More on Baby

If you want more details about adventures in newborn land, and more baby photos have a look at my "overflow" blog Kronicle Extra

Baby!

Cambodia at a Crossroads

a less busy week

So it looks like Tuesday night is the big social outing night- the last 3 weeks I've come home from the clinic with other pregnant people. One of them has already given birth, but a few new ones have appeared!
Last week we worked out although it looked like there were only 5 of us in the car there were actually 8 people.

Yesterday I went to the hospital where I'm planning to give birth, I filled in a paper and got a hospital number on a card back. Then back to our leafy guesthouse for lunch with a women who will be helping with the birth (hopefully, if he comes while she is in town). She is Swiss but studying to be a mid wife in the Philippines.  I met her through the expat birth team network here.

We're still working out how to do the paperwork for the birth, looks like we have a few different options (sending a person down, sending the documents by EMS).

Buying dinner on the way home from the Tuesday night pregnant  outing to clinic

Soeun is trying some new med and less exposure to inside dust. The doctor here reckons if we treat his dust allergy his inner ear will be more healthy and it will deal with his fatigue and insomnia.

At this point in time it feels like being pregnant and trying to get healthy is a full time job for us! I think i imagined we would be doing stuff in these weeks, but we only have enough energy to do the essentials it feels like. So we are very thankful we are staying somewhere that means we can just focus on health for now.  Don't feel like we have energy to look after a baby- but we don't have a baby yet so thats ok for now.

I'm enjoying public transport here, feels safe, smooth, easy and comfy. 

something new to try

I think my memory of Thailand is going to be all about 7 eleven and doctors! We spent the day in the hospital, so missed lunch, although it was nice to be in air con all day!!

 Saw a doctor about Soeun's health and it seemed to make sense. We only went to this doc cos we have time now, it didn't feel like it was going to be useful as we have already spent a few years seeing different docs and trying different things. We ran out of energy in Aust, but now that we've had some breathing space we started investigating again, and seems fruitful (to our surprise). We'll see what happens over the next little while with meds and lifestyle changes.

slowing down

Feeling like things are less hectic now, thankful yesterday both of us did pretty much nothing all day which was a relief. Enjoying staying here with the trees, grass, birds and various other things like geckos.

within 2 weeks

Over the last 2 weeks I've lived in
1 room, visited
2 hospitals, been to
3 doctors clinics and
4 birth classes.
 I've lost track of the number of 7elevens and song thaews (red ute, public transport) I've been in, and the number of nice friendly helpful people I've met.

blue spot

We just had lunch with a couple from our birth class, and at one point in the convo I felt like they had got together before hand and come up with a baby fact I'd never heard of, it was a bizarre experience!

The other father-to-be is American (white) and the other mother-to-be is Chinese (from China). The father told us how he had recently found out that most asian babies are born with a blue spot that normally fades after a few months.

Soeun and I were both surprised for different reasons. I was surprised as I'd never heard of it before, and he was surprised because he thought all babies had that and was surprised that I and the other father-to-be didn't know about it.

So now all 4 of us are wondering if our half asian babies will have the blue spot.

Daunting

The thought of having a baby is quite daunting, and the thought of going to a new country is also daunting. But thats what we are doing... well we've just arrived in a new country and getting ready to have a baby. 

We've been travelling in these red utes, much more comfy than a motor bike!

Getting ready to come here and travelling here felt like a big effort, thought once I got here I would be more relaxed, but the first week has felt busy, good busy! Enjoying getting to know some people here, other expats from various places and others giving birth as well as those who can help us at this stage of life.  The main reason we came here was because of the network, and so far it has been great.

More of our first week is on other blog click here.

Lots of nice trees!

snails getting ready to meet Soeun

Khmer New Year- frogs, a funeral and stormy weather

Fried frog!

Soeun spent a few days with friends in a village for the biggest holiday of the year. Normally we would visit relatives in the province, but its not practical for me to travel at the moment so this was the next best thing.

