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Pregnancy

  • Reasons to Choose a Midwife for Homebirth

    It is hard for me to fully explain the reason I wanted to go home to have the baby. I had been traveling while pregnant for the past six months through Eastern Europe, the Balkans, and the Middle East. And now it was just time to go home. We were in Cairo, we had traveled [...]

  • Adventures in Syria

    By the time we arrived in Syria, my belly had grown round and my feet had grown slow. I was ready to start traveling slow, but we had plane tickets back to the US in two weeks from Cairo. After leaving Iraq and going back to Eastern Turkey for a couple more weeks, we crossed [...]

  • Travel to Iraq while Pregnant

    I hadn’t really planned on going to Iraq. Wade briefly mentioned it in passing while we were daydreaming about the trip. I shot him a “what the hell are you thinking?!” look in response. Nobody goes as a tourist to Iraq. Let alone when they are pregnant. “We’ll just go to the northern Kurdistan part. [...]

  • Pre-natal Visit in Istanbul

    By the time we arrived in Istanbul I was 14 weeks pregnant and due for another routine pre-natal check up. Ashamed about how much money we had spent seeing a private doctor in Budapest, I was determined to find an alternative in Istanbul. I tried calling the German and English hospitals, but they charged at [...]

  • Finding a Job in Istanbul

    From Albania we took a minibus and train through Greece to Istanbul. Greece was the one place I had wanted to go when we found out we were pregnant, the adventures of the Balkans and Middle East seemed a little overwhelming. Being pregnant was enough of an adventure, I just wanted to relax. “Why don’t [...]

  • Couchsurfing While Pregnant

    Wade and I have tried several different methods to save money on accommodation while traveling. We stayed in an apartment in Budapest, slept in dorm beds in Belgrade and Sarajevo, stayed in private rooms in Mostar and Dubrovnik ad slept in a sex hotel in Northern Albania. But the cheapest and best by far was [...]

  • Mothers in Tirane, Albania

    In Tirane, Wade and I couchsurfed with a young Albanian man, Florenc, and his mother. I was exhausted from pregnancy and it was a welcome relief to stay in a home instead of a hostel or sex hotel. Florenc was recently returned from New York where he lived and worked before being denied political asylum. [...]

  • Pregnancy Cravings in Eastern Europe

    “So what kind of fruit do you want?” the Serbian mom who lived at the hostel in Belgrade asked me. I looked at her all confused. “With my first one, my son, I couldn’t get enough apples,” she continued, “I could eat them all day long. And with her,” she nodded toward her daughter, “I [...]

  • What to do About Morning Sickness in Sarajevo

    Traveling and Morning Sickness in Sarajevo — From Serbia, Wade, myself, and the little fetus growing in my belly boarded a bus for Sarajevo. We left Belgrade at 10:30 at night, figuring we’d arrive in Sarajevo around 6 am. Traveling at night is one of our common strategies for saving money, since we don’t  have [...]

  • Travel to Serbia while Pregnant

    Wade was eager to leave Budapest,having stayed in the city for over a month last summer working in a hostel. So we got on a bus and headed to the south, and ended up right next to the borders of both Serbia and Romania. “Where do you want to go Serbia or Romania?” Wade asked. [...]