Helping hands

There are many things that are much easier in Hong Kong, but none hits you as a parent like having cheap, experienced, full time childcare. It is a sad fact of economics that thousands of women from South East Asia can make much more money working as housekeepers, nannies and carers for the elderly in Hong Kong or Singapore than they could make at home even in professional jobs. Hence H, our nanny, who has a university degree, lives in our home with us for less than half of what it costs my sister to put my niece in nursery.

The conditions for these women in Hong Kong are often very tough. Contractually they have to work 24 hours a day, 6 days a week for a pittance. The government stipulates that they live in with a family, but we are only legally obliged to provide a private sleeping area and in many instances this amounts to a curtain in the corner of the living room or a child's bedroom.

Aside from the conditions and appaling treatment some "helpers" get at the hands of employers and the government, I find the role they perform in many families to be quite odd related to the children. There seems to be a culture here of giving the child to the helper even when the parents are not at work. I find this wholesale outsourcing of parenting very odd and rather worrying.

For example, yesterday the Boy and I were out shopping. Shopping for the Boy is a tedious exercise as he hates making decisions and will never compromise on anything. Between the two of us we negotiated 3 hours of shopping centres, with the buggy. However, a surprising number of families had their helper in tow. Sometimes the helper was carrying the child, sometimes carrying the bags, sometimes just pushing the empty buggy behind the couple and their child. This posed the question "why?". What is so difficult about taking your own child shopping and carrying your own bags?

Then, in the evening at our pool we took Eve swimming. We were the only couple with a baby who did not have their helper with them as well. One couple brought their baby and helper with them - that is 3 adults to take one baby swimming. In one case only the helper was there with the child (it was a Saturday).

When I talk to H, our nanny, she is really surprised that we do so much for Eve - in her former jobs she has variously slept in the baby's room to do overnight feeds, taken the children swimming at weekends, and even gone on holiday to look after the children. It would be easy to think this is a Chinese culture thing until I recall two English couples I know who think nothing of giving their baby to a helper for the weekend so they can play golf or go on a junk for the day.

I just don't understand the concept of having a child and then not spending time with them. Aside from building a healthy relationship with your child, it is simply fun doing things with Eve. I try hard not to judge the choices of others, but this is something I can't help but do in these instances.

Lost in translation

H, our nanny, is a lovely lady from the Philippines. She has excellent English, although with a strong American/Spanish accent. So good is her English that I often forget that she is not a native speaker.

Yesterday, after breakfast, I dressed Eve in a cute denim skirt and vest combo. The Boy had gone to work early so I left Eve with H while I had a shower. Once out and dressed I walked back into the room to find H playing with a very happy Eve who was jumping up and down. H was laughing with her shouting "look at you, you look so sexy".

To H, the term "sexy" means the same as "pretty" and she really didn't think there was anything odd in calling a 7 month old baby girl sexy.

I must have looked horribly shocked, and spent the next 5 minutes explaining to H why it was an utterly inappropriate term to use.

Morning sickness

One of the surprising (or perhaps not) sides of being a mother is that way in which any news story or even vague possibility of a child being hurt cuts to my core. The Boy and I watched The Piano a couple of weeks ago and I was relatively unmoved by much of it - before anyone assumes I am a cold and heartless person, I studied the holocaust and have been to the holocaust museum in Israel, nothing is more moving and disturbing than that - except the point in the film with the woman who had suffocated her baby to keep her quiet when the Nazis came looking for the family. I felt physically sick and needed a break from the film at that point.

When you start noticing, the news is full of children being hurt and abused. At the more extreme end is the Austrian cellar, but even here in Hong Kong there are stories of neglect when a mother decides to spend the weekend gambling in Macau leaving her children at home. Children are such vulnerable little things really.

It was brought home to me yesterday when H told me that she had been caught in the rain and popped into the flat of her former employer with Eve (they live just down the hill from us and right by the supermarket). I knew she had been there once before to show them Eve, and I was fine with this, but they then gave Eve a little gift. This, and H going there again yesterday led me to suspect that she is there more often than perhaps I know.

Now, probably they are lovely people. They have children of their own and H's sister still works for them. However, someone I don’t know spending time with my child, and her spending time in their home makes me feel very uneasy. All the nasty possibilities about what people can do to children come flooding into my mind. But then I found myself feeling neurotic and bad for being so mistrusting - after all, people in the UK leave their children with childminders and daycare all the time.

After discussing it with the Boy, and feeling a bit sick, today I told H that I would prefer it if she didn't go round, that I felt uneasy with Eve spending time with people we don’t know. She smiled that knowing mother smile of hers and said that she understood and no problem. Of course, she could still go there and I just wouldn't know about it. But if I trust her with Eve then I should trust her to respect my wishes.

Employ a professional

In my pre-baby days I used to say that I would always have a nanny, after all you employ someone with experience in every other facet of your life so why not employ someone more experienced than you to look after your child. In no other part of life would we put something as precious and important as a baby in the hands of people with no experience! Of course, now I actually have a child I find myself feeling quite differently and that a parent should be with their child. I think that emotionally this is best, but 3 hours this morning have found me reverting a little back towards my former position.

