When you move to a new place and try to build your new lifestyle, there are often many discomforts and frustrations, as well as many interesting new experiences and fascinating people, on your road to finding your new niche. Most expats experience varying degrees and varying types of adjustments. Here is a short story of my adjustment to expat life with baby.
Many experts in moving abroad speak of the stages of the expat lifecycle and cross-cultural adjustment. The final stage being when an expat reaches the point of feeling settled and like they ‘fit in’. The government of New Zealand are particularly welcoming and helpful in their article explaining the settling in phases common among immigrants to their country.
At this point, I finally feel that I’m settled in my adjustment to expat life with baby in Bangkok. (The sad irony though is that we recently found out that our family is being repatriated in the next few months!)
The toughest first months are now behind us
We have been living in Bangkok for 11 months now. When we arrived people advised us that the first 6-9 months are the toughest (their experience is backed up by the U curve theory timeline). While I have moved to several new countries on different continents to live over the past 20 years, I had always done so on my own – without a baby and without a husband – though as part of a study program or with an employer.
In some ways this made it much easier to integrate and build a life because I was very socially active, plus I had arrived into a network of people, either through my studies or job. However, my adjustment to expat life with a baby was definitely a different process than what I was accustomed to, and what had worked for me, in my previous five international moves.
‘Fitting in’ when you arrive as a stay-at-home mom
This time, however, I was arriving with a baby and no job.
Knowing previously about the risk of new mother’s feeling isolated in their homes because they found it difficult to get out of the house with a baby, I was concerned about this even more so being in a new town with no friends and no colleagues to interact with regularly. I was starting from ground zero in building a network of people to connect with.
I was also transplanted into a city that has fairly infamous levels of road traffic making it difficult and frustrating to get around town, a city with an average sweltering temperature of around 90°F, and infrastructure that includes broken, narrow and sometimes non-existent sidewalks down which to push a stroller or carry a baby. I knew nothing about the baby groups or other services or facilities available for new babies and moms.
In my adjustment to expat life with baby I knew I would have to face all these additional challenges to getting out and getting connected to other people. And I did. The Expat Mummy Club, Bangkok group on Facebook was fantastic for this, as was the BAMBI organized bumps and babies groups and other play groups.
Learning a new day-to-day life and creating creature comforts
When most people move to a new place they find there are so many learnings, upheavals, challenges, new situations, new people, and efforts to create a home out of the apartment. This is particularly true when moving to a country that speaks a language you do not understand (and, frankly, will likely not learn fluently even if you lived there for 5 years!), and has many different cultural norms and expectations from your own culture. There will inevitably be some faux pas moments where you feel embarrassed or guilty. There is an adjustment phase to being (at least temporarily) the outsider.
However, on this, I feel we are finally turning a corner. Our apartment feels pretty comfortable and reflective our lifestyle and personalities – though I wouldn’t go so far as to say it’s ‘homey’. A couple of trips to Chatuchak market and IKEA helped with that.
Now we know how to shop and where to buy things. A big tip for Bangkok food shopping when you have a baby is the Happyfresh app or Honestbee app which connect you with various supermarkets where you can shop online and have your order delivered to your home. And also Food Panda and the Lineman apps are amazing for delivery of restaurant, bakery and other foods.
We know how to get around town (note: Grab is illegal but still functions), how to get restaurant discounts (for example, eatigo), where to meet friends on the weekend, which parks we like to hang out at, how to have take away delivered to our house.
These are so many of the ‘creature comforts’ that one takes for granted when living in one place for a while. It’s almost possible to live life in what I like to call a sort of “auto pilot mode” after a while in one place. For me, this can be relaxing and/or boring depending on my outlook on a particular day. In general, I’m more inclined to the ‘boring’ slant on it since I like change.
