Baba Ganough: The First Trimester

A bit of a back-dated blog post here as I thought it would be good for us to record the goings on of Baba Ganough's first trimester.

Even before we were able to do the pregnancy test I had an inkling that I might be pregnant.  I started getting a metallic taste in my mouth from about 3 weeks.  I recognised it as being metallic after spending so long three years ago on Flagyll tablets for tummy troubles out here!  I started drinking hibiscus tea after work to try and give myself a different taste (and because I heard it was good for maintaining good blood pressure).  Between about 3 and 6 weeks too I was sometimes feeling 'crampy' pains in my abdomen.  The unsettling thing is that these would feel a bit like period pains, but I tried to reassure myself that they were fine as I had read that other people do get these.  In trying to have a good balanced diet we went out and bought a range of nuts and dried fruit and some little containers so that we could have healthy snacks at work!

I had to have a day-off work soon after we discovered I was pregnant though as I came down with a cold that really wiped me out.  I was suddenly just so stuffy-nosed and stuffy-headed and so tired.  After having a day of rest though I was feeling better and able to get back in to work.

Once we had had two positive pregnancy tests at home, we knew we wanted to get to see a gynochologist to start pregnancy preparations properly.  We had been recommended Dr Cherif by a number of friends who had had pregnancies out here but no one still had his number, so we went out to find the gynochologist 'behind the Grand Mall' (!).  We assumed that he must be on the road that goes directly away from the Grand Mall back entrance so we started along there looking at the signs outside each building for a hint as to where we might find him.  We asked the Bowab for a couple of buildings for 'Doctor Cherif?' and a few looked confused but finally one said 'Aywa, el beit tenni' which meant he was in the next building down.

Our first scan with Dr Cherif was at 7 weeks, and it was really reassuring and wonderful to have Dr Cherif confirm the pregnancy. Before the scan though we were first seen by his assistant in an office who went over our medical histories. When he asked us why we wanted to see the doctor today we said 'because we're pregnant' to which he replied 'mabrook!' - our first congratulations!  After we had finished with the assistant the man himself, Dr Cherif, came in to see us.  He was very nice and friendly and went over the information that the assistant had taken.

After this we were taken across the hall to another door (that looked a lot like the first) with a bed and the ultrasound in it.  Up on the bed another assistant put the jelly on my belly and we sat and waited for Dr Cherif who then did the scan.  The black-and-white image was projected on to the ceiling above the bed, so I could lie back and see what he was seeing.  It didn't look like much, but then he pointed out a small dark circle which was the amniotic sac - proof that conception had occured!

Our next move was through a second door in this room and in to Dr Cherif's actual office. Here he gave us a copy of the scan image (with the mouse pointer helpfully showing the important bit!) and advised us that I should keep exercising, but should not exert myself, I should have a healthy balanced diet and that I should take pregnacare tablets (which are a multi-vitamin with folic acid in, rather than just the folic acid).  Dr Cherif was also able to explain why I had been feeling unwell with a cold since finding out I was pregnant; apparently your immune system is slightly lowered during pregnancy to allow for the foreign body inside you (!)

Our first scan was on 14th February; Valentine's Day


The week after this scan, we were flying to the UK for half term. We had told Dr Cherif that we were flying and he pointed out that there was a slight increased risk of miscarriage from flying in the first trimester, but doing further research ourselves on the internet we could not find any link between flying and miscarriage, only that there was all-round an increased risk of miscarriage in the first three months.  So it was week 8 when we flew to the UK and on our visit we knew that we would see all three sets of parents, so would tell them all in person. They were all very excited but with it being early days we were still feeling cautious.

Returning to Cairo in week 9, we started to get in to our healthy diet together and made a large soup at the weekend which we then put in to freezer bags with daily portions.  The soup was full of loads of veggies and really yummy, but after a few days I started to feel like I was missing out on something at lunch time, so started to bring along some bread for lunch too.  After a great start with the nuts I started to go off these and found that I wasn't eating them so often.

