Pregnancy And Birth In Portugal: A British Expats Guide To Having A Baby In The Algarve

By Sam Milner

After the author had her first son in England in 2001 she was about to have her daughter in Portugal in 2014. Not only had it been such a long time since she had last experienced pregnancy she was doing so in a foreign country.

This ebook documents the story of Sam Milner having a baby in Portugal. From first doctors visit right through the experience of having the baby in a Portuguese hospital the whole lot is covered!

If you are pregnant and live in Portugal and are worried about what it would be like then I suggest you read this!

• Language: English
• Publisher: Recipe This
• Release date: Apr 20, 2017
• ISBN: 9781386585060

Book preview

About Us

Our names are Dominic & Samantha Milner. We originally moved to the Algarve in the summer of 2008 and decided to put long term roots down in 2014.

We have a teenage son called Kyle and we live in Silves which is the central area of the Algarve.

We love living in the Algarve but as 30 something British Expats we find that we are in the minority with the majority being retired and not having to worry about family and mortgages and what not.

We love living in Silves because we are centrally located for everything that we need such as shopping centres, favourite restaurants, the beach, Zoo Marine, Krazy World and our favourite place of all....Slide N Splash.

We have gone through most things in the Algarve from getting our son registered and set up into a Portuguese school, transferring Dominic’s driving licence, setting up an LDA and so on. So when we found out in April of 2014 that we were expecting a baby it was only natural that we would go through this process locally too.

The Introduction

I wish life revolved around visiting my favourite Algarve beach above like all my relatives and friends from the UK seem to think I do.

What I am about to write about is something that terrifies most people. Not only is having a baby stressful enough but to do it in a foreign country where you don’t know the language is a totally different scenario.

Lets face it pregnancy is one of the three major stresses of a couples life. Up there with getting married and moving house. And I must admit it is even more stressful even considering it in Portugal!

Where I don’t know the language or the medical system and a country that is obsessed with paperwork was only going to drive me nuts or was it?

Plus you add to this that everything catered towards British Expats in Portugal is always aimed at the older retired folk. Not those that are in their 30’s like we are.

Well I decided after my first doctor’s appointment at my local health centre to tell my story and hopefully it will help others in a similar position to us.

My Knowledge Of The Portuguese Health Care System So Far....

I remember when we first encountered the health care system and to say it drove us to depression is an understatement. It was early 2009 and we we’re attempting to get our son (who was 7 at the time) enrolled in Portuguese state school. Well what we didn’t expect was that we would have to jump through hoops to get him every injection you could possibly think of.

Then they would send us back and tell us he needed more and then the problems would start all over again!

In the end because of medical hold ups and waiting on paperwork he missed a full year of school. (As we originally arrived in July and it wasn’t until the following September that everything was perfect and he was in school.)

We never went near a health centre again after that even though we were all registered.

Therefore in the Easter of 2012 when I was treated for Ovarian Cancer I did the thing that most of the British Expats do – I went private due to fear of the system!

Expats do this for most things – accountants, television, getting a tax number, residency and so on. So as you can imagine there are plenty of private doctors with perfect English making money off the British.

The cost of my medical treatment was over 10,000 euros and I didn’t want to repeat these high costs that was for sure.

I still carried on seeing my doctor twice a year for checkups to make sure it hadn’t returned and at 70 € a trip it didn’t break the bank.

However on my most recent visit my doctor confirmed I was 11wks+6 pregnant and after him ordering blood tests my bill had come to an excessive 500€ for the sake of a few blood tests and a consultation. I just couldn’t believe it. I didn’t even pay this much for