Nanny H is back from her 3 week holiday and already I am breathing a sigh of relief. I was due to have a call with my boss this morning to discuss my return to work next week, so I hid myself in the bedroom after breakfast leaving H and Eve to battle with the nap. Within 10 minutes, Eve was asleep, in her chair (the Boy and I have never managed that before!) and H was merrily getting on with the ironing.

I don't know how she does it. Of course she has worked with lots of children, has 2 of her own, and not being a parent and getting enough sleep probably means that she is more likely to have a firm hand whereas I tend to take the easiest path. However she does it, I am very glad she can!

Midnight dash

Further to my previous posts about the woeful state of post natal care in Hong Kong last night I found myself urgently needing to access it.

Eve has been a bit poo-ey (babies mean you start to create lots of new adjectives) since the green poo incident. Last night she was unsettled all evening, not all that unusual at the end of the day, but after her 11pm feed she started to scream. This was not a "Mum, I'm hungry" scream, or a tired scream but a "blue murder I want to kill someone" scream. I took her off the Boy and started wandering around the flat. H, the fountain of all baby wisdom, came out of her room to tell me that Eve was ill. It being 11pm, and me being very tired, at first didn't think she was - after all she had just fed really well. However, H showed me the depression on the top of her head (a sign of both dehydration and that something isn't very well) and it was like a hollow hole. I showed the Boy and, quick as a flash, we were off to the hospital.

We have a choice of two hospitals. The public hospital is brilliant, one of the best in HK and has an expertise in obstetrics and children. However, going there would have meant a long wait and we were both worried and tired. The hospital where she was born, although private, has a very good emergency unit, the added advantage of having her notes and we would probably be seen immediately. We drove there.

She was seen straight away (there was no line at all - prompting us to repeat over and over "it's not like this at the NHS") and they had all her notes with the doctor within a few minutes and we were out within 15 minutes of our arrival. It transpires that she has, perhaps as predicted, some sort of gastric bug. It is unusual in breast fed babies, but perhaps not ones who already stick their hands in their mouth all the time or whose father is a bit ill with a poorly tummy too.

She has been given some drugs to take and we are keeping an eye on her. She seems to be OK, feeding well, although she has lots of wind. The Boy, H and I are now obsessing about the state of her poo and her feeding habits.

The whole experience was nerve racking, tiring, and expensive (the whole lot came to HKD 1,000 including being charged for parking at the hospital). However, I finally realise that with my own baby no issue is too small and no cost too high to make sure she is OK. It also helps that I have very good health insurance from my company!

The final note to all of this is how brilliant H is. Not only is she excellent with Eve on a daily basis, but she recognised the difference in her cry when the Boy and I were too tired and fraught to react to it, and knew what symptoms to look for and worry about. I feel very lucky to have been blessed with such a great nanny.

Letting go, just a little

Since Eve came home I have been a bit over the top in wanting to do everything myself. In the way of modern "have it all" woman I still seem to buy into the myth that I can be the perfect wife, mother, career woman all at once and without any help. I simultaneously want my daughter to be so deeply bonded to me that she doesn't want anyone else (thereby showing I am a good mother) but also to be so well socialised that she will go to anyone or sleep anywhere (showing that I am a modern, practical mother).

This has resulted in me insisting that the Boy or I do every feed, every nappy change and are the ones to put her down. This works fine when the Boy has some time off work, but when he is at work it means that I spent 3/4 of my day either feeding, changing, settling or playing with Eve. The remaining quarter is for sleep, phone calls, blogs, work (I am still getting calls...), and eating. Yes, that is all within 6 hours.

Something had to give.

So, after about 4 days of nagging his progressively exhausted wife, I finally gave up a little bit of Eve care to H. H has been employed as a nanny, and is very good with children and babies - knowing far more than I do. However, my resistance to giving her Eve is both emotional and logical. Emotionally, she is not family, she is not Eve's relative and it just seems wrong to give my child to someone who is not a relative. I was always looked after by my parents growing up, and my sister looks after her two children - so it is just something I don't have in my DNA. On a practical level, I also have a fear that now Eve is in something resembling a standard routine, H's version of childcare may differ from mine and muck things up.

However, the Boy was right and as I intend to go back to work at some point, Eve needs to bond with H and H needs to get used to Eve. With some nervousness I asked H to do Eve's 10am change, feed and put her down. Prior to this I explained our principle of routine (i.e. wake up Eve every 3 hours, then what happens next). Although H didn't agree with waking up a sleeping baby, she was fine with the rest.

So I ran the bath, locked the door, switched on the radio loud and forced myself to stay in there for half an hour while H got on with it.

Eve was, of course, fine. She fed lots. H rocked her to sleep (which we don't do), which meant that Eve didn't go down to sleep quite so fast. H also has a habit of picking Eve up at the first whimper, whereas we soothe her in her cot and let her put herself to sleep (good habits for later life!). However, other than this, all went very well. I now plan for H to do one feed a day with Eve, and once we get past 8 weeks and we need to start preparing Eve for my return to work and more bottles and formula, she will do more.

I couldn't, however, stop myself smiling when H couldn't settle Eve in her cot. It seems that for some things only Mummy or Daddy will do.