It’s tricky adjusting to a new country and attempting to build community while pregnant, even aside from the physical demands of simply moving and setting up house.
In Seoul, I was lonely at first (as with any move), but I enjoyed the freedom I had to take a semester of Korean, wander the city and take walks around our tree-lined neighborhood and the military base.
In Hong Kong, I was lonely at first (of course), but I enjoy the freedom I have to walk out my door and into the clubhouse, where Luca and I can swim (in season) or play in an epic indoor playroom. I was also thrilled to discover we can leave our building and find ourselves in a bustling part of the city with easy access to public transportation. But, as I’ve mentioned elsewhere, navigating the city sidewalks and the grocery stores with a toddler in tow proved stressful and physically difficult for an exhausted pregnant woman.
My first pregnancy, I danced my belly silly at a Zumba class until it became uncomfortable, and then I swam laps two to three times per week. I was fit.
This time, walking the city with Luca was all the exercise I could muster—and even that dropped significantly with some physical issues that came up. I’ll get to that.
My first pregnancy, my doctor constantly badgered me about my weight, saying I was gaining way too much and should exercise at least three hours a day. Do marathoners even exercise three hours every day?! (and, by the way, the maximum she thought I should gain was about 22lbs, less than the minimum my doctor in the United States recommended).
This time, my doctor has never weighed me. Her nurse asked me to estimate my weight at my first appointment, but that’s it. “Keep growing!” my doctor told me during my second trimester.
Funny enough, I’ve gained less this time around, though I assume part of that disparity is my lack of muscle mass.
In both countries, I got awkward comments about the size of my belly, but perhaps that’s universal. Listen, no one wants to hear she’s HUGE and looks about to pop at the beginning of the second trimester, thank you very much, random store clerk. The hand motions to clarify the hugeness of my belly are particularly helpful.
Perhaps the biggest difference between my pregnancy with Luca and this pregnancy with his younger brother, though, is the sheer physical and emotional challenge the new one has presented over the past nine months. My first pregnancy was a breeze in comparison. This pregnancy has been marked by one difficulty after another—none threatening to the baby, thank God. Just enough to make life difficult. I realize many people have stressful complications far worse than mine, and I have many, many reasons to be grateful, but these truths don’t mean my experience hasn’t been tough. The worst thing was an issue with my lower hips and sacroiliac joint, the upshot of which was that some days I would stand up unsure whether I could put pressure on my left leg at all—unsure whether I could even walk to the bathroom.
I wrote this blog post on a rare morning of solitude. Joe took Luca for a daddy-son date to allow me some time alone with my thoughts and the keyboard at a bustling Starbucks. I sat down with my Frappucino to write, and about half a word into it, I heard a voice: “It’s Mallie, isn’t it?”
I looked up to see a woman around my parents’ age smiling at me, coffee in hand.
This woman has approached me before, at church. Right in the middle of a difficult phase of my pregnancy.
On that Sunday, Joe was traveling out of town. It had been a stressful week. My sacroiliac pain was starting to let up, just in time to see Luca’s behavior descend into everything I’d heard about the… well, the Testing Twos, I’ll call it. With Joe gone, Luca was particularly emotional about everything. He’d just given up naps completely and tantrums sparked up on the daily. My little buddy’s desire for me to be close at all times was at a peak.
So I’d gone to church alone with Luca, hoping Sunday school would at least give me some time to focus on something outside of my own life, the sermon. As soon as we walked into his class, though, I knew that was a long shot, what with all the weeping and gnashing of teeth. Luca is not a fan of other kids crying.
“Are you right there, Mama?” he kept asking, his mouth a worried line ready to droop into a crying pout. “You’re staying with me, Mama?” I didn't have the heart to leave him—the unusually distraught, screaming two-year olds were overwhelmingly stressful even for me, as an adult.
The last ten minutes of church, I realized the noise-blocking headphones we’d borrowed from upstairs during the loud music section of the church service were still in my purse. I decided to run up to drop them off and return straight to Luca, but a woman in the hallway—the children’s pastor—said hello as I passed, and I mentioned offhand that I planned to get back before Luca broke down.
“Oh, he’ll be fine,” she said with a knowing smile.
