Sunday, October 14, 2007

The new social leper # 2

Another whinge about everyone having an opinion about my bump.

A harmless look at the BBC news website last week informed me that the UK government has revised its guidance on drinking booze during pregnancy to say that you could drink, maybe, sometimes, but only a glass, or maybe two. There then are comments from all sorts of people, mostly male, who in the absence of any actual evidence say that drinking anything during pregnancy causes behavioural problems in young children. That's right ladies, no actual factual information, but best not do it just in case. We don’t know the impact of living on the 23rd floor of my apartment block because no one has done a conclusive study on it, but am I supposed to not do that in case it's harmful too? I am sick of being made to feel guilty for even breathing at the moment, and this kind of thing really annoys me. I am so annoyed that I may need a large glass of whisky to calm me down.

So, onto my second pregnancy leper-related amusement. I have a couple of trips to take in the next month or two for work and to see some friends in Thailand and after checking my super-duper tell you everything UK baby website I found out that a lot of travel insurance doesn't cover you late in pregnancy. So I checked a couple of policies this morning. Basically, if you are pregnant you are an insurance leper, I will taking that up with the Boy who works in a large insurance company.

What amused me most, though, is the policy that we already have from the world's local bank. It took me a while to find the pregnancy exclusion because it was at the bottom of a list of other conditions that exclude you from being insurable. This list was: insanity, alcoholism, drug abuse, terminal illness, pregnancy.

You couldn’t make it up.

1 comment:

London City (mum) said...

Of course, dearest Alice, what they do NOT tell you is that if you step on board an airplane and lie blatantly (if and when challenged by the space waitress "Are you pregnant?", to which you can always reply "No, I am just fat..."), they will never categorically say that you are further down your pregnancy than you look.
This is simply because they do not know and in these PC times, no one would dare say otherwise (especially the British).
So, although the insurance policies suck, if you are beyond 28 weeks but feel fine, then a short trip - business or otherwise - will be of little consequence to baby's due date.
Trust me, I've done this with all 3, and learned the truth re my above comments the hard way (ie being too honest and getting marched off the plane!).