Lisa Ferland - Knocked Up Abroad Again

Knocked Up Abroad Again

Baby bumps, twists, and turns around the globe

Edited by

Lisa Ferland

Copyright 2016 by Lisa Ferland.

All rights reserved.

Printed in the United States of America.

No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews. For permission contact the publisher.

Permissions obtained from all contributing writers.

ISBN 978-0-9970624-2-7 (Print)

ISBN 978-0-9970624-3-4 (eBook)

Cover design by Venanzio

Photo by Sandra Jolly Photography

Motherhood knows no borders.

For my lovesJonathan, Calvin, and Lucy.

AUTHORS NOTE

If you have ever been pregnant, thought of becoming pregnant, or known someone who has been pregnant, then you know that pregnancy is a time of high anxiety partnered with joy. A woman is unsure about her future, her body, and her unborn baby. Most of these unknowns are absolutely uncontrollable, which doesnt help any mother to feel at ease.

The mothers in this book are faced with all of the same unknowns that mothers face everywhere but there is an extra twist. There is a foreign cultural approach, a foreign environment, a new language, and a different custom that these mothers must discover, decode, and demystify while they venture into the waters of motherhood in a foreign land. For many, motherhood abroad has become the new normal. Feeling out of place nearly feels comfortable after a few years. Foreign languages that arent our native tongue are easily tuned out and ignored. The wash of white noise in the background becomes soothing and without influencing our thoughts we can think clearly.

Parenting abroad is both similar and completely unlike any parenting we could ever do in our passport countries. Faced with new cultural norms, we adapt, maintain the traditions we value, and adopt new customs to result in a blended parenting approach that is wholly unique.

Lisa Ferland, Sweden

FOREWORD

Is there anything as vulnerable as a newborn child? Naked, defenseless, limbs flailing, the teensy creature stretches her fine-boned fingers toward a blurry world and what must seem a violent blast of lights, smells, and sounds. Still, she reaches. Headlong she goes, right into the adventure of a lifetime.

The onslaught of stimuli might make her curl into your flesh for refuge, or wail in raw alarm. So you hold her, committed to bearing her as long as needed. Shes no more than a couple of handfuls of pulsing magic, this infant you carry. Yet in those handfuls lie both a whole urgent world of need and a throbbing universe of promise.

Nope, there is nothing quite as vulnerable as that babe. But there is nothing quite as magical and magnificent, either.

Unless, of course, its that babes mother.

Im a shameless fan of mothers. A mother of four myself, I know something about how giving birth requires literal but also figurative nakedness. Right off, giving birth strips us bare of any delusions we might have about our own strength. When you hit transition during delivery, didnt your limbs flail involuntarily, your fingers stretch (or claw)? And somewhere near expulsion, didnt you spring sudden lungs like I did and outwail your offspring?

Yes, birthing and, in turn, parenting ratchet up every last scrap of high-pitched anxiety and deep down discomfort weve ever known, then multiply it all by a squillion. And its exactly because of that massive investment of nerves, grit, and crack-your-ribs love that parenting can foster the kind of heroism, soul expansion, and gratification little else in life can offer.

Which all holds true in ideal, stable circumstances. So what happens when we arent in those circumstances? When we couple the arrival of our baby with another kind of arrival, that of arriving in a new country? What do we get when fate layers vulnerability upon vulnerability, nakedness upon nakedness, when we are in an unfamiliar setting, speaking an unfamiliar tongue, staring down an unfamiliar medical system, without friends, family, and no semblance of our former competent and composed self?

What happens when we are in Turkey, China, Nigeria, Bolivia? Or maybe in Japan, Hungary, Sweden, South Africa? Weve just landed in Brazil, perhaps. Or were freshly settled in Abu Dhabi? Or surprise, surprise, we find out were expecting just as we hit the tarmac in Ethiopia?

What you get is knocked broadside with a near-vertical learning curve. What you get is Knocked Up Abroad Again. The 25 authors you will meet in these pages have known the scenarios I just mapped out. They know something about motherhood, vulnerability, and heroism in all those countriesplus others. From these women you will get an irresistible compilation of true life accounts rich with firsthand insights and best friend frankness. The result reads something like a whole room of wise, multicultural midwives and cultural integration specialists buzzing with intimate stories of pathos, surprise, hilarity, and tenderness run through with a strong strain of poignancy.

As said, each mother has lived (conceived, delivered, parented, or all of the above) internationally, so each knows what its like to arrive on foreign soil exposed, practically naked, essentially a newborn yourself. Like you, theyve been there battling with a new language, arms flailing indelicately, even spasmodically. Theyve known about being overwhelmed by the avalanche of urgent needs when setting up life in a new country and bringing baby into the mix. And so they sympathize with why a pregnant or freshly delivered newcomer might curl back from it all hunting for refuge, self-medicating, maybe, on chocolate, under a pile of down, in front of Netflix. Programmed on infinite loop. At midday.

Above all, these women are proof that bearing and raising children in your nonnative culture is not only possible but rewarding, and in many instances more desirable than the conventional upbringing many of them themselves knew. They wouldnt call themselves this, but to me they are quiet heroes.

While over 25 years on the global road I havent birthed or raised my four children in the same countries as have these women (mine were born in Norway and France and raised there as well as in Hong Kong, Germany, Singapore, and Switzerland), I felt while reading their accounts that if we gals were somehow seated next to each other (on an airplane, lets say, since that might be the only place wed cross paths), no flight would be long enough for sharing all our stories. I understood these women within a page. And I trusted they would understand much about me. I imagined us elbow to elbow with our tray tables down, leaning against our upholstered headrests, comparing notes, laughing, gasping, and at times even weeping without a sound.

Because I have to tell you, birth and life are not all these women have known. Some of them, like myself, have known not only about the cost of bringing a child to earth on foreign soil, but also about burying a child in it. Which means, Im grateful to add, that this is a volume about real life. It offers many parts light and select parts heavy, parts wackiness and some precious parts weightiness. Any volume on parenting abroad (or at home, for that matter) would be shallow and lacking texture without those counterbalancing truths.

So join me in this highly personal, multicultural, and thoroughly human journey. Meet the women who, like their children, have left a certain zone of comfort (for the moms its a home country; for the children the uterus itself), to enter a new life naked and sometimes squalling, unsure and often vulnerable, but ready to build an existence that shimmers with color, variety, resilience, wisdom, and true beauty.