Luckily, I never felt what I would call 'morning sickness'.  I did feel queasey and a bit dizzy at times in the second two months.  It was mainly after a day at school (and bus journey home!) so was probably combined with some tiredness.  I found that the hibiscus tea helped, as did having a bit of a sit down on getting in.  I tried not to do 'too much' but work being work meant that wasn't always an option!  There was just one time that I felt like I might actually be sick, but it never got to 'head over toilet bowl' fortunatly.

Our next scan took place at 11 weeks, just before our Easter holiday and what was so exciting about this visit was that we were able to see and hear the heat beat during the scan.  Dr Cherif was pleased to see this too and he started to point things out to us on the scan as the baby was now growing in to a recognisable shape.  All signs and stats were normal; my weight and blood pressure, what could be seen on the scan.  Being able to see and hear the little Baba Ganough's heartbeat was well worth the wait (we were waiting nearly an hour-and-a-half!) and a great way to end the first trimester and start our journey of telling people now we were through to the second trimester.

My tiredness started to clear up at around this time too.  I only noted this actually because I was organising a day-long event at work on a weekend and had been thinking 'I'm going to be knackered after this - and might need a day off during the week to recover' but actually I was fine to run the event and do everything at work the following week.  This was a good sign!

After a long and cold (for Cairo) winter, things started to hot up and it was finally time to turn the AC on.  I started to get a blocked nose around this time and thought it was probably the AC being turned on and all the sudden changes in temperature.  I did the netti pot for about a week to try and clear my sinuses out, as I was really concerned about how they might be on the flight to the UK for Easter, and although it helped, it didn't fully clear it up.

We had a lovely pre-Easter holiday holiday when MummyB, G and Lis and the kids came out to visit.  When they were over, we told Lis and she was dead excited for us, as were Emi and Alex about the baby in my tummy!  We had a weekend all together at the Marriot and so we took advantage of the pool and good weather to have a bit of a swim.

The flights to and from the UK at 12 weeks were fine, but my nose was still feeling very blocked.  In the UK I tried to get some Olbas oil as well as use the netti pot and things would clear up for a day, but not much longer.  While we were in the UK we had the chance to tell the Dudleys who were all excited by our news.  Nic was able to recommend a good 'pregnancy' book, something that I felt I was lacking up until now, and we were able to order this online and have it delivered before our return flight.  On reading the book I was able to find out what was going on with my nose, as it was still blocked by didn't feel like a cold.  It turns out that at this point in your pregnancy you have a lot of blood running around and heading to your membranes which then start producing more mucus - great!  The book then added that this sympton may stay with you for the rest of the pregnancy - really great!

On getting back from the UK we had our fetal anomoly scan at 13 weeks.  The scan showed that everything was normal and all the measurements showed our little Baba Ganough was growing at a healthy rate. It's things like this that make us feel lucky to be out here with private healthcare. In the UK this would be our first scan, but we've been able to have two scans before this one.  All of our scans have been a lot shorter than the scans you get in the UK, because each time they haven't need to check for as many things (because they were maybe checked at the last scan).  By seeing Dr Cherif once a month it means too that he can have a fuller picture of the way our Baba is growing, rather than just snapshots at 12 and then 20 weeks.

St Paddy's gigs

While you read this post, why not listen to a selection of recordings from these gigs by clicking here to load our MP3 page.

Being in Cairo's premiere Irish band means that mid-March is a busy time of year ;-)

We had two gigs lined up in as many weekends which, considering we're used to gigging once a term, was something special.  The first gig was on St Paddy's weekend itself (albeit the Friday rather than the Saturday to allow for a weekend lie-in) and the second gig was the following weekend (as we can't cope with gigs either after or before a school day).

