My mom used to say that whenever we were getting close to home. It ends with "cow's in the meadow, sheep's in the pot." I remember thinking "lucky cows!" and feeling bad for the sheep.
The Howell women have landed! After four months in the blessed USA, Mary and I are back on our home island. I was seriously dreading the return for many reasons that I will explain below, but mainly because I was a bit fearful of what this island had in store for my infant daughter. My concerns were not just for Mary, but for myself as well. I know that God tells us not to be fearful, to trust all things in him, and while I may not have been totally doing that in my head, I think that in returning with said infant daughter, my actions were stronger than my thoughts, and I have been shown that my fears were logical, but unnecessary.
Grandparents, uncles, aunts, and anyone with germ phobias: be warned, I am not going to hold back.
My top 10 fears, and how we are getting over them-
1.
The heat. When I left the DR in October, it was so ridiculously hot, it hurt. I would get home at lunch and go straight to the cold shower, and remain unclothed for as long as possible, and when I absolutely had to dress, put on the lightest, airy-est clothing I could find. It made me so lethargic and grumpy, and I was nervous to stand up in public places, just knowing there would be sweat marks on my back. (and my rear. I originally wasn't going to include this, but you have to know to get the full picture.) Sleeping at night was a joke, cuddling was out of the question, and exercise....well, I gained plenty of weight in this pregnancy and I can't blame it all on my 8 pound baby.
NOW the weather is quite delightful 90 percent of the time. Most days I think that I could live everyday with this weather. I need a sheet at night to be comfortably warm, and I get to wear what I want, with out worry of sweat marks or overheating. I know that it will get hotter as the summer progresses, but to not have to jump back into heavy heat is a blessing.
2.
The heat and Mary. Mary has only known chilly. Her room was kept warm, but the rest of the house was a little chilled, and outside was fa-reezing. We kept her pretty well layered, and she was swaddled for every nap and bed time. I was so worried that it would be too hot to swaddle her, that she would become lethargic and miss out on developmental opportunities, that breastfeeding would be so uncomfortable, and that she would be cranky from the discomfort.
Again, the weather is nice. At night it is cool enough that not only do I swaddle her, but I sometimes put her in her long sleeve footy pj's too. Most mornings she gets dressed and wears leggings the first part of the day. During the afternoon and early evening it can get a bit warm, but I just put a cool washcloth on her back and she is fine. By the time it gets to be that oppressive heat, she will be old enough to sit up in a little swimming pool and appreciate the cool water.
3.
Critters (this excludes bugs; they have their own section) We have mice. Lots and lots of mice. And rats, though we have yet to spot one IN the house. There are also lizards which while cleaner than mice, are still sort of creepy with their weird blinky eyes and scary fast movements. In Bombita, it is a common problem that children get their toes nibbled on by the critters that shares their beds, and groups have sent down socks for the kids to at least provide a barrier for the mice to get through. Also, they leave their droppings EVERYWHERE! I seriously do no know how they get to some of the surfaces, but their evidence is there. The worst is that they seem to love our dish rack, so we end up washing our dishes twice, once to clean of the dinner, and once to clean off the poo. It makes me cringe to think of rodent excrement getting on my dishes, let alone on my baby's bottles, pacifiers, clothes, etc... it is pretty toxic stuff.
Turns out, in our new house, the mice aren't so bad, and since we no longer live on a wall adjacent to the trash receptacles, I haven't seen any rats! There was lizard on Mary's mosquito net one time and it jumped into her crib when I shook the net. I was surprisingly un-bothered by this though. We have some evidence of mice, which I would wipe off, bleach the counter, re wash the dishes they had contaminated and whine and moan to Patrick about it. The day I went to get a bottle for Mary and there was a piece of poo INSIDE the bottle. I threw that bottle in the trash can, sterilized everything in sight and put down traps, covering the counters. You should know that we cannot find any type of trap other than these sticky little panels. When a mouse steps on to it, it just sticks. And the mouse fights it. Sometimes we catch more than one mouse on one trap and the mice fight. So during the night we hear "squeak squeak squeak squeeeeaaaaaaakkkk
4.
Bugs Mainly mosquitoes, but also spiders, and fleas and gnats, and these little things that hurt like a mother trucker, and ants. We couldn't use a mosquito net because it blocks out all the breezes, even from the fan. So we used to fumigate the house every night with some spray thing. I would have to hide in another bedroom so as not to have a three legged baby, and Patrick would spray the house. That kept the bugs away just long enough for us to fall asleep, but come morning we were covered in bites. Also, there are cases of malaria and dengue, dangerous.
