Carnet de la Mere

On 11 of December, at 11:00 hours, I had my first meeting with a "sage-femme" (a midwife) in Belgium. She's young, fun and her name is Titou. She and her colleague will see me every two weeks until I give birth and she's going to teach me everything I need to know about child labour.

She wrote down all my medical details, took a look at my medical check-ups results and asked me to do the 3rd ecography - the last one (which I will have on January 3rd). I got measured - actually, my belly got measured ;-) My weight is 62.5 kg, which is almost 10 kilos more than when I started this baby adventure. I could also hear, very loud I might add, the heart of the baby.

Having a pregnancy medical check-up here is a bit different than what we have in Romania. One thing, it lasts an hour, and it is not all about your medical background, but also your family's medical background and the overall situation (if your parents and your partner are supportive).

A consultation is 40 Euros, but it's worth every penny. The atmosphere is nice, you come out assured your baby is fine and you learn a lot of things that prepare you for the new life ahead.

Also, after the consultation, I got to play with 5 adorable kittens, about 1 months old. I miss so much having the cats around! One other funny thing was doing the test for urinary infections - I had to pi on a coloured stripe - and of course, when you are tell to do something, it is usually then when you can't just do it ;-) Well, enough to say it was a terrible experience - but next time I'll do better - you do this test at each consultation.