The [Dutch] first six months

- How old is your little one?
- She's 4 months old.
- I have an 11-month-old. Oh, it goes so fast.
- Everyone says that, but I find that it goes really slowly. It takes them so long to develop! Four months and she can't even move herself.
- Be careful what you wish for.

Advice! Advice! Advice! My God do you receive a lot of advice when you have a young baby. Sleep training, breast feeding, formula, co-sleeping, vitamins, vaccinations, western medicine, eastern medicine.

With which parenting method do I most identify? Do I subscribe to the attachment parenting package? Or is detachment parenting better for her self-esteem? If I pick and choose as I please will it confuse her?

I had four friends all apply different varieties of parenting techniques to their babies, generally adjusting their approach as they learnt what worked for them and their baby, and I am more convinced than ever that parenting choices need to match your own style -- you have a better chance of succeeding and being consistent if it's natural to you. And be willing to let go of parenting ideas that just are not working for your baby.

What worked for us? After health & safety, we had the following priorities:

Sleep without props 
Our first priority was to get our little girl sleeping well. We decided that all of us, including the baby, could cope with everything else if we were well rested. We implemented the "Sleep sense program", and followed the rules. We established a little routine around her bedtime and naps, and though sticking to it was woefully, painfully difficult, by 8.5 weeks old, she was miraculously sleeping 12 hours through the night. This method did not work for any of our friends.

Breastfeed exclusively, almost 
Our little one was breastfed and periodically given formula. If I wanted to go to the gym or have brunch with friends, my husband simply gave her a bottle and I didn't sweat it. For a while I tried to pump and keep up with her, and there were weeks -- perhaps even months -- when she was exclusively drinking breast milk, but it was stressful to keep up. I didn't find that the added health benefits of being exclusively breastfed exceeded the health benefits of an un-stressed mother.

Alternate who puts the baby to bed and who gets to sleep
For us, it really worked to be co-parents, and since we weren't breastfeeding her to sleep this meant that [theoretically] anyone could put her to bed. Mama. Papa. Oma. Opa. Babysitters? Date night? Yes, it's all possible. However, whoever is responsible for the baby that night is responsible for the whole night. This way rather than having two semi-tired parents, you have one well-rested parent and one sacrificed parent (who gets to catch up on sleep the next night).

Breast and bottle, every day 
Even when she was exclusively drinking breast milk, I would pump and give her a bottle at least once a day (when your baby sleeps 12 hours a night, you have to pump before you go to bed anyways -- that bottle would become the next evening's last bottle before bed time). Most of our friends who exclusively breastfed had the experienced that their babies stopped taking a bottle after just a week or so. This meant that they -- and only they -- could put the baby to bed, feed the baby every 3 hours, and, well, I don't know a baby who is exclusively breastfed who sleeps through the night.

Papadag (Papa Day)
Every Saturday is Papadag, when my husband is the primary care person for our baby girl. I sleep in, go for a jog, or even rock climbing (pictured above, when my baby was 3.5 months old) and they have the whole morning together just the two of them. We often do a lot of activities together as a family also on Saturdays, but having alone time between papa and baby -- without mama interfering or managing things -- has been endlessly valuable in our family. There are too many benefits to name, especially for our baby.

Pause & listen 
More than anything, young babies need unconditional love from their parents. You can't spoil a young baby, they don't have wants, just needs. However, their only way to express their needs, big or small, is to cry. And though your first instinct might be to go to them immediately when they cry, to hand them the toy they are reaching for, I learnt to pause and let her try to handle it herself first. Then she slowly develops the self-confidence she needs to help herself.

Don't be a judgmental parent
What I love most about being an ex-pat parent is that I'm surrounded by contrasting and varying parenting ethos, with no real societal pressure to conform to one method over another. I enjoy direct exposure to Dutch, British, Portuguese, Filipino and many other parenting styles and secrets. I have learnt so much from these families, and we have fostered a community of genuine openness, freely comparing parenting ideas, finding out what works for whom, and not judging each other.

I've learnt about the reasonable side of the anti-child-vaccinations movement from a friend who is not vaccinating her baby (my closing remarks were "But, don't you ever wonder to yourself 'if there was a nuclear holocaust, maybe the vaccinated babies with formaldehyde in their blood might better withstand destruction?'", I got to compare the hands-on experiences of one friend practicing child-lead weaning with another who described her weaning technique as "as passive a possible -- we practically tie her hands behind her back when she's feeding!"

