Premature Babies Arrival-Prayer Assistance needed

This blog started off being about our emigration journey, but in life one's journey changes and I started writing about our journey when my wife had Hyperemesis Gravidarum during pregnancy.

Our little wee man was born, 7 weeks premature with an emergency C-section. We have a long road to walk before he is in the clear and he will be in NiCU for at least 5 weeks. This is a massive change to our lives, emotionally and financially. 

Mommy saved our babies life, she new something is wrong and informed the midwife. She says God told her something is not right, thank you Lord for helping us.

We live 80km from the hospital but fortunately we have temporary accommodation near the hospital. We have no family in New Zealand either. With the HG journey I have used up all my sick leave and annual leave and have no paid leave left anymore. As we have a toddler as well, I need leave to support my family through this time.

We are trying to juggle and plan our next 7 week journey, but will need financial support if I were to take off to enable me to be with our baby, support mommy and be there for our toddler as well.

I would have loved to have more time to be with him and support my family more, but at this stage it is not possible.

I ask for prayers please. Our son needs all the help he can get and we as a family as well.

The nurses say skin to skin for him is very important, it helps with brain development and babies getting enough of this seem to do much better. We try and give him skin to skin as much as possible. That and prayer of course. Prayer helped us through HG, prayer will help us through this part of our life journey as well. 

Born Premature

Bubs decided he needed to come out NOW, like in emergency C-Section.

The full story to follow.

Please pray for him and us. We need the support.

Life after HG

Well is there life after HG? Not sure about that this round yet. The psychological scars HG has left on the whole family is enormous. 

The first pregnancy we could go on with life as usual after HG passed, this time around not so much.

My wife has had a terribly difficult pregnancy so far. 23 weeks and suffering from a lot of different things. Bouts of nausea, migraines and low iron levels to name a few.

I did not realize the emotional and psychological effect HG has had on me until I saw what my reaction was when she feels unwell. I go into overdrive, I stress and I even feel depressed. I start worrying how we are going to cope, how my wife is going to get through feeling bad again and how or darling daughter will be affected. 

I really hope that we can look back on this journey soon and say, WE SURVIVED, WE MADE IT. 

Beating Hyperemesis Gravidarum by Prayer

Yes...Prayer DOES work !!!

Please don't stop reading now. I will come to the point very shortly and then tell the rest of my story.

So this is how it went. I have always been a believer, I've always believed there is a God and He has done such a lot of wonderful things in my life that I just know that He has to be there. But when things go wrong and life throws you a curveball,  God is the first person you ask why and God is the first person you push away. And this is what I did and this was a big mistake. 

This I realised when looking back and if you read my previous blog post, this is the only option I had left and this was a miracle option.  One that works, one that lifted us up, one that saved us, saved me, saved my wife and save our baby. What a Wonderful God we have one just has to pray with all you have in you, to pray with every little bit of your soul and hand all over to Him and He will be there for you,  He will provide, He will comfort you, pick you up and make you strong. As I type this I have tears welling up in my eyes, tears of  gratefulness, tears of happiness, tears of sadness for not believing He would always be there for us.

When my wife was just lying there and feeling hopeless and sick, all I could do was pray for her. I would lay my hand on her and pray that the bad nausea would subside and many times I would feel the strength through prayer flowing through me to her. Afterwards I would ask her if she felt better and mostly she would. I am not saying that God takes the nausea away, but He gives us the strength to get through it. Believe in Him, we cannot do this alone.

If you are not a believer, just be quiet and talk to God. Try it, it works. Message me through the contact form on this page if you don't feel comfortable to pray and I will pray for you. Together we can and will beat HG.

The Horror of Hyperemesis Gravidarum

I don't think anybody realizes how hyperemesis gravidarum really affects, and what it does to your family until they go through it. The emotional and physical effect on the mother to be, the emotional effects on the husband and children and, in our case, the toddler, is massive. 