The first gig was at the BCA in Maadi and was their first outside gig since their opening weekend (when a neighbour had apparently complained about the music, making subsequent outside music requests hard to get police approval for). We were looking forward to playing outside as when we play in the downstairs bar the sound bounces around the walls and the size of the room means it is packed and people don't have much room to listen, dance or do anything apart from sweat or stand close to the speakers.

The problem being that this winter has been the coldest and longest that we've known here in Cairo and it was actually pretty chilly on the day of the gig itself and it just got colder once dusk hit. We ended up playing in jackets! The other downside of playing outside that we hadn't really anticipated was the lack of crowd feedback - without the intimacy of the small downstairs bar the crowd was spread out over the whole garden and from the stage we just couldn't get a feeling of how we were going down with them.

We felt prepared for the gig as we had had three rehearsals in the week leading up to it, but when it came to it we were a little fumbly. Listening back to the recording my bassoon became progressively flatter during the evening (probably a combination of the cold and that I was having some difficulty with breathing / tiredness that was affecting the support I could give each note) and was not sounding good at all.

The good side of the evening though was that the Guinness was flowing and our home brewed stout was going down well too (the three rehearsals during the week had provided ample testing time too). Everyone we spoke to said that they enjoyed the gig and thought we'd played well. We had a new singer join us who was fab, Mary. And the sound for us was a lot better outside than it had ever been in the downstairs bar - for once we could actually hear what we, and each other, were playing!

Jump to a week later and we're at the Maadi House in the mid-afternoon ready to get set up for their Post-Patrick's Celebration. The weather has been warming up during the week which is promising, and we're feeling quite rested (as we haven't met up all week).  It's the first time for most of us to go to Maadi House as it's quite an exclusive club - you have to have certain US affiliations to be a member - and so it's a treat to be able to take advantage of their import licence. And take advantage we do - they have imported Sam Adams lager from Boston!

Although the crowd at Maadi House was a lot smaller than we'd had the previous week at the BCA there was something about the set-up of the seating and the lighting (or maybe it was just the temperature!) that made the gig just 'feel' better.  I think we played better too - well it sounds it from the recording anyway!

In the kitchen...

...We've been doing loads of cooking recently.

Yesterday had a whole shelf in the fridge dedicated to two large sprigs of broccoli, nearly 1kg of green beans, tomatoes, peppers, mushrooms and courgettes. All of these we'd bought at the weekend and used some of, but were waiting to be finished in meals this week. We then went to the shop (well four shops actually, by the time we managed to find all the ingredients we were looking for!) and cooked up three different meals - two sets of lunches for work and our dinner. I think we manged to use every pan we have!

So what have we been cooking? Well a large part has been lunches for work during the week. For this we have been cooking soups. The first soup we made was a recipe that Scotty found with loads and loads of veggies in called 'Rainbow Soup'. The first time we made it we mainly followed the recipe (but struggled to find a substitute for spinach, and found ourselves shelling the green beans because we couldn't get hold of decent ones), but the second time we ad-libbed a bit more. Here's our basic recipe;

Rainbow Soup
Fry up loads of onions with diced carrot. Then add other veggies, like peppers and courgette (this was our ad-lib). Then add tomato sauce (we make our own passata as it's cheaper to use the fresh toms than to buy tins - simply boil up tomatoes for 10 mins, remove the skins and then whizz them in a food processor).  Add some chicken stock and green beans. Simmer away and add sweet paprika (we only have normal paprika and soon learnt that you need less of this than the sweet stuff to get it spicy). When everything is cooked then blend away!

The second soup that we made we found the recipe for in the Super Foods book that Fabs gave me as a birthday present. I think it was under the 'broccoli' section, but it could have been under the 'sweet potato' section as both are Super! We don't normally eat sweet potato even though it's usually quite easy to get out here, but this year we have been having it a bit more and so we thought we'd give this soup a go.

Broccoli and Sweet Potato Soup
Fry in a large pan onions, diced sweet potato (one large sweet potato per 100g of broc) and a chopped tomato. Once the sweet potato has browned then add stock and the broccoli and bring to a boil then simmer. Once everything has been cooked then blend and add pepper.

