Forgive the late entry. This one just wouldn't publish when I wrote it. But here it is now.
Many people heard of our plight to get to Thailand to have our third baby and many of you prayed for us to get here. Well, already 2 1/2 weeks have passed and I never got around to posting about how we finally got here.
We had booked tickets to Bangkok via Qatar Air months ago. We carefully read the pregnancy restrictions and printed out the forms we were supposed to have an OB/GYN sign. The website said that I could fly til the end of 35 weeks and then the forms that we had to print out for the doctor to sign said that I couldn't fly past the end of 36 weeks. We picked the earliest flight of the week I reached 35 weeks and didn't think a whole lot more about it. We were actually quite worried about the Tajik Airline, Somon Air, that we'd have to take from Dushanbe to Dubai. They wouldn't allow a pregnant person to fly past 32 weeks - period. I understand this, though, as they give women all kinds of whatnot in the way of due dates. I've known women who were due at a certain time (dated by a Tajik doctor) and baby was born 8 weeks earlier or 6 weeks later. We're not talking the usual give or take 1-2 weeks here. Knowing that I knew for sure what my due date was and knowing how every Tajik system works here - I figured we'd ask some friends if they had any connections with OB/GYNs who could write and stamp a letter for me (and one for Jenny also as they were planning to come to Thailand for the birth of their #3, just 10 days after us). Indeed, a friend of ours knew someone and took us to see her and we apologized profusely for asking her to fudge our dates and assured her of all our due date calculations and did all the tests she asked us to do and she wrote a letter for Somon Air for us. Bless her. Well, we did everything to the T for Qatar Air - no fudging dates or anything there because we were within the rules for flying and understood the nature of their rules. It's pretty darn expensive and inconvenient for an airline to have a woman have a baby on-board and have to land at the closest airport. We also understood that Qater and the UAE are very developed and they do medicine similar to how we do it in the west. I doubt that women are having babies 6-8 weeks before or after their due dates there (unless they're actually premature). Weren't we surprised to get an email just 3 days before our flight saying that I wasn't allowed to fly past that day (April 29th). We weren't allowed to submit our medical paperwork more than 7 days in advance but had to have it submitted no less than 48 hrs prior to the flight. Those 5 days that it was ok to send it landed during two of the airline's days off. Oh boy. We appealed this decision - scanning the rules that we had printed from their medical form, showing that we were flying just 3 days later than they wanted to allow me to, trying to be as respectful but persuasive as possible. Well, it was a no-go. They wouldn't budge. Now, they were very polite about this, assuring us that they would refund everything but the cancellation charge if "Ms. Bettinger wants to find an alternate travel route" but we spent a whole day feeling quite stressed as you can imagine. We should have assumed a little more. On this side of the world, you state age and time according to what year or month you're in. For example, Emmett is about to turn 4 and once he has his birthday we would say that he's 5 because he's in his 5th year now. In the U.S., we just say he's 4, even just turned 4. We do the same with gestational age. If a pregnant woman asks another pregnant woman how far along she is, she's going to say something like 27 weeks but usually that means she's in her 28th week. Does that make any sense?
Well, praise the Lord, we found another flight for me from Dubai via Colombo to Bangkok on SriLankan Air (really good food, BTW). So we all flew to Dubai together and I went with Rees and the kids to their hotel. Rees kept the kids and our two suitcases and I headed back to the airport that night for my 11:45pm flight with just my purse. We didn't have any way of talking to each other as Rees had our one computer and we both just had Tajik SIM cards in our phones and they would be in the air when I reached Colombo and Bangkok. So we hoped for the best and decided that no news was good news. I was really worried that Rees would sleep through his alarm (he needed to leave for the airport with the kids at 4:30am). I must say that it was very fortunate that we were flying through the Gulf and South Asia. If you have never visited a Muslim country, you may have some pre-conceived ideas about what "those people" are like. I must assure you that if you are pregnant or traveling with children, you probably won't get treated better than you do in a Muslim country. There's such a high value on children. It was pretty hilarious in Dubai because the flight was full and the flight-attendants were trying to get all these men to let them check-in their large carry-ons and these men were passionately arguing why they wouldn't allow this (it was all in Arabic, but you didn't have to know Arabic to know what the conflict was). When it was time to board (it was an hour delayed) they all jumped to their feet and gathered at the gate. Someone said, "families first please" and all these Arab men turned to me, alone and pregnant, and stood back and pushed everyone else back to make a tunnel for me to get through saying, "Please, please, you are a family." The whole way, everyone wanted to make sure I was comfortable and had enough to eat and drink and got a seat on the trams and all that. I was so thankful to finally get to Bangkok and quickly looked for a lounge to crash in. Fortunately, I found an empty lounge with a huge comfy couch and was able to sleep for two hours. I spent the rest of my waking time praying that Rees and the kids were on their way w/o any problems and trying not to make contingency plans but then making them anyway. I saw that their plane had landed and I'll tell you what - that was a very long 20 minutes waiting outside customs for them! I don't remember the last time I felt so relieved as when I saw them all walk through customs. Rees said that the kids were amazing little travelers, that Qatar Air treated them like royalty and that everything had gone without a hitch. Ironically, we went to check in for our little in-country flight to Chiang Mai and it was the first time anyone asked to see my letter from the doctor. We had had it officially translated into English and the airline attendant only wanted to see the words, "flight allowed."
We were exhausted for a few days (and I was sore and swollen) but now we're all doing great. It's hard not to feel pretty good when you don't have to grocery shop, cook, clean or do laundry. The pool and the humidity are helping with my "last few weeks of pregnancy" aches and pains and we are really thankful to be here. The Readys made it here fine also. There are two other pregnant women who are due in June so at any given time, you can find all four of us bobbing around in the pool.
The kids are having a blast. They swim at least once a day and have lots of other kids to play with and plenty of play space. We are really relishing this special time together and looking forward to meeting our little one. Just in case you thought you missed something - we don't know if we're having a boy or a girl. This one is going to be a surprise. We're thinking it's our last one and wanted to know what it was like to be surprised (and I'm hoping that gives me a little extra oomph in labor this last time around).
I'll have to write more about H & E another time. Suffice it to say - they are little fish. Emmett's even swimming without water wing floaties these days. I'll write more about that later though (at least I intend to :))
