Pitter Patter

I'm pregnant!

I'm pregnant!

Surprise!

Hopefully that explains why I have been missing in action on my blog for the past few months. It is not that I didn't have anything to write about, I just wasn't ready to put the news out there. I am nearing the end of my fourth month of pregnancy. My husband and I are both starting to get really excited especially now that I am starting to show and, as a result, it is all getting a little more real. We have had two sonograms so far and have seen Peanut (he/she's name for now) and heard P's heartbeat. Everyone is healthy and on-track, thankfully. I must admit, though, it is still hard to make the connection on a daily basis.

Last week, my husband and I toured three daycare centers (creches) in our neighborhood. Just when I think I am getting integrated into the culture, bam! The shock hits me all over again. What has always fascinates me about travelling to other countries is experiencing how people in other cultures live their lives. It could be the littlest, most mundane things. I love going to a local grocery store or market and just roaming the aisles or stalls, respectively, for instance. I will walk around a residential neighborhood. That is all well and good until I try to visualize handing over my infant to strangers.

Waves of anger, fear, annoyance, sadness, and tears suddenly rolled through me throughout the day and during our three visits. For starters, reality set in just a little more that we are about to become parents to a completely helpless human. Our decisions, for better or for worse, will shape this person's life. As a control freak and planner by nature, the fact that no amount of research can prepare me for a child nor should I realistically expect to have a predictable schedule for much of the next two years brings out the worst in me. My defense mechanism is to withdraw mentally, emotionally and sometimes physically to the most nearby familiar place or, in extreme cases, women's clothing store. But there we were, touring day care centers. I willed myself to stay present in the situation which was made all the more difficult by a language barrier.

Did I mention everyone only spoke Dutch? I just finished an advanced Dutch language course so if I give each spoken word my undivided attention, I can follow along in a conversation. And, if allowed many periods of uncomfortable silence and some panomiming, I can respond in Dutch. Strangely, this has also inversely affected my ability to speak English, my mother tongue. During the tours, I would ask questions in English and the person would answer in Dutch. It worked well except that I could barely cobble together a question in understandable English so oftentimes the person didn't answer the question I was asking. They were incorrectly guessing what I was trying to ask and answering that question. To top it off, tears would rush to my eyes and surprise me mid-sentence. By the final visit, I would just start with the main word of my question, "Discipline", for instance, and follow it with, "How do you do that?" I also stopped telling people I was American in hopes that they would cut me a little more slack and guess that English in addition to Dutch was not my native language. I am sure they still came away with the impression, "The Dutch father seems really nice and put together, but that mother. Whoa! Nutjob!"

We live in a city center that, while a relatively small city, is still quite densely populated. The Netherlands, after all, is one of the most densely populated countries on Earth. As a result, the daycare centers occupy huge buildings by local standards, but are small compared to those in the U.S. Fortunately, they have each managed to carve out large landscaped play areas while being sandwiched in between apartment buildings. They are not the playgrounds and backyards of my youth, but at least they are not all completely paved. Our child will play under a tree and eat sand and dirt, but they will have to reach into a planter or pot to do so. He/she will have far more exposure to different cultures than either my husband or I have had and will speak Dutch better than me by his/her second birthday.

One cultural norm that my husband and I are still struggling with is how many days to put our child in daycare. The standard in the U.S. seems to be all or nothing - five days per week or not at all - for babies. The Dutch standard seems to be a maximum of three days per week. There are exceptions to every rule, but the onous tends to fall mainly on the mother to work a maximum of three days per week. It is just not economically feasible nor my wish to be a full-time stay-at-home-mom. Don't misunderstand me, please. I think it would probably be the hardest and most fulfilling job I would ever have, but it would also put a huge amount of stress on our current and potentially future finances and that would also impact our marriage and our child. There really is no perfect decision.

At the same time, even as I stood in each daycare center talking to friendly and I am sure completely competent caregivers about what still feels like a fictitious baby to me, it deeply pained me to imagine bringing Peanut there five days per week. What could my husband and I be doing in our careers that is SO important to warrant someone else raising our child 40 hours per week? What could be more important to me than experiencing our child reach his/her first milestones? Do I need to be physically present at every minute milestone (i.e. dirty diaper) ? Probably not. It would probably give me more appreciation of the ones I do get to experience. Once again, I just can't wrap my mind around it all.

The other option we are considering is hiring a nanny. Now, before you write me off as a poor little rich girl, hear me out. I am not referring to the live-in caregiver/au pair from "Nanny Diaries". Frankly, we don't have the appropriate number of bedrooms or bathrooms for that and the idea creeps me out. This would be a woman (not that I oppose men, but I have yet to meet a manny here in The Netherlands) that comes to our house eight to nine hours a day five days per week and also cleans our house and possibly does some errands. Dutch daycare is so expensive that hiring a nanny usually costs less - sometimes upto 40% less - than daycare. I have also heard of some situations in which the price of the nanny also includes two weekend nights per week of babysitting. Babysitters run EUR 10 per hour here! And did you catch the cleaning part? Cleaning! Errands! Date night! Can you hear the angels singing?!

(Cue the sound of a needle scratching across a vinyl record.) Yes, there are huge risks to consider when hiring a total stranger to care for your child in your house on a daily basis. In The Netherlands, there is also the high likelihood that the woman will speak limited Dutch or English. Dutch woman are usually far too expensive and English speaking woman are typically twenty-somethings only interested in being a live-in au pair. Additionally, nannies are usually found by word of mouth and we just don't have than many channels in which to search. Postings can be found at the local grocery store on their announcements board, but do I really want to risk it? Nevertheless, we are open to the possibility. We have also added our names to the waiting lists at the three daycare centers.

