12 weeks old...

Since DD2 has been born we have had three months of family visits.  Some have been fun and happy, others not so.  In the UK, if you have a baby, your friends and family are acutely aware of your exhaustion.  If they stop by, it isn’t for too long.  Traditionally, they will bring food and help with the house - or at least this is my experience of friends and family growing their brood in the UK.  But this doesn’t appear to the case when you are an expat.

Other expats understand the rules of engagement, but your family will insist on coming over for a holiday two weeks after you have given birth.  I get that they want to see the new arrival, but to say that they are coming on a holiday..?

I had a C-section but ended up driving after two weeks and walking people around town.  Considering that I was back to work after 6 weeks, it has been non stop and people just don’t consider the fact that any birth takes time to get over.  I wanted to spend time just the four of us.  I wanted time to bond with my DD2 and get my family back in a routine.  I was paranoid about ensuring DD1 wasn’t greatly affected by the birth, or if your baby is ill - as DD2 was - I would have given my right arm for the opportunity take a breathe and recoup.  At the risk of ranting (and now I am on a roll so I will), I wasn’t really able to do any of this.

Oddly, following the birth, I wanted to be able to breast feed which I didn’t expect.  I have always had an aversion to breast-feeding (BF), yet I did want to BF for the first few days.  I attended BF classes as DD2 is slightly tongue-tied and it was obscenely painful at first.  When it worked though, it was a great experience.  Sadly, it wasn’t meant to be.  I am still very resentful of the fact that I was unable to because I had to go off and decamp into my bedroom to do so.  Believe me, I know how this is sounding - this doesn’t sound like such a chore to those who haven’t breast fed, but considering it takes about an hour and a half to feed and burp, you then have a 90 minute window before you have to do it again, 24 hours a day, 7 days a week for the first couple of months, it is actually a major upset if you can’t be comfortable and do it where you want, when you want.  My quest to BF was hampered further by the fact our visitors wanted to be with us continuously so I ended up taking them out virtually every day.  Keep in mind that we live in a country which is incredibly modest and breastfeeding in public is uncomfortable for all, being out and about is a way to kill it off very simply.  Something had to give - it was breastfeeding.  I have written this very simplistically.  It was not an easy choice, but expressing takes forever and who wants a 20-year-old nephew or your father-in-law watching that?  Not being able to do it in my environment of choice, and my being a tour guide when all I wanted was to be at home on my own with my little family left me feeling very claustrophobic, and created a lot of resentment.

The hardest thing though was undoubtedly dealing with the hormones.  Personally speaking, because I spent the whole of my 6-week maternity leave biting my tongue and refraining to tell people what I thought.  I believed I had kept my hormones under control.  I didn’t want to appear to have lost my mind or be unfairly judged.  The main problem with this is that, coupled with sleep deprivation and a house full of people waiting to pounce and tell you are being ridiculous, is that it creates a huge divide between you and you husband.  In fact, with mine, I was unable to keep my emotions in check.  He is the closest person to me and the one I took all of my frustrations out on.  Regardless of how much we tried to hide them, both our moods were evident, so the judging and family gossip started… Fun!

Three months on, we have mastered the family rhythm.  We are still entertaining people continuously, but I am not feeling psychotic continuously with hormones (just 30% of the time).  Finally I am getting to the place where it is OK to tell people “No.”  Even going back to work before all the visitors had left (we didn’t have one day in the whole of my maternity leave where we didn’t have people staying), has been a breath of fresh air – despite how much I was dreading it.  I am very lucky though to be able to work from home as that is very far from the norm out here.

The one thing I have learnt from giving birth is that regardless of what anyone tells you or expects from you, be selfish.  If you give in for a quiet life (as I did), the repercussions on your family are just too big, and I learnt this the hard way.  My husband and children come first, so now I am vocal and do whatever it is that is right for them.  Others may not understand, but really, that is their problem and not mine to worry about.  Why should I put myself through the mental torment that will, in turn, affect my family if I don’t have to?

