Hi Everyone,
We are currently in the very early stages of lodging an application for a SIR visa and have yet to have skills assessed and sponsorship etc.
But, at this time we are also hoping to try for our second child :D Does anyone have any experience/advice they can share about being pregnant or trying for a child while going through the visa process.
We understand it can cause problems with medicals and so on so could we do these early before we conceive? We're also unsure about what will happen with the timing of things. My wife has strong feelings that she wants her pregnancy here before we emigrate so as to involve family as much as possible. I'm happy either way but would like feedback from others who might care to shed any light.
Cheers

Chris and Dette, Somerset

Hi there

Sorry this isn't much help to you but we were also thinking the same thing I would like to have baby before we go because I think it will make the whole home sickness thing worse when in Adelaide but I have decided that we need to wait because of the medical I just don't want to take the chance of screwing things up if I am pregnant!!

Good luck whatever you decide


Jackie

Thanks Jackie,
It's good that you've made a decision. Good luck to you.
Did you know that the Australian Government offer $6000 to new parents who have a child out there and that the child automatically becomes a citizen? I think this is correct as we've just come back from Perth and our migrant friends told us about it. You might want to verify it yourself though. Sounds attractive nevertheless. But, Dette still wants to have the baby here, understandably so...

Hi, we've got out visa and are due to set off to Oz in less than 4 weeks. We've got one little one already and are hoping for another one soon. The one thing that stopped us trying for a 2nd baby sooner was the requirement for chest x-rays in the medicals. Not to be recommended if you're expecting. Our timeline was skills assessment was returmed in Feb 2004, main application June 2004, medicals requested Ocober 2004, visa granted Jan 2005. Skills assessment and medicals are valid for a year.

you'll have to make your own mind up as to whether you want to try for the baby before you apply or wait until the x-rays are out of the way. Best of luck to you what ever you decide to do.

dwp.

Hi
I know that the baby of a permanent visa holder born here is automatically an Oz citizen straight away (Jan's Wils is :lol: ) but don't know about SIR visa as it's not permanent.

I've seen tales on here in the past of the problems a pregnancy during the visa process has caused - chances are you will have to wait until the baby is born to have the medical, which may well delay your visa. Also there is a point during pregnancy during which you won't be allowed to fly here. And finally, you then need to put together an extra visa application (at extra expense) for the baby.

The issue with having the medical done early is that any visa granted will typically require you to first enter Oz within a year of the medical or police check, whichever is earlier. So if the visa takes a while to come through you could end up at a point when you can't fly, or having to add the baby to the visa later before heading off.

Why not wait until the medical is done then 'celebrate' heartily..... :P

SIR holders are NOT entitled to the baby bonus. You have to have PR. Likewise any child born in Australia where the parents hold a temporary visa, ie SIR or 457, will NOT be entitled to Australian citizenship, normally the baby will take the nationality of mum. However if the temp visa holder then secures PR, baby will be eligible for an Aussie passport.

Desiree
:D :D

Hi
I found out I was pregnant whilst we were waiting for our visa. Medicals etc had already been done though so wasn't a problem. When I found out I was pregnant the visa only took another couple of weeks and as we were living at my mums at that stage (the house had already been sold) we carried on with our plans. I was 11 weeks pregnant when we flew here and am due in four weeks time. As we are PR visa holders I have been told the baby will be a citizen and am entitled to $7000 baby bond.
Good luck.
Joanne

Sounds like you managed to time it just right Joanne!!!! :P

Hi Guys

Hopefully I'm going to give you the answer you are looking for.

We submitted our visa application (class 136) July 2003, then I became pregnant August 2003 with our second child. I forgot to inform immigration for ages ... ooops ... firstly because I wanted to get past the 12wks scan when things were more viable .. then I thought oh I'll tell them after my 20wks scan ... then I forgot until approx March ... I think when they sent me my "go for a medical forms"

I informed them that I was pregnant in March (baby was due in May) and they were really cool about it. Usually you have to have your medical and return it within a couple of months. They just informed me to wait until after the baby was born and then whole family could have a medical together. Once Liam was born I informed them and they sent me additional medical forms for him.

I told them I was going to wait until after my 6wk check-up before having my medical ... again no problems.

So after me & Liam had our 6wks check-up we all went to have our medicals. Megan & Liam's medicals were very basic ... no x-ray or anything and we didn't get charged for them .. even better.

Once completed we just sent off all our medicals and our visa came through a couple of months later. Bingo!

Hope this helps you. There was no hassle, no extra expense as easy as 123. Also we didn't have to be here until July 2005 so it meant we could spend Liam's 1st birthday in the UK before we came over.

Good luck.

Suzanne

Hi, Just to add that I have also had a second baby during visa application with no problems, and no extra expense (apart from the medical for baby).

We applied for visa 136 in February and I found out I was pregnant in March. I did inform immigration straight away and told them that we wouldn't want our medicals until after the baby was born. They wrote back saying that because we had literally only just applied for the visa, it would probably take that long to process anyway, and my medicals wouldn't be due to around the time or after my baby was born anyway.

They did ask us to go for our medicals in November (I wasn't due to 9 December) so I sent an e-mail saying I hadn't had baby yet. They were absolutely fine. I then had my daughter on 11 December and in January I sent off her birth certificate, photos, (had lots of fun trying to get a newborn to pose for a photo in a photo booth :lol: ) and photo copies of her passport. Then they wrote to us again in March, asking why we STILL hadn't had our medicals. I wrote back explaining that (stupidly :loopy: ) we had assumed they would re-write to us asking us to go and have them done, I didn't realise that once we was ready, we should have just gone and had them done. Anyway, had medicals done in April (we wanted to delay it as long as possible, because we knew we didn't want to be out in Adelaide until after Christmas 2005). and obviously you only have a year from the medical date. Had no problems with medicals, they were promptly sent off and we got our visas in May. :)

We are coming to Adelaide in March 2006, but obviously we could have got out there quicker, if that was what we wanted, but for other reasons, we don't want to be out there until 2006. (Hubby wants a last family christmas here first etc).

Anyway, just wanted to let you know my story and say good luck with whatever you decide.

Natasha xx :D

We decided to TTC at the same time as we were in the very early thinking-about-emigrating stage.

Our agent told us about a couple who had gone through the whole visa process while the wife was pregnant. When the baby was born he had Downs or Spina Bifida and the whole family was refused their visas.

This is worst case but was enough to put Ady off from taking any major steps until our baby Oliver was born. It put us behind by about a year but Ady didn't want to jinx the visas so the paperwork waited.

Andrea

Just thought on - it's $3000 baby bond not $7000.