The Worried Pregnant Tourist in Barbados

I wasn’t sure what to expect from my most recent trip to Barbados. We’d selected it as our destination because we used to live there, and figured it would be both relaxing, and handy to have existing relationships with doctors, should I need one.

My midwife gave me a complete copy of all of my medical records since I started seeing her practice, to bring my OBGYN in Barbados up to date, should I need to see her. I bought travelers’ medical insurance for the first time in my life, though after paying for it, I read the longish list of exclusions and found that maternity care and childbirth are excluded. Rats.

I worried about staying regular and whether I’d be able to find prune juice at the grocery store there, so I bought some bags of dried prunes and apricots to be on the safe side.

A colleague got me worried about sunburn, saying pregnant ladies are more susceptible to sunburn than normal, so I bought some children’s SPF 50 sun block – opted for the children’s type, hoping it would have fewer weird chemicals. This is in addition to the lovely natural sun block product I’d purchased at Lush, which they say is approximately SPF 15.

I remembered our hotel room from last year where we were on the third floor with no elevator, and figured that would be hopeless, or rather, I would be hopeless trying to climb two flights of stairs right now. I called the hotel a month before we arrived and requested a room on the ground or second floor.

I have read that mosquitoes are particularly drawn to pregnant ladies, so I worried about contracting dengue fever again (you can get it up to four times) and considered buying insect repellent, but didn’t find any citronella based products before I left. I don’t use DEET based stuff under normal circumstances, and really don’t want to while pregnant.

In the last days before departure and the first few days of the trip, I got myself completely worked up and convinced that I was going to go into labour while in Barbados. Happily, that turned out to be wrong and I’m still quite pregnant.

Here are my lessons learned for traveling to the Caribbean while pregnant:

• It doesn’t matter how much your traveling companion loves to have the window seat, you really need to get an aisle seat. This is not just for you to be able to get up and down to the bathroom frequently, but also for some shoulder and arm rest space: on one of the longer flights, I was stuck between my husband and a larger guy. I thought my back was going to go into spasm, I was so uncomfortable.
  
• They sell prune juice in the large grocery stores, just not the little touristy ones.
  
• The guy selling papayas out of the back of a van is also your friend: ask him for a large, very ripe one and make a basic little fruit salad with lime and brown sugar in the hotel. It will keep for days in the fridge and help with the digestion.
  
• Mosquitoes still prefer my husband (poor guy!) to me. I don’t think I got bitten once.
  
• The SPF 50 was pretty effective, but so was the stuff from Lush. I wore a hat and stayed out of the sun from 11 am to 3 pm and only got a bit singed – mostly got brown. Someone to whom I’m married doesn’t think he needs sun block or a hat, and he’s peeling now. And a lot browner than me.
  
• People are nice to pregnant ladies everywhere I go. Except those that aren’t, but they’re outnumbered. I got the best customer service I have ever received in Barbados on this trip. Even the cashiers at Big B’s grocery store were sweet to me, and that’s a minor miracle.
  
• Gobsmacked is kind of a wacky thing to say when explaining your reaction to hearing that someone is pregnant, but in a funny, irreverent way that I like.
  

So that’s what I learned on vacation in Barbados. I spent loads of time listening to the Hypnobabies recordings... or in some deep state of hypnosis where I snored, and listened to them at any rate... We had a lovely time, visited with many old friends, enjoyed perfect weather and hope to be back again soon!

UPDATE: forgot to link to the photos on Flickr. All better now.

Dealing with Pregnancy Side Effects

I can't pretend to be an expert on dealing with the symptoms or side effects, as this is just my first time through it, but I'll share what's worked well for me.

• Metallic taste in mouth: Trident chewing gum works for me - I haven't had much luck with other types of sugarless the flavour away. Yes, I am still having the metal taste in my mouth. I'm in the third trimester for goodness sakes!

• Morning/whenever sickness and nausea: eat something! It's counter-intuitive, but it really helps to eat a small amount of carbs. I was good friends with the whole wheat saltine. Except when I'm nauseated because I forgot to not brush my tongue in the morning. I haven't figured that one out yet. Yes, I'm in the third trimester and still somewhat nauseated in the morning. There are worse things...
• Intestines moving too slowly: I've switched to Citra-Natal, a prescription prenatal vitamin with a stool softener and a more easily digested form of iron in it. I've also continued to eat loads of raw fruit and veggies, and drink loads of water. I alternate between prune and apricot juice - I can't find unsweetened apricot juice though, which makes me cranky(er). Finally, I've significantly reduced the amount of cheese and bananas I eat. All put together, I'm more regular. Thank you, PTB.
• Sinus congestion: I got nothing. The neti pot? Fun to use and I do believe there are health benefits, but the congestion just comes back within a few hours.
• Back pain: gentle, pregnancy modified yoga and seeing my chiropractor once a week. If you're pregnant, it's important to find a chiropractor who has done a course in obstetric chiropractic: not all of them have. I have read that my chiropractor can help reposition the baby if she's almost ready to come out but in a breech position.
• Heartburn: Tums is my friend and constant companion (with a bottle in my desk, another in the loo at home, and a packet in my purse). So is sitting upright after eating, and eating several small meals instead of one big one, but sometimes I both have heartburn and feel hungry. Go figure.
• Pregnancy brain: One word: BlackBerry. Don't know what I'd do without it, other than buy an iPhone.

Here's a new one: I've been having Braxton Hicks contractions for at least a couple weeks and just figured it out, oh, you know, yesterday. Thank you WTEWYE! I was reading ahead to the 28 - 32 weeks section, where they mention that sometimes your uterus feels like a rock for a little while and then it stops, and identifies these as BH contractions. I had no idea. They also mentioned that they can start as early as 20 weeks... but don't mention it in the book until 28? Sigh. Editors are great.

At any rate, I haven't got anything in particular for dealing with the BH contractions - they're not painful (yet), just weird feeling: I look like I have a melon stuffed up my shirt, but now my belly feels hard, like a melon... and then it goes away. I actually thought, before I got this label for it, that the baby was doing backflips or something, and just taking up a lot of space.

The hairiness? I shave the bits I normally shave and ignore the rest. The belly touching hasn't got out of control yet.

Actually speaking of WTEWYE, I love that every month/chapter starts what what to expect this month, and is mostly physical stuff but also some mental/emotional stuff too. The last couple months, boredom with the pregnancy has been listed, which just blows me away. I feel like I'm just really getting into it now and enjoying that I'm really showing. I think the whole thing has been fascinating and (largely) wonderful. The only boredom I'm worried about is that not everyone else around me is finding my pregnancy as endlessly fascinating as I am!

Let's hear some other good tips for managing the pregnancy side effects you've experienced!

Photo credit: Eric Gjerde

Being a Girl Geek

I have addressed this briefly in other posts, but I feel compelled to note that I am really enjoying being a woman working in IT - especially right now, during pregnancy. Why you might ask? Good question.

Because we geeks have a whole floor in my office to ourselves, thus we have one women's bathroom and one men's bathroom. Since we are geeks and mostly fellas, I frequently have the women's bathroom all to myself. That, my dear gentle reader, is gold. We have also spoken of my intestinal distress during pregnancy, which I have learned to manage (another post to come on that topic I guess, could be useful), but I nonetheless need to be in there more than a normal non-pregnant person. 

There might be a downside to being a women working in IT - well, I know there are, but it's largely treated me well.  Maybe I should be annoyed about being treated like a bit of a novelty (not so much in my current job but definitely in previous places of work), but I like not being totally normal.