9 months later

What a change 9 months makes?  WOrk has been manic, I have literally been doing nothing else, aside from a cheeky trip back to the UK and Tobago - Oh, and my darling daughter number 2's (DD2) birth!

It started as me being utterly exhausted, unable to concentrate at work and wanting to sleep non stop if I was anywhere else.  The tiredness was like nothing else.  I was sleeping so soundly that I didn’t hear my daughter (DD) coming into our bed at night.  I was going to bed at 7pm and sleeping through my alarm.  I put it down to family staying for three weeks and entertaining every night yet maintaining a job.  I was just so tired… 

I suddenly had all the symptoms with horrific sickness and diarrhea to match my extreme tiredness.  I could keep nothing down at all and had to cancel the breakfast that I had booked with a fabulous friend Holly.  Luckily Holly was awake when I text at 6am to say I wasn’t well, and immediately jumped in her car driving from one side of Dubai, all the way to the other, calling me en-route to say she was coming to look after my daughter so I could rest.

Despite her protestations, I initially refused hospital.  Gastroenteritis has been going around town, so I was sure it would pass.  After spending several hours asleep and waking only to check that Holly was still OK with DD, I found that DD had been sick too.  Realising that I had to get better to be able to look after my daughter properly if she were ill (she was actually completely fine in herself, but you just can’t risk it can you?), we took her to her Godfather’s house and Holly took me to hospital.

After 9 bags of fluids, several blood tests and various injections later, I was told that I had Salmonella Blood Poisoning.  “Have you been experiencing any other illness recently?” asked the Doctor as she told me the test results.  After I said no, I had just been tired, she asked, “Did you not know you are pregnant?”

The room span.  “Pardon?”  I asked, not believing what I had just been told.  We had spent years trying to get pregnant, and when it didn’t happen and with our adoption window was narrowing, we adopted our most precious DD.  In those years, you quickly learn that actually ‘physically being pregnant’ is not the be-all and end-all.  All you want is the child at the end.  In fact, the more times you see your monthly cycle alive and kicking, the higher and thicker the brick wall is built about whether or not you want to become physically pregnant.  I lost count how many times over the years I have said, “Actually, I am far too selfish to be pregnant.  I like my body the way it is.  My boobs are in the right place and I have a small waist, plus a crying newborn baby?  Why would I have a child?”  This was my standard moniker that I trotted out when I was continuously asked (normally by family who should have known better), why wasn’t I pregnant yet?

After a few months of repeating these sentiments, you do start to believe it.  Years on, you not only believe it, but the thought of pregnancy quite literally revolts you.  In fact, by my mid 30’s, I felt better about my body than I had ever done before.  Oddly, just one month before I found out I was pregnant, I recall standing in my underwear in front of the full-length mirror in our bedroom saying to Ian, “Actually, my body really isn’t that bad for a 36 year old is it?”  I truly meant it too.  I also remember vividly that I thought I only looked this good because I hadn’t had physically carried a child…  That said I did not care.  After years in a mentally abusive relationship being told I was fat, and being constantly compared to other women who looked far better than me, Ian had installed confidence in me again, and I was loving it!

We took the decision to give up trying for kids’ years ago, way before our daughter came along.  Our new mantra was, “if it happens, it happens.”  People would ask us why we weren’t IVF’ing.  Personally speaking, by the stage IVF was a consideration, all I had ever wanted was the baby at the end.  Adoption was a much more natural consideration for me, and although discussing whether or not to IVF with Ian (I would absolutely have gone through the process had Ian have wanted me to), he surprisingly agreed with me that we would adopt.  It was a further couple of years though before we were able to complete the process. 

