc) I had to wait up to 40 mins for an answer so the food was even less appetising by then. When morning sickness finally died don a bit I was so hungry I kept waking up whenever I fell asleep (I still have to set alarms to get up and test sugars every night). And the tiny chinese lady next to me was on the same diet as me despite being about 1/3 my body size. Hmmm......
There was 1 other western lady in for 2 nights, and all the staff and other mums were in shock at how 'huge' her 7lb baby was. Mum was in shock at how tiny all the chinese babies were - 5lb seems the biggest! I was getting wound up by the seemingly Victorian attitude t men - several dads waiting in the outside room were not even told, let alone allowed in to see, the birth. And 1 got thrown out for taking a photo of his newborn in the privavcy of their bed curtain cubicle!!! I was allowed out for a couple of 2 hour parties but not allowed to let anything pass my lips 9food/ drink). From what parents said, private hospitals are much les 'chinese' towards men...but i hope the UK is better!
Cute rainbow flowery butterfly- face painting by www.cats-creations.co.uk
Originally uploaded by wildcatfin.
The final straw a week later was me asking all day to be discharged and finally seeing a Doctor asking why I had ASKED to be let in. Um, I asked NOT to be admitted! Then she said my sugars were better when I was at home (YES as I'm allowed to get out of bed - I got glared at if I did more than 12 turns round the ward, but my legs were dying for exercise). And I slept better/ looked better when I'd been home. Yes. And my insulin levels were probably more sited to me when before I'd been admitted than after all the mucking around - my sugars were still up & down and all over the place in hospital! Ok, so can I go home then please? And she said NO!!!! Go figure.
luckily Pete arrived then and with the pair of us insisting I was finally released against their will. The only thing i gained from my stay was a lot of stress and constipation - which went as soon as I could get fresh fruit again.
I saw my own dietician the day after and she was not impressed that I had last 1 stone in the 6 weeks since she saw me the day after we found out......
Still, happier. Took 3 days for my shoulders to relax. Relif!
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