I Found Out I Got Knocked Up Abroad and Here’s What Happened (Part 1)
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Here’s one of my most popular articles About that time I found out I was pregnant on my best, friend's 40th birthday — including a voice over reading by yours truly — free for all to read. Enjoy!
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I Found Out I Got Knocked Up Abroad, and Here’s What Happened (Part 1)
(Links to parts 2 and 3 at the end of this article)
“It’s so weird,” I said mid-pee to my girlfriend Sophie, who was in the bathroom stall next to me. “I’ve got my period again and I only just had it two weeks ago.”
She was silent for a moment. “Riiight…”
We came out of the stalls and were washing our hands. “And, you just said you’ve been peeing a lot?”
“Yeeeah…” I said, the realisation not quite hitting me, but kind of. “But, you know, these gin and tonics are massive.”
And, I mean, they were. We were at the W Koh Samui for our best friend Juliette’s 40th birthday. Drinking gin and tonics the size of our heads.
As you do on someone’s 40th.
“It could be spotting, you know. A lot of women spot when they’re first pregnant.”
I twisted my face. I’d never heard that before. Ever.
“Show me your tits,” she demanded.
So we went back into a stall, and I lifted up my dress for her to examine my breasts. “Hmmm…” she said, nodding.
We came out again. “What?” Now it was my turn to demand.
I was newly married. My husband, Fraser and I, had decided to start trying after the wedding, at the start of October. I’d read that it takes 80 percent of couples at least a year to get pregnant. It was November 23rd. I was wholly unprepared for this.
“Have you considered that you might be pregnant, babe?”
“Oh come on, I’m not pregnant. I know my body,” I insisted.
“Right. Well, why don’t you just pick up a few pregnancy tests, just in case?” She suggested gently.
The realisation was starting to set in now. This was real.
I might be pregnant.
Abroad. In Thailand. Without my mom. Without my family doctor. Without easy access to English language baby books. Without doctors who were fluent in my mother tongue. Without even knowing if I was covered for this by my health insurance.
We were going to a French restaurant Juliette had picked out next. I hopped on the back of my husband’s bike.
It was one of those moments you never forget, peeing on a stick in a tiny almost-bathroom with cracked floorboards and no toilet seat, while your friends wait in anticipation for both their decadent french dinner…and to find out whether or not there’s a tiny human growing inside of you.
“Don’t freak out. It’s almost definitely nothing,” I said to him as we raced down the road. “But I’m going to pick up some pregnancy tests. Soph thinks I might be pregnant. I know I’m not, but I just want to make sure.”
“Okaaaaaay…” was about all he could muster in response.
So we grabbed the tests from the 7. We picked up four, actually.
We got to the restaurant and sat down. I didn’t want to be rude, but I couldn’t wait. Not only for Juliette’s 40th birthday to be over (as I should have), but not even for dinner to start.
I excused myself to the ladies’ room. Well, it wasn’t so much a ladies’ room as a hole in the wall. But at least it had a flush toilet. You learn to appreciate the little things when you live abroad.
The instructions were all in Thai. So I did what I’d always heard you’re supposed to do, and peed on the stick.
It was one of those moments you never forget, peeing on a stick in a tiny almost-bathroom with cracked floorboards and no toilet seat, while your friends wait in anticipation for both their decadent french dinner……and to find out whether or not there’s a tiny human growing inside of you.
I looked at the stick. Nothing had changed. There was a little clock diagram on the instructions that had a number 5, so I figured you’re probably meant to wait five minutes. So, I popped the stick back in the box, put it in my purse, washed my hands, and went back to the table.
“Well?” Soph asked me. By now everyone at the table knew.
I shook my head. “I dunno. Gotta wait five minutes.”
We ordered a bottle of wine. I downed my first glass pretty quickly. I figured if I might be finding out I was pregnant, I might as well enjoy not knowing while I could.
Five minutes passed. I looked at it again. Still nothing.
“Oh, but Kaila, you’re supposed to leave this kind to steep in the little plastic pot you get. You did it wrong.”
“Ah come on, really? Does that really make a difference? I mean, I peed for a long time.”
They chuckled. “Yes, it makes a difference. Go try another one.”
I went back. I had the kind where you actually do pee on the stick, so I got that one out. Luckily, downing that glass of wine had given me fuel to need to pee again.
Within literally seconds, the white part of the stick developed two pink lines. Now, though this wasn’t the first time I’d taken a pregnancy test, the times before were few and far between, and my memory was fuzzy.
But from TV shows, movies, commercials, and magazines, I was pretty sure that two lines meant I was preggo.
I frantically looked at the directions. All in Thai, of course. But I thought maybe it would have a baby symbol next to a diagram to give me some kind of indication. Nothing.
I washed my hands and went back out to the table. I called my Thai girlfriend Gam over.
“Gam, can you read this for me please? What does it say?”
She looked at the directions. “Two means pregnant!” She cried, giving me a big hug.
My mind went totally and completely numb. It was like in the movies when someone goes under water and all the noise around them drowns out and for some reason there’s a high-pitched buzzing sound, you know? That’s how my world became.
I told my husband, who teared up. My girlfriends were all hugging me. I didn’t know how or what to feel. Of course I was happy. We wanted this. But it was so soon. How did it happen so soon? I mean, we’d been trying, but we hadn’t really been trying. I hadn’t been tracking my ovulation cycle or standing on my head or anything like that.
We ordered more wine.
“We should tell our parents,” Fraser suggested. We looked at our watches and then up to the ceiling, doing math calculations in our heads to work out the time difference.