My lovely wife is pregnant for the fourth time with HG and we have one beautiful toddler daughter. To look at my wife and see how she suffers, how her body deteriorates, how she emotionally deteriorates, is so so sad. In only just a couple of days and numerous times of vomiting she ended up in hospital, totally dehydrated and needed to get IV's. She just would not have made it without them. The hardest part was me sitting next to the bed in the hospital and looking at her crying and begging me for a termination as her body and her mind just could not cope anymore. Looking into her eyes and seeing how depressed and lifeless they look broke my heart. That is very hard to see for a husband. All I could do was hold her hand and pray for her because termination was not a possibility as she/we wanted another child very badly.  😢

Here we had a constant feeling of nausea, of sickness, constant vomiting, depression and then PTSD after the previous pregnancies with nausea, giving her anxiety attacks as well.  I then realised the only person that can save her emotionally is me, her husband and I must be strong. Drying my tears, I just had to get her positive, I had to get her through this ordeal. The IV's helped, the doctors and their medical plans helped and slowly but surely, we are getting there. We started off planning and looking at it hour-by-hour, day-by-day, week-by-week to get better. Not a long-term plan but very very short-term plans almost snack-by-snack, medication-by-medication and day-by-day until she could get better. But support of friends, support of prayers, support from myself we finally reached a turning point. Seeing her like that is terrible, seeing our toddler not understanding that mummy can't play, and that mummy can't help her is so hard, hard for both of us and for everybody around us and so much harder for the poor mother. 

Weekly trips to the hospital for extra fluids and a good medication routine helped tremendously. We are now at a point where all vomiting has stopped, and nausea is only now and again. But she still is very weak and cannot do much because she then is tired, and this triggers the nausea again. We are hoping that all will be okay at 12 weeks, but for some mums this carries on until their baby is born. If you are one of those mums, I salute you !!!

If you are a HG survivor, you already are a super mum. 

If this is your first pregnancy remember you have already become a mother, going through a pregnancy with HG makes you a super mum. You're already fighting for your baby, you are already giving up a lot for a baby that has not even been born yet, you are a winner, YOU ARE A WINNER. And if your partner does not support you enough, if he does not understand it, if he does not do as much as possible to help you through this, to support you through this emotionally and physically, in the house and all over, then he has let you down. He needs to be on board, and he needs to give his everything.

My daily routine looks something like this: I try and be up before anybody else is awake that I can get an hour or more work done. Then I make tea for my lovely wife with a rusk, something to settle her stomach. I take a shower and get dressed, and then get my toddler up and dressed and ready for pre-school. I help my wife get ready (if she needs help), make them both breakfast and pack a lunch box for my toddler. I make or pack a snack for my wife and then we are off. My wife I drop off at the hospital for IV's and my toddler for school. I might stop at the supermarket for a couple of things on my way home and then start working. Around 3 hours later I am off again to pick both of them up and get lunch ready. Hopefully our toddler is restful the afternoon that I can put a couple of hours in working again. Then it is evening and a bath and supper needs to be done, a snack for my wife for the night and getting our toddler to bed. I then normally try and get in another couple of hours of work. On weekends I do the laundry and pack out our weeks medication in our containers, all ready for each day. (This includes reminders on my phone to remind my wife when she needs to drink her meds) This continues day in and day out, week in and week out, but we focus on the day that my dear wife will feel better, and we focus on the little miracle growing inside of her 😊

She CANNOT do this alone, husbands and partners, man up, you need to help her as much as possible. She did not get pregnant by herself, getting her and that baby through HG is just as much your responsibility as hers. 

IT'S NOT IN HER HEAD (Click and Read)

Please watch this Sick Film

There are thousands of women suffering from HG all around the world. Many people and unfortunately many medical professionals are not totally clued up on how to treat HG sufferers properly. 

If you read this, please spread the news so that more people can become aware of HG and be kinder to women that need your help.

HER Foundation

Pregnancy Support

A Husbands Guide to HG

HG Support Australia

To all the women out there suffering from HG, to all the people supporting them, I pray for each and every one of you. I honestly believe that only prayer has carried us through this and has given us the strength to get this far. 🙏 Try it, prayer WORKS !!!