As I hung the headphones up in the back of the service, I realized, She’s right. I should just stay.
So I found an open seat and heard the final words in the sermon, about the need to rest and renew our mindset in order to actually be able to listen to God. Ha, rest, I thought, I wonder how that’s possible with a two-year old suffering from separation anxiety and who never naps.
When the closing worship songs ended, I started to turn to rush back downstairs and pick up Luca, but just then, an expat woman—the woman from this morning at Starbucks—walked up to me as though she had something to say.
“You don’t know me,” she said, accurately, “but I see you here on Sundays, and I've seen you out around in neighborhood, in the supermarket, and I think you're new to Hong Kong. And God really put you on my heart to pray for you this week. You're expecting—and you have another little one, too, right? I believe he wants me to tell you that his peace is upon you.”
Um.
Wow.
I squeezed a “thank you” in my lame, caught-off-guard, trying-to-avoid-tears response, but I was unable to express what her words meant to me in that moment.
I had just been thinking that God must have been listening to prayers on my behalf since every time I came close to sinking, something let up to keep my head above water. If my hips and legs were still hurting so severely, I wouldn't have been able to deal with Luca’s behavior and neediness (try taking a wiggling two-year old to a time out in his room when you can’t get off the couch without extreme pain—which happened a couple times). God was keeping things just shy of what I could no longer handle, and her prayers were an encouragement to me that God was with me while I was overwhelmed, sustaining me right when I needed him to.
That’s been true this entire pregnancy. When my joint issue hit its worst point was the week our domestic helper’s visa finally came through and she started working for us. Honestly, I don’t think we would have had groceries that week if she hadn’t arrived, let alone a cleaner house that I could ever have conjured, even on a good week.
(Before you judge, I wrote a little on the particular need for a domestic helper in Hong Kong elsewhere.)
When Luca’s behavior worsened and Joe went out of town, my joints were improving. Then something else, followed by another thing, and so on.
This pregnancy has felt like running on an uneven treadmill, tripping unexpectedly and trying to keep up simply to stay in the same place. It’s hard to have goals of my own when the only energy I have goes to being Mama to Luca, and any more I can eek out goes toward being wife to Joe. It’s hard to feel productive. It’s hard to chill out and rest in the knowledge that being a mom every day and growing a baby are actually enough.
It’s frustrating when my usual go-getter, self-motivated personality is superseded by the constant need to take a breather on the couch so my hips don’t go out of joint or so I can simply regain my composure and catch my breath.
Labor and delivery has been the light at the end of my tunnel.
If you recall from Luca’s birth, I’m a bit of a hippie about birthing drug-free unless there are medical complications, and I felt so empowered by the positive experience the first time around that I’m ready for such a hill to climb, such a goal to accomplish.
There’s a reason people refer to huge life achievements as “my baby.” The hard work, the blood, sweat and tears of researching a thesis or completing huge work project or writing novel or training for a marathon isn’t necessarily enjoyable at the time, but it is what gives the final product meaning.
The thought of working through labor and delivery, even though I'm not in as good physical shape as the first time around, sounds like a breath of fresh air for my willpower and personal agency. God has proven himself (once again) to be a reliable source of strength over the past months of pregnancy, and the concentrated hours of labor and delivery will give me the chance to draw my strength from him, once again. To experience the power of the female body, which he designed with the ability to grow and produce another human.
It’s strange, knowing what to expect this time (barring any complications) and anticipating it with excitement.
But, even if things go wrong and I need medical interventions, I realize now that those labor pains have already begun. I see now that this difficult pregnancy as a whole is part of that process. The accomplishment I seek is not just in the literal labor and delivery, but in the months of discomfort, growing a baby while raising a toddler and building a new life in a new country.
The “labor” culminates in delivering not only a new member of our family, but in strengthened character, in a stronger marriage and in an increased ability to humble myself and ask for help and prayer.
God never promised I won’t go through storms, but he promises to be with me through the storms, growing me into the person he alone knows I can be.
So, who knows whether I will get another peaceful, rewarding accomplishment of a birth story in the next few weeks. But even if I don't, I can still have the satisfaction of my 10 months' hard work coming to a head.
And for that, I am grateful.
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