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| Waiting for the subway after Easter brunch at Capital M. It was a really smoggy day, there were no taxis and no seats on the train. |
The observant among you may have noticed that this blog hasn’t been updated in some time.
Unless I count New Year’s Eve when I forgot to turn the monitor on…
Anyway, it would be such a shame not to share with you some of the highs and lows of those crazy nine months, so before the baby wakes up here are five things every expat expectant mother in Beijing should know.
The sweet male waiter didn’t have a lot of English but it was clear he was trying to suggest I have a glass of water not risk a cup of tea while pregnant. Luckily, I had just done the ‘Doctor, my head hurts!’ Mandarin lesson so I was able to tell him that my doctor told me ‘tea is okay’!
The same thing happened after a prenatal massage. I asked for ‘cha’ but I got hot water and a knowing look from the masseuse. Better to be safe than sorry.
You get used to being stared at in Beijing. I think most foreigners are stared at.
But as I got bigger and bigger, the stares got harder and harder until they eventually turned into cat calls. My favourite was the woman in our local hutong who, grinning, leant out of her shop door and yelled ‘Liang ge!’ – rough translation, ‘lady you are massive, you must have two babies in there’.
Occasionally, being such a curiosity did work to my advantage. I was given a seat, on the subway, in Beijing. Enough said.
You may have heard Beijing has a bit of an air pollution problem. I wore my face mask a lot. I often felt embarrassed as despite the air being heavy with smog on many days, few people wear masks. Happily, this is a city where most preggie ladies get around in smocks adorned with bows and bears, so I was not the daggiest preggo in town.
Simple tasks become difficult when you can barely speak the language and you can only recognise about three written words (big, hello, and exit, if you’re interested). Hence I found myself standing in the female sanitary aisle at Carrefour trying to ask the very helpful shop assistants which were the most absorbent ‘products’. Cue lots of sticking the bump out and pointing at different boxes, while trying to mime ‘most absorbent’.
Myself and my equally pregnant pal, Aleasha, found the maxi pads and were then given a guided tour of the nappy section where we were presented with a sample of each nappy to examine for absorbency, thickness and softness. Genius.
I was told many times that Beijing is a great place to have a baby as you can have plenty of help at home and save loads of money on baby equipment buying from other expats.
My second-hand buying spree went smoothly until the Great IKEA Changjng Table Incident of 2013.
The changing table in question can be brought new from IKEA for 300 kwai and for not much more you can have it delivered and assembled in your home. Instead, I arranged to buy a used one from a lady a couple of streets away for a bargain 100 kwai.
Hubby knew this was a bad idea from the start but given my hormonal state wisely chose to say nothing. I waited in the taxi while the other half went to get the table. He appeared five minutes later with an IKEA kids’ play table – the mama making the sale was out and her ayi had given him the wrong table. So I called the mama, who then called her ayi, who then gave hubby the right table. Phew.
Now all we had to do was get the table in the taxi.
After 15 minutes of the driver trying the table every which way, seeking counsel from the gathering crowd on the pavement, getting bits of rope out the boot to try to tie the stupid table onto the taxi, I could feel tears and panic welling. This table was not going to fit in the taxi. I was about to throw myself down on the pavement when hubby muttered the immortal words, ‘If only we had an Allen key’.
So I got on the phone to the mama, who got on the phone to her ayi, who turned the hallway cupboard upside down and lo and behold found a set of keys. I don’t know who was more pleased when we finally got the blimming table into the car – me, husband or Beijing’s most patient taxi driver.
When we pulled into our complex, the meter was reading 50 kwai and we tipped the guy another 50 kwai. So it worked out marginally cheaper than a new one. My advice? Go to IKEA.
That was such an informative post , first post i read from your blog. I am newly pregnant too and i don’t have a lot of Chinese skills , just the basics so sometimes it feels difficult to ask what i need..The most funniest thing happened to me was that at 5 weeks i came to know i am pregnant through pregnancy strips , when i went for doctor appointment to make sure through blood tests she asked straightly : You want abortion?! i said Nooo ! haha… i thought May be abortion is very common here..
Will read your whole blog time to time and i am 8 weeks pregnant right now , May be i would like to buy baby items from you as well ??
oops sorry , i just read that you left Beijing in 2014 !! Haha… Anyways I love reading your blog.
Hope everything went well with your pregnancy!