Blog on hold...going through HG

Hi all.

My wife is currently going through a HG pregnancy at the moment. Will continue in a couple of months again.

https://twitter.com/HGmoms/status/1261793646375993352?s=19

After the Interview

Your interview has passed, you might feel positive, maybe not. You might also have no idea how it went or what to make of the interview. This is where it helps to have a really good recruiter backing you. Mine was awesome and this is what she did...

After the interview I needed to update her how it went, what they asked and how I felt about the interviewers. Would I feel comfortable to work there, would I fit in?She would then call them and hear their side and how they felt, why I was not the right candidate, etc. She would then give me feedback and we would decide on the way forward. When a job offer comes she looked at the contract and provided advice. THIS IS WHAT YOU NEED FROM A RECRUITER!!!

From your side, when you have received the offer and negotiated the contract...okay calm down calm down 😀, you need to get that visa application in. Please do not leave your employer out of the process. Update them with your visa application process and timeline, they want to know when you can start, they are running a business so need to know what is going on on your side.

At this stage you would of have decided if you are going to do the application yourself or use an adviser. Time to start the visa application process. If you want to do it yourself, read here. Read it a few times so that you get it right the first time.

https://www.immigration.govt.nz/new-zealand-visas/apply-for-a-visa

Good luck, we will chat about waiting for your visa and getting ready to leave SA in my next post.

The Interview

So after you have put on that gorgeous smile, your interview will start. If you are not nervous at all you should not have taken that last whiskey😂. Yes I was nervous and yes my hands and armpits were soaking wet, no I did not take any whiskey😁. If you are not the nervous type, good on you.

A few things that might make it slightly more difficult is the accent of the interviewers. It might catch you off guard but don't be shy to ask them to repeat the question. The same goes if you cannot hear them clearly, tell them that, rather than giving an off topic answer. All of my interviewers were friendly and put me at ease, except one group which were a bit shy. Here I made the mistake of probably talking too much but hell, somebody had to do the talking🤔 and I am an introvert😁 (Their feedback was that they were scared I would take over the practice). 

For one company I even had to do a DISC profile, which to me, is total rubbish. You can manipulate the answers to be the personality that they are looking for.  Fooling the DISC Test
I would not suggest you doing that, explained nicely in the above link.

My personal opinion is just being yourself, trying to be somebody else now will later be really hard work when you have that job. Then you won't fit in at the office, hate every day at work and probably be job hunting soon again.

Each interview is different as their are so many personalities out there, so you need to "read" the interviewer early in the meeting, is it very corporate, laid back, relaxed, or whatever you can pick up from the situation. You need to adapt !!!

What do you need to do? There are a lot of tips out there and they all will probably help in one way or the other, I am just listing the important ones from my experience.

1. Research the company, you want the interviewer to know you are interested in their company
2. Know the job description so that you can highlight which of your skills make you the perfect fit
3. Your body language is very important, you want to create a good impression as this might be your only chance. DO NOT SLOUCH, sit upright and look interested, maybe even excited. Pay attention to what the interviewer or interviewers have to say, create eye contact with each as you would when you are consulting with clients

What more is there to say other than always be positive, be yourself and enjoy the experience. The right job will come at the right time, maybe after the 1st interview, maybe after the 20th. 

COVID-19

COVID-19 has put many peoples lives on hold, it is probably the most talked about 'word' around at the moment.

The impact of this outbreak has even affected me and my blog. I have not had time to get to my next post about the Interview process. Due to lockdown and shifting to work from home, the massive amount of clients calling and emailing around the wage support, etc that the Government has brought out, I just have not had time for anything else.

It is great working from home but difficult juggling a toddler around and getting all your hours worked.😁

Be safe out there, let's get this virus under control.

Hopefully I will get the following post out soon.