Adopting our daughter was the best thing we have ever done.  She completed us and we are so lucky to have her.  But it reinstalled in both of us that your flesh and blood does not make a ‘family’.  It the unconditional love that you have for that child; How you would trade places at the drop of a hat if they were in pain or in danger, how you live to see their smile each morning and think there is no better sound in the world than hearing their laughter.  Naturally, when we spoke about extending our family, it was only ever in discussions about adoption, never anything else. The thought of my falling pregnant never even crossed our minds.

Last November we had been speaking about to whether to adopt again or not and decided that we were in the middle of such an exciting age with our DD, where she was developing such a magnificent personality and getting more independent daily, we just didn’t think we would ever be this lucky a second time around.

So when the Doctor explained that I was actually around 12 weeks pregnant, shock set in.  I just sat there mutely, my head swirling.  She continued oblivious to the fact I wasn’t listening and luckily Holly was, “This is why the blood poisoning had taken hold so quickly as your immune system is lowered in pregnancy,” and what the next steps where that I should take to deal with both the salmonella and how to proceed with the pregnancy.  “Take it slowly, take a month off work,” Yeah right – One day off and a week working from home more like.  I had a deadline to think of! “And rest up,” not to mention the scans, finding an OB etc.

I took some practical (and impractical) steps myself.  Yes, I have brought surgical garters to help me heel more quickly, because I was scared I won’t get my figure back, but I couldn't fit into them in the end.  Yes, the thought of stretch marks on my belly still brings me out in hives, so I wish I had taken out shares in bio oil so I can make some back some of the money that I am spending on their product.  Yes, the thought of aging another 10 years in the space of one month because of lack of sleep has had me looking at the cost of a facelift; not to mention the tummy tuck and boob jobs that I have reviewed.  Age I have.  Badly in-fact over the last three months, but luckily I think I will be able to avoid the tummy tuck as my belly went straight back (well within 2 months anyway) Boob job though may yet be avoided, but only time will tell.

What petrified me the most was how was I going to get  that balancing act perfected quickly between the two girls.  It is only recently that DD1 has started to show the tiniest hint of jealously.  Like tonight, when I was dancing around the room the room with DD2 to LMFAO, DD1 asked if it was her turn yet.  The thought of either feeling left out as they grow up makes me feel physically sick.   

I have also been incredibly worried about the strain of having a baby will put on my husband and myself.  Actually, when it is just the four of us, we get on really well still although I do wish he would accept that I know best!  When others are meddling though, it is very stressful.  But that's life I guess.  We are just lucky that people don't live locally to make this a major issue.  Actually the list of these real fears is endless.  How do other mums do it?

DD1 is a very proud big sister. She loves to introduce her baby sister to everyone.  She wants nothing more than to hold her and kiss her as often as possible.

I was completely unable to take it easy after the birth.  THats a story for another day.  I did go back to work after six weeks, but being able to work from home and cutting back events to one or two a week means it is very managable.  

I still have not got my head around the body issues though.The idea of having a baby I still think is revolting.  In fact, when I think about how I carried DD2 in my belly  – I can’t help but think of the scene in Alien when the Alien erupts from Sigourney Weavers stomach - which is pretty much exactly what her birth was like.  Whilst I couldn't see what was happening as they screened my face from my neck, I could feel a numb prodding, pulling and pushing when the Doctor was rooting around inside my (a friend described how her c-section reminded her of washing in a washing machine).  According to my husband, my insides were literally pulled outside of me as the Doctor gained access to my womb.  It was when DD2 was finally pulled from me though that I properly turned into Sigourny Weaver...  with blood flying all over the place as she was pulled out.   

DD2 is gorgeous.  She is a mini me of her daddy, but hey - we can't have everything.  DD1 is so proud to be a big sister sister and introduces her to everyone who enters the room.  It is very rare for people to experience both an adoption and the birth of their own, and I am very lucky to say that I have.  

We know life will be tough.  Racism, people's perceptions... I was told I had a "white entitelist mentality" in a FB forum by some boy who on viewing his profile, had just started university and addmitted in his own words had no experience of adoption or what people go through to adopt.  He even boasted that his own parents were still together and he went home for dinner several times a week, but viewed myself and my husband as Bradjelina wannabes.   