Again, this time of year the bugs seem to not be so bad. Mary has a mosquito net over her crib, and we found some all natural bug spray, and our new house is a bit cooler, so we will be able to have a mosquito net too, when the bugs get bad again. And you know, we'll just do what we can to keep Mary Jo bug free.
5.
Finding a trustworthy nanny. I am so lucky to be able to work from home for the first half of the day, and since our lunch break goes until two, I only have to get a nanny from 2-530. Even then, I am mostly just across the year, or right next door in the school. Childcare is so different here, so....illogical and ummmmm, stupid. I wasn't worried about finding somebody loving, somebody who would do their best with Mary. I was concerned that it would be hard to find someone that would be willing to learn how we do things with Mary: not putting her on her belly to sleep, putting her on her belly to play as often as possible, not letting her cry it out, swaddling her for any sleep time, helping her keep a sleep schedule, etc...My biggest worry was that if Mary got sick or hurt somehow, their response would be so drastically off base, that it would be more harmful to Mary.
We did find Caco, who also our cleaner and does our laundry (please do not think ill of us for having these services, we only chose to have her because she had cleaned for the last people and we didn't want her to lose her job.) Caco has three kids and three grand babies close to Mary's age. She is gentle and calm, unlike most Dominicans. She is used to us Americans and our weird ways, and has far exceeded my expectations. She asks me how I like things done and follows through. We have asked her about different emergency situations and she seems to have a pretty good understanding of the right way to handle things. Mary LOVES her and Caco sings and dances and plays with her so sweetly. The only off the wall thing she does is when MJ has the hiccups, she finds a piece of white string, and it HAS to be white, spits on it, balls it up, and places it on Mary's forehead. Then she sticks her finger in her own mouth to wet it, and makes a cross on Mary's stomach with the saliva. I have since seen and heard of others doing this, and while it is strange and ineffective, I think I can live with it...
6.
My Job. To put it plainly, I did not have a very positive experience in my work environment when I was here before. I did not want to come back to that.
Its better now. New people, better understanding of what my job is, and more confidence to do it.
7.
Non potable water. Ingesting water from the tap can lead to parasites, so you see my concerns. Teeth brushing, dish washing, produce cleaning, showers and baths, etc...the whole game changes. The parasites are water born, so anything wet with tap water is a danger. Mary's bath time and breast pump and bottle cleaning were my biggest concerns. She eats her hands while she's in the tub, and those breast pump and bottle parts are impossible to get dry unless you set them out for a long time.
I wash and sterilize the breast pump parts and bottles in our drinking water, and while it uses up a ton of our water, I don't have to worry about the cleanliness of her meals when I am away. As far as her bath is concerned, we sort of just do the best we can. We can't use drinking water for baths, its just too wasteful, so we keep a glass of clean water and use it to wash her face and hands throughout bath time. We are super watchful for signs of illness, and we know what to do if she develops symptoms of a parasite.
8.
Missing our families. We miss them, and we want Mary to know her family.
So we skype and email and do everything we can to stay in touch. And we still miss our family.
9.
Social life (or lack there of). We just don't really have real friends down here. Cultural differences, our restricted activities, and maybe a language barrier, play into it being really hard to make connections. Plus, I was more exhausted being pregnant down there than I realized at the time, and that kept me from being much fun, or wanting to have much fun either.
I have made friends with some other new mothers and it is fun to just sit and talk about our babies, which eventually leads into talk about other things which will hopefully lead in to actual friendships. This doesn't help out with Patrick though, so hopefully he can find a way to make some more connections soon.
10.
The noise. It is overwhelming at times. Cars and trucks and motorcycles with out mufflers all gunning is by our house because we have two speed bumps on either side of our driveway, campaign buses with enough speakers for a Foo Fighters concert, ice cream trucks on steroids, chickens, dogs, lizards, bugs, frogs, wild children, unruly adults, gun shots, and the two bars down the street, do not make it easy for this noise sensitive girl(me) to sleep, and I was nervous that my baby wouldn't be able to sleep either.
SO we run a fun in her room to block out some of the noise. It works pretty well except for when our neighbor's chickens decide to lay their eggs right outside Mary's window during her nap time. When it is just too much and I can't sleep, I join sleep in her room to benefit from the fan. We can't have a fan running in both of our rooms because we run them off the inverter and two fans would kill it before the night were through.
THE END
of this ridiculously long blog.