Overcoming our biggest adjustment: living with the air pollution
In our first few weeks in Bangkok, I spent hours upon hours reading about air purifiers. As someone who had never known anything about air quality or air purifiers I was a complete newbie starting from scratch and realized I had a lot to learn! How do they work, how are the different mechanisms used to purify the air in a room, what are the unintended harms they can cause, what companies are producing the most effective air purifiers, what wifi and other data features exist, what ratio of room size and purifier capacity do I need for each room, what are their prices and availability in our marketplace?
In the end, I decided upon the IQ Air Multigas for our living room and dining room area since it has large capacity (1100 sq ft) and the Blueair Pro L for our master bedroom, walk-in closet space and bathroom, the Blueair Pro M for the baby’s room, and the Dyson Pure Cool for our kitchen.
Fortunately, the city has been turning a corner: the air is the cleanest it has ever been since we moved here 6 months ago. As mentioned in my post “Waiting to Inhale“, it has been stifling and oppressive living through such horrid air quality with a baby (and me being asthmatic). I have felt boxed in throughout December and January, when it has been at its worst, and it finally feels so freeing to brazenly go around and wantonly open every window and door in the apartment!
The air quality improved somewhat in March, and by the time we came back in May from a 4-week trip to the US, the air quality was great. We have been able to get out to the park, the pool or other outdoor activities every day since then. This has been the biggest change contributing to me feeling like I could finally feel comfortable here in Bangkok. It was impossible for me to ever feel at home in a place where I could not take my baby out to the park for a couple of hours everyday without fear of what she was breathing, and if it would lead to her developing asthma. I was scared of her needing to use a nebulizer to inhale medication to help her breathe like so many other kid’s mothers had shared with me here.
It seems that the air pollution is typically bad during the cooler months of the year, and much better during the rainy season months. Yay for rain! Never thought I would hear myself say that… But I now have learned that I will take rain over air pollution any day of the year! I have been much happier living here in the months where I can get outside whenever I want without fear for worsening my asthma or my baby’s health.
As baby grows, it’s easier to get out and enjoy life
I’ve been doing all this ‘adjusting’ while doing my most important job of all: growing baby big and strong. I will say, my adjustment to expat life with baby has definitely been tougher this time around than when I lived in Bangkok 10 years ago as a single twenty-something.
However, baby and I have turned a corner too: we hit the tipping-point 9-month mark of ‘getting to know each other’ on the outside of my belly. At that point I had known her as long on the outside as I did on the inside!
We reached a stage where we have both slept the whole night through and we wake up at 8.30am – a very nice time to awaken, thank you baby! We’re both washed, dressed, fed and packed up and ready to leave the house by 10.30am. This is the “brunch” time that I imagined doing on maternity leave. (Little did I know before I gave birth what the first few months would be like! When I saw moms out with their babies and other mom friends walking around town, brunching and coffee’ing in cute places, I did not know that their babies were probably at least out of the ‘fourth trimester’ i.e. more than three months old.)
Baby and I head over to one of the local hotels and have a brunch on one of the rooftop bars. The wind blows across the pool bar area and I eat chicken cashew with rice and drink traditional Thai iced coffee. This is the Thailand living that I signed up for! It is then that I observe in myself a feeling of happiness and freedom, and I realize how heavy and worried I have been feeling in the past few months.
I realize that what’s happening today is what I imagined when I signed up for a move to Bangkok many months ago. This is what I envisioned as I made the commute to work each day while pregnant and looked enviously at other mothers off work and out and about town with their babies. I release a big sigh. We made it, baby. We’re finally living the life that I thought we would be living!
We walk over to Lumpini Park, take a stroll around, look at various temples and take a rest in the shade under a tree by the lake in the park. How normal, yet how unusual.
The tipping point of trade-offs
In moving to another country there are always many trade-offs: losses and gains. The first few months after arriving tend to be the toughest phase of the move for most individuals and families.
In those first months we definitely struggled with many issues, not least the air pollution as well as setting up our apartment and finding child care. Having now dealt with those issues and turned a corner, today I allow myself to indulge with baby by a rooftop brunch and a leisurely stroll in the park. It feels blissful.
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