“My parents will still be sleeping,” he realised disappointedly. “We’ll have to wait another hour to contact them.”
“My mom will be up already…but I think she’ll have left the house. Let me try to call her anyways.”
Fraser’s parents live in Scotland, which is seven hours behind, and my mom lives in Mexico, which is 12 hours behind.
I called my mom. She didn’t answer. I knew she was at her morning workout. I’d known it was a longshot.
We ordered more wine. (Don’t judge me. It was my last night of indulgence.)
We finally got a hold of all our parents.
I told my mom she was going to be a grandmother on a Thai street corner next to a girlie bar with bright neon lights and a sign with a high-heeled woman sitting in a martini glass. My friends looked on with proud smiles.
I had gotten pregnant so quickly that I hadn’t even made sure I was covered for maternity care with my health insurance. I was pretty sure I was, but I had been meaning to call and verify.
After the wedding, we’d had friends and family visiting for a full month, and it had all been pretty hectic. I know, I know, I should have made it a priority. It was a mistake that we later paid for, so lesson learned.
It turned out — sod’s law — that I wasn’t covered. Of course I wasn’t. We’d have to pay for all the scans and delivery ourselves if we wanted to deliver in Thailand.
So, the next day, we went to a clinic. There was the option of Bangkok Samui hospital, which is famous for charging about five times the price of anywhere else. Juliette told us about a clinic that does ultrasounds near her house, with a decent doctor and decent prices. So we went there.
We waited 45 minutes. Then the doctor called us in. She laid me down, lifted up my top, and squirted that unnecessarily cold goo on my belly. My heart started to race. What if it had been a false alarm? What if I wasn’t actually pregnant? Or scarier yet…what if I really was? We were about to find out either way, 100%.
But then, she walked away to treat another patient. I laid there with the cold goo warming to my body temperature, desperate for her to come back, fir what felt like two hours, but was probably more like 30 minutes. Still, I was not impressed.
Finally, she came back, and pressed the ultrasound wand into my belly.
“There, yes, baby. Maybe six week. I not sure. So small.” (We still don’t know how far along I was then!)
And there it was.
It was nothing really. Just a tiny dot on a screen. But it was everything. We paid the 1200 THB clinic fee and went on our way with our sonogram print out, with the doctor telling me to avoid watermelon, pineapple and coconut as I walked out the door (something I still consider extremely strange to this day).
We were thrilled. We were terrified. And we resolved to change doctors immediately.
What we didn’t know was that we were about to have a huuuuge scare.
My Top Tips for How To Hack It As A Pregnant Girl in Thailand
I’m not claiming to be an expert on pregnancy, by any stretch of the imagination. No way! I originally wrote this article when I was five months pregnant, and every day I learned more and realised just how very little I know about this business of growing a human inside of me.
But, I sure as heck have learned a lot from this experience, and I’m happy to share what I’ve learned with y’all. Here goes.
Check your pregnancy coverage beforehand. This one probably seems super obvious, and if I were to have read a year before the wedding, I’d have rolled my eyes and gone, obviously. But there we are, pregnant without maternity coverage, living abroad. How did it happen? It just all happened so fast that I forgot to check. Seriously. So don’t let that happen to you. The moment you decide to not use condoms anymore or forego birth control, should be the moment you call up your insurance company.
Find Mommy friends. Or ideally, other pregnant women. But if you’re like me, and those are few and far between given the small population of people who live in your chosen destination, settle for mommy friends who can give you advice and tips from their own pregnancy experiences…and their old maternity clothes too! If they live where you do, some of them may have gone to doctors and given birth there too, and can also give you references on the best doctors and hospitals (and more importantly…ones to avoid!).
Give yourself a break. Unless you’re on a sweet expat package, you probably aren’t covered for maternity leave. This is probably one of the biggest disadvantages to being a woman living abroad. Unless you have a ton of savings or rich parents, you have to work through pretty much your entire pregnancy. It sucks. So, give yourself a break. That’s what I learned to do. Don’t try to do it all. Take advantage of the fact that you likely have flexible working hours, and take after the Spanish and start enjoying afternoon siestas in the air conditioning. Let your partner cook dinner(s). Sleep in.
Swim. If you live in a beachside, ocean, or lakeside destination like me, did you know that you now float!? Get to the water, and enjoy the fact that you now have your own personal built-in floatation device. It’s freaking awesome.
Listen to your gut, and verify. There is a lot of misinformation about pregnancy floating about, and nowhere more so than when you live abroad. Local folklore can be full of wisdom, but can also be flawed. Do you know what three things that same doctor who kept me waiting 45 minutes for my first scan told me to avoid? Coconut, watermelon, and pineapple. Seriously. In doubt, I verified online, with my mommy friends, and with my new doctor, who all said these things are not only fine to consume while pregnant, but healthy for the baby. When planning a fishing trip with friends, my Thai girlfriend told me that I couldn’t fish when I’m pregnant. Confused, I asked her why. She wouldn’t answer at first, but when I pressed her, she explained that according to her religion, Buddhism, it’s bad luck to kill any living thing when you’re pregnant. Finally, I understood that this was simply her moral opinion.
Do you have any stories about getting knocked up abroad to share, that we could all enjoy and learn from? Please share in the comments! And if anyone has any questions about getting and being pregnant while in Thailand, feel free to hit me up.
PS. Want more? Here’s parts 2 and 3 of the story:
I Found Out I Got Knocked Up Abroad And Here's What Happened: Part II
I Found Out I Got Knocked Up Abroad And Here's What Happened: Part III