Today I’m 18 weeks pregnant! Yay! In this bump update I’m going to talk to you about my challenges with the NHS, home-birthing in the U.K., feeling heavy, baby showers, and British reserve!

I’ve been thinking a lot about my home birth because of how the last meeting went with the Midwife. I really didn’t feel comfortable with her response to my comments on the GD test. I think it becomes problematic if you start declining a lot of these things that most women are happy to take (like the GD test). I don’t want to come off as supposedly more knowledgeable or “ignorant” when it comes to making sure that the baby is healthy. But I worry that because she refused to take it off as a recommended referral for my GTT that I will come off as having declined this even though I sincerely don’t need it.

I’ve done even more research and I’ve had some wonderful friends in the area who are a very pro-homebirth say that the NHS themselves define South Asian as other countries that don’t include China and Japan. I found it really disturbing that the Midwife, instead of looking it up herself, or considering what I was saying, just wrote me off and said, “Well no. I know that Chinese and Japanese people are a part of the high diabetes category”. I would understand if I had any other indication that I needed this test but I sincerely don’t. My BMI is really good, I don’t have any history of diabetes, I don’t have any family history of diabetes, and didn’t have diabetes with my first born so there are so many other factors that would flag me. If my race was the only reason that I was being referred for this test, I would like her to get my ethnicity right!

I’ve been thinking about my home birth. I want to have a relationship and know the person who would come to my home birth. The problem with the NHS right now, especially in my area, is that there are so many different people who might be on call for a home birth; there seems to be no way for me to control who would be coming to my birth via the NHS. So it looks like the only option right now is really to hire an independent Midwife. I want to be able to know who’s coming and to be comfortable that the person who is coming is very natural birth-minded.

Unfortunately, there are people who go to home births in this area who aren’t very supportive of home births. I’m thinking “why are they there?” But I don’t think they have a choice sometimes. It can really ruin a home birth–I’ve seen it happen with my own eyes. I’ve read stories online on midwives just doing a terrible job and I think a birth is that important that we shouldn’t risk something like that.

Let’s put some context to this dilemma. I’m American and I’m here living in the UK, surrounded by people who have been in the NHS and have been using the NHS very happily for for many, many years. And… the mentality here is that you accept what you get. I mean the NHS is free to them, and they’re not going to want to make separate birth choices where they have to pay out-of-pocket, especially in the thousands of pounds. Here in the UK, I think women are just so used to birth not being a choice. They seem so used to thinking “Okay, whatever…you know this is just what every woman does here in the UK anyway”, “Why am I worrying about who’s gonna show up at my birth?” “Every woman doesn’t know who’s going to show about their birth”.

I just come from a different perspective and I think having had such an amazing home birth with a midwife that we knew very well–having that experience would make me feel like I wouldn’t want to do it any other way. I feel like I’m more emotional than other women–I worry that I wouldn’t be able to control my emotions if I get angry at someone for coming in and telling me how to birth.

Anyway, moving on, about three or four days ago, I just suddenly felt heavy! Leading up to about my 16/17 weeks, I haven’t been feeling that pregnant, in terms of carrying another human inside me and carrying extra weight. But a couple days ago I suddenly felt heavy and it’s been great. I really like it because it makes me feel like this is more and more real and the baby is growing and we’re going to be able to have another little child running around just like we have now. It’s such a miracle how they grow and how they change and how they develop.

I remember now looking back, how short pregnancy was with my first, but sometimes I feel like this pregnancy is dragging along. But soon enough we’re gonna have a baby and I’m gonna be telling you guys about how the birth went, etc. It’s just a little bit surprising for me that it’s gonna be here soon, so I shouldn’t complain about it dragging out or anything but I just wanted to be honest with you guys and tell you guys what I feel. For some reason I think a lot about the birth but there’s still a lot of stuff that has to happen before the birth. For example, picking the name. I also want to share with you guys why we’re not going to find out the gender beforehand.

Having this pregnancy in a different country is going to make a huge difference and also second pregnancies are not celebrated as much as your first pregnancy. Here in the UK it’s not really customary to do baby showers, and if you want a baby shower you basically have to tell someone to host it or you have to host it yourself. I feel like people are definitely more private here. You kind of have different circles of friends and you don’t really bring those circles together. I think that’s what makes having a baby shower that a friend wants to throw for you so difficult because they don’t really know who to invite; they don’t know the other people. Whereas in America I loved mixing my circles and I felt like they could feel free to invite each other because they knew how important each of them are to me. It’s very possible that the second child isn’t going to have a baby shower and we’re just going to have to rely on our friends and family in the States who want to be really nice to send us anything via amazon.co.uk!