I wouldn't change it for the world though.  I am very proud of my little family.  They come first.  I find myself worrying more for DD1's future than DD2 because the world is a very different place to what it was when we adopted.  I know from the hoops we are jumping through trying to secure her citizenship, but at the end of the day, my family comes first.  We will do everything in our power to protect our daughters and whilst that could mean we may end up living in Addis Ababa, then so be it.  Their security and health comes first, everything else pales into insignificance...

My First Office Meltdown…

So today I had my first hormonal meltdown in the office.  I am mortified.  It was my entire fault and my (male) colleague didn’t have a clue what to do… 

All he had done was asked some questions that I was willingly answering.  I am an open book and maybe some things I shouldn’t share as they are painful, but I just wanted him to understand my prospective – And sadly instead, I was unable to answer and just ended up more frustrated.

The thing is, I am very open.  Especially when it is about adoption as I am passionate for people to understand that my baby girl is MY baby girl.  My colleague, who I will call S, hit a nerve that is a constant worry to me.  He said that I would feel differently towards my DD then I would towards my biological daughter because it is a  “scientifically proven fact” that biology accounts for more than nurture.  This I vehemently disagree with.  I mean, if that were the case, why are there so many babies and children placed for adoption?  Why are children around the world being abused?  Why are mothers happy to go on vacation, leaving their children to fend for themselves?  This I could answer, but then when he asked, “Aren’t you worried that you will love your biological child more?”

I just broke down.   It is sad really as the easy answer is, “No.  Not at all!” But it is this type of questioning that I fear my DD will have.  It petrifies me to think that one day she will think this too – even if it is for a hormone filled millisecond - at some point she will feel that pain, and I just have absolutely no idea what I can possibly do about it.

It frustrates me even more that I was so emotionally upset and beside myself with trying to speak these fears out loud that I just broke down sobbing.  In a room full of men.  In a room full of men, who don’t have children and could never possibly understand the fears that a mother has and the all encompassing urge to constantly protect her children. 

It frustrates me that people don’t have the empathy to understand this.  that they don’t expect the response that I give; especially as I am 7.5 months pregnant (to be fair, S was expecting it to a degree and felt horrific afterwards). 

I was kind of blindsided by the line of questioning really.  I knew people would think that as most people I meet have no idea of the emotional turmoil you go through in your dream to adopt.  That you experience the exact same emotions at various stages of the adoption that you do with your own personal pregnancy.  The only difference is that the stress of adoption is far far greater than having your own pregnancy; in our case, we were at the mercy of three governments, yet we had the bond with our DD the second we were sent her photo.  She was thousands of miles away.  We could see her only at weekends and had no idea what was happening the rest of the time.  When we were told she had pneumonia at four months old, panic set in.  Could she get the right treatment?  Would the treatment be as good there as in Dubai?  Would the orphanage administer the treatment correctly in our absence?  What will be the long-term implications of it?  Is there anything we can do from thousands of miles away apart from keep in constant contact with them?  What happens when she is crying and just needs a cuddle?  We weren’t there to be with her through all this and that thought is so painful you just couldn’t understand…

When you are pregnant, you know that your actions are directly affecting your own baby.  You know that if jump out of building you will hurt your baby.  Ultimately though, the decision to jump is yours and yours alone.  When you have a baby in another country, being looked after by amazing people (but they are ultimately strangers), that decision could be taken away from you.  OK.  This is a tad extreme, but you get the drift.  Everything is out of your control and the stress that this brings is huge.

It scares me to no end that someone with no brains will think that it is OK to ask these questions when my DD is around.  As I said to S today, I would not have been responsible for my actions had he have asked these questions in front of my daughter.  The poor man… how does he know that this is something that has kept me awake at night more often than anything else – that at least twice a week I lie in bed worrying about this from 2am and give up at 5am trying to get back to sleep?