The job search experience

Ahhh, one of the most important pieces of the puzzle to emigrating, made a bit more difficult because of the visa criteria of New Zealand. As I mentioned in another post, no job no visa, but no visa and you are going to battle to find a job. A real catch 22. Well the only way then is to find an employer that is willing to employ you, offer you a good salary and be willing to wait for your Visa to be approved. Perfectly easy 🤣

So where does one start?🤔 You need to get yourself assessed by an immigration agent, know if you qualify and if you have a pathway to residency. Get yourself document ready, in other words, get all documents sorted that, when you get that illusive job offer, you can apply for a work visa immediately. Then get ready for late night and early morning phone calls, discussions with recruiters and job interviews. It is a long process until you actually get the interview. Here is what I did, it eventually worked but I will also mention where I went wrong and what was a total waste of time and money. 

Everybody was saying you need to change your CV to a New Zealand format.📝 Get a professional to do it, get your LinkedIn profile sorted to attract the right people, build your connections. This costs quite a bit when you use a professional for that. Does it help? I say NO, a total waste of money. Maybe it is just the case with my process but my recruiter totally re-wrote my entire CV anyway and it was better than the one I paid for.

But I had my CV done and my LinkedIn updated. I then job searched and searched and reached out to recruiters on LinkedIn. I applied directly for probably around 80 jobs with no success at all, not even an interview from anybody I applied to directly. Finally one recruiter reached out to me with an interview, and then a second interview. I also reached out to another recruiter that I had heard a lot of positive feedback of and almost begged her to help me. 

This is where things started getting exciting and more positive. She called and chatted away to find out who I am, what I want and to get to know me personally. She then targeted employers that she thought I would fit in with personality wise. I had four interviews lined up through her plus the other two. Stress levels started to peak, I made notes about the employer's and more notes for answers to the usual questions so that I did not stumble on my words. These were stuck all around my PC screen as the interviews were all via Skype and ZOOM. 

(Okay maybe not that bad)

The recruiter mentored me, told me what I need to say and what not, how to answer the questions, how to dress and all I needed to do to have a positive interview.

Some of these interviews were late night interviews, others very early in the morning. One has to do what needs to be done to look great, feel awake and impress the socks off your new employer haha.... I prepared myself before the time, put my clothes out beforehand, had a cup of coffee so that the caffeine could do its thing, checked my internet connection 30 mins before the interview, talked to myself to get my voice warm and ready and then waited. Remember to check the lighting on your side, how you look on the monitor, shades on your face, etc. I had to put a lamp on the one side so that I had enough light on my face. And check your background, you don't want your laundry or something like that in the video🤣 

The normal Skype ringing tone starts and your heart beats faster, you take one deep breath, put on that gorgeous smile and click the button....ACTION 🎬

To be continued with "The Interview"

Have a read here as well, great post

How to Get that Dream Accounting Job

https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/how-get-dream-accounting-job-blake-mather

Hyperemesis Gravidarum

Whatttttt, HG and emigrating 

Well I did say my blog would also be about life. And this is part of our lives, a part that we are going through at the moment. It is a pregnancy condition that sadly is not understood by many, including a lot of health professionals.

My wife has had her 3rd HG pregnancy. We unfortunately lost our 1st baby because her body just could not cope with the illness. YES, it is an illness that is understood by only a few. The healthcare service here in New Zealand look at you as if you just cannot cope with morning sickness. But frankly, I don't give a flying f@&# what they think, I know what my wife is going through, I know what a strong lady she is. I know that she is a survivor as we have one beautiful child.😚 We need to get more people informed, especially Dr's and nurses in small towns. They have no real idea how such a person feels and thus not enough empathy. This in turn lets the patient feel as if she is worthless and not strong enough. NOT FAIR !!! 

Have a read here and maybe you will understand it better. Maybe you are a health professional and can help a woman going through this. Maybe you can just support a friend or colleague better that might be suffering from this illness.

"Hyperemesis Gravidarum (HG) is a debilitating and potentially life-threatening pregnancy disease that may cause weight loss, malnutrition, and dehydration due to severe nausea and/or vomiting with potential adverse consequences for the mom-to-be and the newborn(s)."