It was this soup that caused us the real shopping trauma this evening; it took us five shops before we found some sweet potato! We've said before how it's rare for anyone to be able to cook a meal out here without needing to visit more than one shop. This seems to be that some shops are better for certain ingredients, some shops are more reliable than others for having the range of ingredients in, and sometimes you forget things! This evening we gave Save Way a miss to start with as they hardly ever have sweet potato, we thought that Kimo would be a good bet but they didn't have any. At this point Scotty took all our other Kimo shopping home and I went a few blocks away to try Seoudi Market. No luck, so I thought I may as well continue another few blocks to Adam Market. This time when he shook his head I asked 'lei' (why?) and he replied that the season is over. That explains it, but it doesn't help the fact that we have two large broccoli stalks in our fridge that need eating. In a final attempt I head to Metro on Road 233. We've found that the veg we buy from Metro doesn't tend to be as good a quality as we get elsewhere but they do tend to have everything in. I strike it lucky when I find four 1kg bags of sweet potato left and leave happy.

After a quick trip to Save Way (because we needed juice and a few other things that it didn't make sense to carry half way across Maadi) we were finally home with everything we needed to cook our planned meals.

First up we made the Broccoli and Sweet Potato soup. Then once this was simmering we started to prepare our dinner of baked salmon with potatoes and green beans. With that cooking we chopped up some peppers and courgette to make an omelette with the six eggs that we didn't eat at the weekend. The plan here was to make an omelet that we could both take in to work for lunch, but once we added extra cheese and remembered about the bacon in the freezer it was a lot larger than we'd planned! Not to worry - we'll just have a few more meals out of it!

After dinner we bagged up the soup into portions and then stuck these in the freezer so we're all set for lunches during the week. How domesticated and how organised we have become!

Will you start the fans, please?

We've been very good of late when it comes to 'charity shop buys'.

If you read my Read the Casbah book blog then you might have spotted a pattern; that I'm catching up with reading books bought in charity shops ages ago and I'm not buying so many more these days. We've been trying to curb back on the number of books we're buying, lugging over to Egypt in our hand luggage, reading, deciding that we like, and therefore lugging them back to the UK to 'keep'. I think it is all the 'lugging' that is making us change our habits. And the kindle.

But this holiday we did do the Charity Shop run along Spring Gardens in Buxton to see what they had in store. After taking a look at the books and the bric-a-brac I spied this top-shelf beauty along with the puzzles and board games. We 'umm-ed and ahh-ed' a while but it just looked too kitsch to be true so we decided to cave in and buy it.

£3 later at home we open it up and discover that while all the pieces of plastic are there, there are no rules! The instructions on how to set the board up where on the inside of the lid so we followed those and were able to get the gist of the games in the four different zones, but we still weren't able to quite work out how you moved between the zones, selected the games or played the final Crystal Dome game.

It was a lot of fun to set up and we're just going to keep our eyes open for a set of the rules on ebay or something in the next few months. Once we've played the game we'll probably be done with it and can return it to the charity shop for someone else to enjoy!

A little trip out

We had a little trip out today, which means we went out of Maadi both days this weekend! 

On Friday we were out for brunch with the Prebs and Flossie and her Andy.  Not that we needed much of an excuse to have a brunch, but it was meant to be a belated birthday brunch.  I managed five courses which is well below my usual average.

