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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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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