From HER Foundation

https://www.helpher.org/blog/her-foundation-online-hg-support-group/

https://www.noted.co.nz/health/health-health/hyperemesis-kate-middletons-rare-pregnancy-condition

https://thespinoff.co.nz/parenting/18-07-2017/when-pregnancy-is-hell-what-hyperemesis-is-really-like/?amp&__twitter_impression=true

https://kidspot.co.nz/pregnancy/what-hyperemesis-gravidarum-feels-like/

Not only does it effect the mother, it effects the entire family mentally and emotionally as well. Our toddler battled tremendously to cope with mommy being soo sick😢. She just was too small to understand, she tried helping mommy and was very sweet, but it shattered me to see her suffer. Then she became difficult and was seeking negative attention, anything for attention from sick mommy, which mommy just did not have the strength to give to her. I was trying to juggle my job with taking care of my wife and family. Late nights, early mornings, nights up with a toddler, something somewhere was going to give in. Well a mothers body can only take so much and we have made peace that we will only have one beautiful child.💞💞💞💞💞💞💞💞💞💞💞💞💞💞

Thanks for reading my post on HG. An illness that is a big part of our lives, just another part of the journey we are on.

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Selling your assets to emigrate

In my previous post I discussed our process of making the decision to emigrate and our choice of New Zealand.

https://jacquesramblings.blogspot.com/2020/02/decisions-decisions-decisions.html?m=1

The next steps were selling our business', our cars and our home. O yes and many years of extra stuff we had gathered. A good cleanup does no harm and a container can only take so much. That brings me to another decision we had to make. What do we take, what do we leave, will we buy everything new when we arrive, or not? If we decide to ship all our appliances etc, what will we do until our container comes? Will the decision making ever end 😥.

Well in the end we decided to take our newer appliances and everything of personal value with us. The rest we sold and then we can buy or lend what we need till our container arrives. It worked well for us.

Back to selling our assets. This was not easy and unfortunately not very successful. Well selling the car went well, the house not too bad, (although taking advantage of a seller in a small town is the norm) but the business...o well. Living in a small town had its advantages, but when you want to sell your assets you have a big disadvantage. The quantity of buyers are small and those that are available know you are desperate, so they take advantage of you. I ended up selling my business for a third of what it was valued just to get it sold so that we can take the next step.  I don't want to make this post too long, so let's continue with the job search in a future post.

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Twitter @JacquesRamblin1

Decisions, Decisions, Decisions

Let's get back to emigrating.
My wife and I had to make a decision, probably one of the most difficult decisions of our lives. Leaving family and friends, your country of birth and everything you know for the unknown.

The decision making process has to start somewhere. Random thoughts were going through my head, when do we want to emigrate, why do we want to emigrate, where to and many more. The WHY was probably the easiest to decide on. We all know what horrible state South Africa is in. I am not going to go into detail here. just google a bit and enough headlines will pop up.😞

The WHEN question was a bit more difficult, soo many aspects had to fall in place to make that decision properly, but I knew soon, as soon as we can get everything in place. Now came the BIG question, TO WHERE? This is where hours and hours of research came in. Reading up on different countries, the culture, immigration policy, work availability, safety, the climate and just about anything we could read about. We joined Facebook groups of different countries where discussions and tips were given on immigration for specific countries. We contacted people directly through them to get their opinions. I joined forums and read posts and more posts and asked questions. I did job searches and looked at salary scales for my experience to determine what I would be able to earn. I went to cost of living comparison sites and had a look there. https://www.numbeo.com/cost-of-living/comparison.jsp  We read some more, articles on which countries are safe, why people choose them and spent more hours on research. In the end we had our shortlist, Canada, Ireland, Australia and New Zealand. We ruled out Canada fairly early as I did not qualify. We did speak to people we knew that had emigrated to Canada. The climate and weather and cost did also not tick our boxes. Ireland was high up on our list to go to. The weather did bother us slightly, what was positive for us for Ireland was that we were closer to family, so time and cost of travel was less. In the end we ruled Ireland out as well due to lengthy citizenship process, cost of living and a few other points.