Realistically, I should have stopped the questions before they began but I don’t really have that stop button.  I need to grow one though I have now realized.  What good will I do for my daughter if I can’t field these questions in the future?  How on earth is that going to remotely protect her?

What is ironic, is that literally 10 minutes before this all happened, I had posted a viral thread on Facebook from Sandra Bullock who is also frustrated at people saying she isn’t a real mum to her son.  She is an “Adoptive Mum”.

Take it from me, love from a real mum isn’t the love from someone that produces a child biologically - As amazing as the human body is, most women can do this in one form or another.  Love from a real mum is someone who sits watching her child sleep at night and feels the most overwhelming sense of love.  Love from a real mum is someone who holds her child tight when they fall, and worries about them when she sees them testing the boundaries.  Love from a real mum is someone who petrified, jumps in the car at 2am racing to their child to hospital only to be told by a Dr that it is only a temperature and there is no need to worry.  Love from a real mum is an overwhelming unconditional love. 

You do not have to give birth to love like a “real” mum.

It is official - My Working is Good for my Kids

So carrying on with my theme of working mum guilt, I was very glad to have read the article in Forbes which only reitterated what I had thought all along - Kids benefit from having a working mum.

In a survey conducted across 24 nations proved that working parents not only helped their family economically, but also professionally and emotionally.

Read it for yourself...

http://www.forbes.com/sites/hbsworkingknowledge/2015/05/15/kids-benefit-from-having-a-working-mom/

As I have always said, happy mummy means happy kiddies.

Who are we to judge?

Every mum’s nightmare scenario is to know you are being criticised.  No matter what we do or how we do it, there will always be someone who thinks that we should be doing it differently.  I get that.  But being mean with it?  That I don’t get.

I have been guilty of it myself, before I had kids that is.  I can remember questioning why a mum would allow her kids to behave in certain manner that was so unruly, making a nuisance of themselves to those around them.  Now I feel so embarrassed when I think of these memories.  Now I completely understand that sometimes you just have no control of how your kids are, yet you can be judged by someone who has never met you, or seen you with your kids before on the three minutes that they spent in your company, which was the exact same moment your child decide that screaming as loud as they could would be fun.

Case in point being that Ian and I hated the thought of our daughter with her head tilted towards an iPad at meal times.  We naively thought that they should be educating the child how to sit and have an adult meal.  “They should be talking to their child,” I can recall saying to Ian one lunchtime when faced with a couple and a 2 year old.  How naïve?  Little did we realise (despite the knowing the fact) that a toddler just isn’t able to sit for long enough.  They get bored; they have such a small attention span, and get irritable…  NannyPad as we have affectionately nicknamed it, is regularly taken with us to restaurants.  If (shock, horror) we forget it, my iPhone is swiftly deployed once it becomes evident that our DD will not sit still much longer, so that Peppa Pig can calm here where all our attempts were failing.  Yes we do notice the disapproving looks from others but more often than not, they are young people who clearly don’t have rugrats at home.  It does though bug me on the off occasion when it is someone who does have their own kids with them at the time.  Our philosophy though is that if it means we can sit and spend the best part of an afternoon in the company of friends at a restaurant and enjoy the meal, so what?  More importantly, isn’t it better that the people on the table next to us are extended the same courtesy regardless as to whether or not we have a child with us?  Why should a child who doesn’t want to be there ruin their meal?

I don’t buy into this, “You aren’t teaching your kids the right way to behave at the table” rubbish that I have heard spouted.  In fact, because we regularly eat out our DD has excellent table manners for a two and a half year old.  She loves to sit at the table laughing and joking with the others who are there whilst she shows off to them, but for those long lunches… well NannyPad nannypad is great.