First course was salads and dips (while we were waiting for Flossie and Andy to arrive). Second course was warm mezze which was really delicious. Next time I think I'll skip the cold salads (especially as I wasn't eating smoked salmon or cheese at the moment) and so two plates of this. They had a really good minced meat baklava, great samousak and moussaka. I also had something I'd not had before which was a layer of rice, a layer of cooked chicken breast bits and then a layer of white sauce. Pretty tasty and sort of like a left-over turkey dinner meal!  Next I had some of the Thai green chicken curry which I had been warned was very hot. It was good and maybe I could have had a larger serving.  My last 'main' dish was some of the braised beef which Scotty had been going on about all day (he'd had two servings already!) along with vegetarian lasagna which was also very nice.  We had dessert envy when we saw someone with a large chocolate bomb, but in the end I didn't go for that, but went for a chocolate cup, a small tartlet of apple crumble and a creme brule.  All were very good (the creme brulee was far better than the 'parmesan creme brule that I'd had as a starter which was just a bit odd, and the apple crumble was pretty tasty and sweet), but by this point I was feeling very full.  I wanted to have room for a crepe, but knew it wasn't really possible without dire consequences.

We left the buffet at about half four, but we were in no rush to leave as the weather outside was pretty miserable (for Cairo, of course).  The wind had been lashing away all afternoon and it was drizzling and cold.  We took a taxi back to Maadi with the Prebbles and all vowed that now we had eaten that much there was no need to leave the house, or even the couch, for the rest of the day.

(We did actually end up leaving the flat to go shopping at about 8pm as they say it is always a good idea to go food shopping when you aren't hungry... and we really were not hungry! We ended up buying cereal and popcorn and then going to the Prebbles to eat it - not really sure how that happened!)

So on to Saturday (today) and after yesterday's excursion this should have been a day of 'apartment time', especially as the weather hadn't changed too drastically.  However I wanted to try and get out to the Khan and take some photos for someone in the UK who wants photos of staircases (and apparently there are two prime examples of staircases in Islamic Cairo). We check on a map where we were going and decided that rather than getting a taxi to the place we were going to (which we were not very familiar with), we would get a taxi to the place we were very familiar with and then walk. This turned out well and it was a really nice walk north of Midan Hussein towards Bab al Nasr.  On our way we took some photos for the new website project.  The streets were really nice and quiet as it was only just noon. 

When we got to Bab al Nasr we found that it was being renovated and the outside stair access looked pretty good. This was a good sign, but the bad sign was the positioning of the port-a-cabin in front of the stairs.  This to us was a strong indication that they might have the Gate renovated, but they didn't want anyone visiting it just yet.  Some boys running a near-by stall showed us how you could squeeze past the cabin or jump over the low wall, but we decided that we would wait another month until it looked a bit more open.

Our walk back to the heart of the Khan took us on the road parallel to Sharia Muezziz.  We'd never been along here before and it was a really lovely walk. The street was being renovated as Muezziz had been and so long stretches were dug up (up to 1m below street level) to lay pipes, then other areas were being prepared for new flagstones.  One block had also been renovated into traditionally fronted workshop spaces.  We kept straight and managed to find our way back into the Khan proper (via our favourite 'electronic weighing scales' district) and then into a taxi back home. 

The trip didn't take us too long all in all. On one hand we didn't achieve very much as we were unable to get into the Gate to see the stairs properly and we only took a few photos for the website project. But on the other hand it was good to get out and remind ourselves how easy it is to get into an interesting part of town, how nice it is to explore and how much we enjoy it!

You want to watch you don't get blocked in, mate!

We walked out today to discover that the army were back on the street. They weren't all over Cairo by any means, in fact, this army vehical was the only one we saw all day. We figure that the are out and about because this weekend is the anniversary of Mubarak stepping down and various strikes and marches have been called.

Our first thought though on seeing that they had backed up onto the pavement outside the Grand Mall was that they were going to get fenced in later on once all the taxis and Grand Mall shoppers turned up and started parking on the street!

Specially sourced mead

W've been keeping these special ingredients for a mead and today we made one!

Our special ingredients were; Siwa water, honey from Siwa and honey from a monestry that the P's visited last year.  To these we added the juice of an orange, one orange cut into eigths, two dozen sultanas and yeast reclaimed from our recently brewed stout.

It's sitting in the kitchen at the moment for the first stage of fermentation as we think that the back room is actually going to be too cold for it for the time being!