That left us Australia and New Zealand. A lot of people we know moved to Australia. We had a chat to a few of them, emailed a few, and started making our pros and cons list for Australia. Visa's for accountants was filling up fast, so we lodged an expression of interest. Cost a lot in Rands to pay the agent and the fee. Then Australian immigration decided to up the points for accountants....I knew I will never get an invite. My wife was not happy with the Australian choice. She kept on saying there are too many things that can kill you there. On a forum I followed a thread with regard to why they chose New Zealand above Australia and the one response was "There are too many Australians"😂

We seriously started looking into New Zealand. One of my searches revealed an article of the 10 safest countries to live in and New Zealand was ranked 2nd. Here is the latest report at date of writing this post. http://www.worldpopulationreview.com/countries/safest-countries-in-the-world/

New Zealand is very family orientated and that ticked our boxes as well. Two things we were worried about, one was the weather and the other the high suicide rate, especially under children. The pros topped the cons and the decision was made. Next step was looking into visa options. This is where it get's really difficult as you need a job offer to apply for a work visa. The catch, most employers do not want to give an offer without a visa...catch 22.

In my next post my story on job searching and applying for jobs.👉

O yes, and the "small" process of selling our house, business and cars.

For immigration information

https://www.immigration.govt.nz/ 

What the New Zealand Elections mean to Immigrants

So I told you that my posts would be all over the place and as the prime minister has announced the date of the national elections, I thought to write a small short piece about this. Elections, immigration blog, why would I be writing about this you may ask? The reason is that the government plays a big role in what immigration is doing and how this will influence immigration to New Zealand.

Some random thoughts from my side. I think the National Party think they have this one in the bag. From what people are saying, the current Government has not done soo much right, but also not so much wrong. There are quiet a few people that are not very fond of Simon Bridges, this might cost them the votes. The other thing is that we have a "new generation" that will be voting for the first time, and Jacinda is doing things right on the social media side. This might make a difference for them. So interesting times for all of us, those that want to come to New Zealand as well as those waiting for residency.

Soon after 19 September we will know.

We can only hope that the elected government will manage immigration correctly. They know New Zealand has a huge skills shortage as they are busy linking immigration to education systems to try and solve this. Immigrants are needed in New Zealand and we are looking for a country to call home. It is a win win situation if managed correctly. There are however some politicians that see us as a threat to "their" New Zealand. The world is a global village now, we are not here to "take over" your beloved country, we are here to help keep New Zealand the great country it is and leave our children with a future in this beautiful country.

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Intro to me and my Blog

Hey there, glad you found my blog. Hope you will enjoy following my journey and my thoughts on life. 

I’m not much of a writer, although I actually love writing. I am a guy with a really weird sense of humor, sometimes nobody understands it, sometimes I don’t even understand myself !!! 

But hey, how boring would life then have been. Although I must admit that I sometimes do wish life was boring and had no horrible surprises lurking.

Anyhow, so my wife and I decided to take the BIG step and emigrate to New Zealand from South Africa. I want to share our journey with those needing support, those still deciding or those that were bored and happened to stumble on this blog. 

I will also be sharing random thoughts on my life and probably whatever comes up in my head as well. 😎

So you may ask, TO WHERE did you Emigrate ??? 

NEW ZEALAND

New Zealand, the really small land mass right bottom

Uhmmmm, but where is that ❓

Near Australia....

The small land mass right of Australia

Uhmmmm....🙍

HERE

#AllBlacks

Okay, now that you all know where I now am.... let's continue.

This was not an easy decision, it took a lot of our time reading up on different countries and lists and lists of pros and cons, but in the end we did it. We decided on New Zealand because of a couple of reasons, which I will discuss later, and pretty much took a leap of faith.

This blog will probably not be your usual, run of the mill, well organised blog.😉

I might post a blog entry and then later another with something that happened earlier in the process, or some background of my life, the emotional roller coaster of emigration, but hopefully you will have fun following our journey, and O my word what a journey this has been.

I hope you will enjoy the blog.

Please also follow me on twitter

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VERY IMPORTANT - I will NEVER give immigration advice, so please do not even ask.

Immigration New Zealand on advice