Being a working mother, we often have guilt.  Many of our friends have said that they just don’t bother taking their children out to eat, as it is just too painful a process.  Here, the culture focuses so much on eating out, and my time is so limited, that I don’t want to have to choose between friends and family.  Whilst I am not saying my friends are more important than my daughter by any means, within an expat community, your friends are an extension of your family.  I don’t want to leave my daughter with the nanny so I can take time out to catch up with people  - I am away from her enough as it is – so I do take her with me.  My friends love it as they adore my DD, and she loves it as she invariably gets spoilt because it is evident how much they adore her and want to spend time with her.  But why should I be judged for it?

I was so angry to see another working mother being judged.  This time, Victoria Beckham (and to an extent David) were being slammed for allowing their daughter a dummy, saying she “may, “get speech or dental issues”’.  Firstly, their daughter has busy working, yet involved parents who have the global media hounding their every move.  How unsettling must this be for a four year old?  Is it really any surprise that she may want a comforter of some description?  I see many four year olds with dummies, but because they are in the public eye, they are getting hit for it.  Why pick on the Beckhams?  This headline is really quite inflammatory and does cleverly succeed in gaining a high click-through rate for the ‘newspaper’ in question.  The way the headline is written highlights the ‘speech or dental issues’ over and above the ‘may’ and draws your attention to these words.  Salacious gossip springs to mind.  It was when I looked at the author of the article that I was initially shocked and then understood.  The showbiz correspondent, clearly career driven if you were to look at the LinkedIn profile, and highly intelligent, appears to not long have been out of university herself, placing her in her 20’s and (I am assuming) childless.

The sad thing is, that this kind of writing, whilst completely understandable and completely thoughtless at such an early age, and by someone who is as career focused as this lady appears to be, does working families such a huge disservice around the world as it only piles on the negativity that working families are striving to move away from.  It also places us back in stereotypical roles – The mother should be at home with her children so a child meets full western expectations as to how a child should be, and the father should work.  But no child is perfect and the writer will learn this soon enough.

It is great that this young reporter is forging ahead with her career and for women everywhere who have the determination to succeed, I wish her the best of luck with that, but by adding to the guilt and needless embarrassment of other mothers who have made it, she is setting us back.  Who is to say that VB is not sat somewhere reading that and comments ‘blaming’ (and I use that term lightly as I don’t believe there is any blame to attribute here), herself and her working for the negative reactions as I doubt highly she can be with her daughter every hour of the day to break the cycle.  Sadly, everyone somewhere will have something to say and it tends to be only the bad comments that you will hear.

If I were to have read something written like this, I would feel terrible.  Despite my putting myself out there, I still like to be liked; yet when you take someone’s children into the equation, you are quite literally stamping on them from a great height.  No doubt VB has toughened up to this sort of thing, but I would hate for any women to think that that is how they are judged.  She has built an amazing global business, investing her time and money into something that she loves doing.  She has to spend enough time away from her family without being made to feel that she isn’t doing enough in their lives.  Ultimately a happy mummy is a happy family, so why shouldn’t she be focused on something that adds another dimension to her life, as well as providing more security and a legacy for her family?

I don’t know VB so I can’t talk for her, but I do know that I can’t possibly be a stay at home mother.  I have tried.  It strained my relationship with Ian and made me resentful.  My daughter on the other hand loves to visit me at work, and will sit next to me in my home office with her laptop so she, “can work too mummy.  Just like you.”  Personally, I think this is a great mind-set for her to have.  It will enable her (I hope) to be just as driven as she grows up, but I also hope she remembers how far people have come so that women globally are able to have these choices, and not, albeit unintentionally, stab someone in the back for some clicks on a website. 

For the writer of the article, I only hope that in a few years time she won’t feel so judged when she is balancing a career and a family life.  Even worse, I hope she doesn’t get so worn down at trying to live up to her own expectations on motherhood, that she losses sight of her own dreams and aspirations, and gives up working completely.

Most of all, I just don’t understand why all parents aren’t just allowed to parent as they see fit.  Every family is different.  Every child is different.  To get through each day, you do what you have to do.  Who are we to judge if that is right or wrong?