 Lots of dancing, games and yummy food, also a funeral. This time of year is extra dangerous on the road and a member of the community he was visiting had a fatal moto accident.

It was awkward as the dancing place in the village was right near the deceased's house. Normally the funeral would have involved everyone and gone on for a few days, but they just had some monks chant for half an hour and then the dancing continued as normal. That was on the 3rd day of the holiday, the 4th day there would have normally been dancing too, probably as by then everyone knew about what happened and didn't feel it was appropriate.

It was only meant to be 2 nights away for Soeun, but on the day he was supposed to ride the moto back to Phnom Penh it was too dangerous due to wind and lightening. So he tried again the next day, but there were still storms. He finally came back, 2 days late and got some friends to ride with him to make it safer. So they cut their stay in the village short to help him, but then found their student accommodation wasn't accessible so ended up having to stay 2 nights with us!

So the last 4 nights have been different to how we expected, but seems like its all settled down now. Even the weather seems to have gone back to mostly just hot.

new year, the year of the snake has finally begun in cambodia

The new year angel arrival time was 2am this year, so it was pretty noisy the other night. We're usually visiting relative in the province where its very noisy at the angel arrival time, it didn't seem such a big event in PP- maybe cos less peeople here, or maybe cos I'm in a big brick house so didn't notice it? Strangely the weather seems a bit cooler this week, sometimes even dropping below 30 deg C, I needed to use a top sheet the other night!!! Nice to have some cool restful days at home.

power cut update

Charging our lights- these ones can be charged either by the sun or mains power, our best friends in March, along with our ice sellers

Well, the last few days the power cuts have been back to "normal", ie how they were in Jan/Feb. Yesterday the power was off 3 times, but for less than an hour each time. Much easier to cope with than in March when it was mostly off during the day- and for us there was a week where it was totally off day and night for 4 days in a row!!

The hardest thing was being hot and having to throw out all the food in the freezer that we didn't have time to eat/cook/give away.

 I had been stocking up as with the heat, pregnancy and traffic the way it is I didn't want to have to go out too much in April. But my planning ahead was in vain! Although the ice boxes/ esky helped keep some stuff cool, they didn't really work for keeping raw meat and bread frozen. i don't think I'll be using my toaster again until after the baby is born, but we've got some meat in there now.

Market photos

Buying beef

Our local market is quite new, lots of construction going on. When we were here 2 years ago this was a lake!

Lemongrass, chili and ginger (ginger is often used more like a veg rather than just for flavour)

You can get shredded coconut to make milk for curries.

Fish sellers

Duck eggs. You can get chicken eggs, but harder to find. 

bananas and jasmine sticks sold for worship

Setting up house, settling in... yes, still doing that even tho been here a few months

Buying a water filter

Less mossies, more airflow, thanks to Soeun's invention

 So, although we've been here for a few months we're still doing things like getting curtains for some of the rooms. With the hot sun streaming through the windows, the rooms are pretty much un- useable. Its taken awhile to to as both of us find it hard going out in the traffic (no one like PP traffic, but finding it particularly hard with dizziness and pregnancy). The heat, bumpy roads and chaos mean we only go out when we have to.

Fly screen making, part 2

Soeun has a drill, and hooks and rods for curtains, as well as fabric. He's measured and marked the wall. He invited a friend over a couple of times to help with the drilling, but the power seems to be always off when his friend comes to help. Hopefully the friend will be free at the same time as the power is on, as we'll be needing to use more room soon!

He and a few students recently spent a few days giving our fly screens an upgrade. Earlier he had stuck some screen up on a few windows, but some of them had fallen down. Soeun came up with another way to keep the screen up, so he and others went to buy the materials and then spent a few days re-doing some windows, as well as doing some for the first time.

Some students had some extra free time with the holidays- as it took longer than expected so we ended up having people stay the night and have extra meals here.