There are other things to consider like our work schedules. I travel for work 30% of the time and can be out of town for a week at a time. My husband drives at least an hour each way to work each day so cannot feasibly drop off our child and pick it up within the ridiculously strict opening hours at the daycare centers. While my parents would happily watch our baby from time to time to fill in where need be, they live across an ocean. Oh, what were we thinking getting pregnant? I remind myself that people do this everyday and, eventhough I can't see it now, we will be fine...more than just fine.

Oprah in Cambodia

Before I even knew I loved to travel, I loved to read. I also love music. Books and music intertwine themselves with memories throughout my life. Songs draw me back into rooms or cars and onto couches, benches, seats and even treadmills of a decade gone by. As I began traveling internationally in my late teens, music and books were always along for the ride. I mostly chose haphazardly based on bestsellers or what jumped off the shelf at me. It has created some strangely charged memories. Dave Matthews' solo album, for instance, will always remind me in equal parts of my early morning jogs along the river in Warsaw, Poland and breaking-up with my college sweetheart.

One book and place keep haunting me lately, though. This time last year, I was finishing a trip in Vietnam and heading to Cambodia where I would volunteer as a teacher in Phnom Penh. Prior to volunteering, I spent a week in Siem Reap and then took a six hour trip by bus to Phnom Penh. Other than the ridiculously simplistic Cambodian soap opera blaring from the bus's tv and speakers, the trip was thankfully uneventful. We had air conditioning, the bus was a relatively modern coach, and the road was pretty smooth. A few years ago, I started listening to books on my Ipod. It was far cheaper than buying books printed in English in The Netherlands and they could easily accompany me on public transport and walks. Oprah's unauthorized biography accompanied me throughout most of my time in Cambodia. Yes, it was a bizarre choice and, as a side note, I just couldn't finish it because I found it too negative.

Nevertheless, Oprah will always remind me of Cambodia. I must have been listening to a chapter about her childhood and adolescence when we stopped three hours into our cross country bus ride in Cambodia for a lunch break. I for some reason associate that bus stop with what the deep south must have been like in the 1940s. I am probably so ridiculously far off on this analogy that it only goes to show you how alien Cambodia seemed to me. I remember taking a wide step off the bus's last step over a open sewage streaming along the high concrete curb and over the orangish brown dirt road. Dust rolled off the wide dirt boulevard as motor bikes and the occasional decades old car drove by the row of six coach buses identical except for a small hand printed sign in English stating the destination.

The dust thickened the already hot air heavy with humidity. Sweat rolled down my back and I could feel drops forming on my shins. The stink and the heat squashed any hunger pangs. I followed the other travellers, some die hard backpackers, but mostly well to do Cambodians along what must have been the local version of Main Street. A two story restaurant occupied the corner. Voices rolled out the open windows and doors and people were packed inside slurping down steaming bowls of soup and hot lunches. I, on the other hand, would have paid $10 (okay, $5) for a cold Diet Pepsi.

Wearing ear buds and listening to an Ipod in the many situations similiar to this that I would come across on my travels throughout Asia, gave me an instant albeit false sense of security. Oftentimes I would wear the earbuds while playing nothing at all. I just didn't want to seem approachable, but I also didn't want to be vulnerable to people approaching me from behind or, more likely, the tuk tuk that comes driving out of nowhere as I cross the street. I suppose just the appearance of an Ipod gave me an appearance of status in such an impoverished country, but that was far from my consciousness. I already stood out so much and was so obviously western what did it matter?

The audiobooks too helped me filtered what I was experiencing. Songs often makee me feel more and that is sometimes just too much to handle. Books have always transported me to somewhere else while music in many ways brings me home and further inside myself. I am such a sensitive and sometimes painfully empathetic person by nature that I found myself in SE Asia having to withdraw from situations just to keep myself from crying. I could only imagine a bystander thinking, "Look at the crazy white girl crying! What's she got to cry about?"

Looking as intentional as I could fake, I turned the corner in front of the busy restaurant and walked along one side of it and towards what looked to be the beginnings of a residential area. I don't remember much because I didn't get too far down the street before second guessing my decision and turning back for the bus. Eyes were following me constantly. Drivers slowed to watch me walk down the sidewalk. Thank God for sunglasses because they couldn't see my eyes struggling not to show fear or anger. There were rules, norms, expectations, ethnicities, and history here that I could not begin to understand or to even have a chance of fitting in with. It is one of those moments where I realized that it wasn't the time or my place to wonder about what was right or wrong about this culture. I wasn't even a minority. I was an outsider.

Not for one moment was I probably in any real danger, but the uncertainty of being is such a foreign place and the instant realization of being alone shot waves of fear through me just the same. Dignity seems simultaneously the most ridiculous goal and the only hope. Instinctually, I forced myself to not speed my step or swivel my head at gwacking passersby. I also made a point to walk as casual and as confident as possible in 104 degree heat. I met the gaze of men I passed and then immediately averted my glance without the faintest secret of a grin. I knew enough by then to know female smiles mean something differently and entirely more to Asian men.

I know I am from a different era and there are things like hatred and racism that I will never fully understand or come to bear. Walking those dusty, hot streets in Cambodia that day, though, I couldn't help but feel I understood the tiniest bit better what it felt like to live all those decades ago in the deep south walking to school with a fear and rage you couldn't understand shaking you to your core, but an equally natural impulse to demand dignity as sweat rolled down your back and into the waist band of your finely pressed skirt, your polished shoes collecting dust with each step.