Work three days a week
The Netherlands has the shortest maternity leave in Europe (16 weeks), but when you return to work you have the right to keep your position and shorten your work week. I was really happy to go back to work when my daughter was 6 months old, to have something that was mine, where I could have adult conversations. After a month, the novelty wore off, but at least I feel very balanced, for now.

5 months to crawling is wonderful! 
When they are so little, it was quite distressful how fragile they are. When they're 4-5 months they are sitting up, moving things and their little personalities really start to shine. What a special time! But just as you're feeling confident in your decisions for your baby, they start to move a little, and then they lose their fear of the unknown, and then they start to have wants and require some boundaries, and it's a whole new basket of skills and judgment for mama and papa.

Feminism and childcare

- I have everything I ever wanted in my life -- career, travel, lifestyle -- except a man and my own little family.
- Yes, but if you had a man and a child, you likely would have had to re-prioritise career, travel and lifestyle in order to accommodate your family.
- I don't think you need to sacrifice your life for your family.
- It's more about re-prioritising what's in your life. Your life is full, so when you add things into it, the rest needs to be...er...re-distributed.
- I don't buy it.
- Well, I would not live in Amsterdam anymore if it wasn't for my husband's commitments here. I would have given it two years then wrapped up the party and gone somewhere else where my career could effortlessly flourish and feel like an empowered professional again.
- But do you regret that?
- Definitely not! I get much more personal fulfillment out of my life with my husband and baby here than I got out of my life with my career elsewhere. But the blunt, feminist truth is that I have sacrificed my career, first for my husband's career, and now to care for my child.


I think above anything, the feminist and civil rights movements were meant to give people choices.

When I was a [overly-principled] teenager, I thought feminism was about women doing what men do, and not falling into gender stereotypes. I didn't want to be a nurse, teacher, or secretary when I grew up. And I would have viewed many of the things I now hold true in my early thirties as cop-outs.

But not doing what you really want because it's a gender stereotype also means you're letting gender stereotypes impact your decisions.

• Do you love caring for your child(ren) full-time, and can afford to live off of one salary? Be a fabulous stay-at-home mom / dad!
• Do you feel like a better mother if you're able to express yourself as a professional, as a woman, as well as as a mother? Go back to work and schedule lots of time for socialising!
• Do you need to escape your family life periodically and re-collect your inner drive? Travel alone!

I'm taking 6 months off of work, and then returning to work 3 days per week for at least a year. If I loved my job, I would work 4 days a week.

I live in a country where all parents have the right to reduce their work week by one day per child. Many men take "papa dag" and only work 4 days per week, and many women only work 3 days per week when they have children (but don't seem to go back to full-time when their children grow up!). I don't imagine we will ever live in another country that facilitates part-time work so seamlessly, and I really encourage my husband to also take advantage of this situation while it lasts.

And that's another thing I really hold true, which I didn't appreciate in my overly-principled years: my life occurs in chapters. How I define myself now is different than 5 years ago, and may be different 5 years from now. I'm very lucky to have gotten to experience the career-driven, jet-setter lifestyle for a long and important chapter of my life, and I fully intend to return to an emphasis on career in a few years. But I'm also happy I get to experience being a wife and mother settled in one place who doesn't think about work after 5PM. Having a job that doesn't consume you has it's benefits too!

And the more of these different lifestyles I get to experience, the less I seem to judge the decisions of others.

My [Dutch] first weeks with baby

"You must feed the baby every three hours, above all other needs"
"You must listen to the baby's rhythm"
"The baby needs to eat a lot, or it won't have the energy to wake up"
"Feedings should never go more than 45 minutes, even if the baby hasn't eaten very much"
"Don't use a bottle to supplement breastmilk"
"Your feedings are taking too long, you must use a bottle"
"The baby should lay against your body with its head aligned with its stomach horizontally when feeding"
"Always have the stomach below the head when feeding"

In The Netherlands, new parents are supported by:

• A maternity nurse, who spends 6-8 hours in your home with you for the first 8-10 days of your baby's life
• A midwife, who visits you at your home twice in the first week
• The consultation bureau, whose nurses and doctors monitor your child's development until it is 4 years old
• Your family doctor
• Hospital staff from the hospital where you gave birth, if applicable

Each of these trained medical professionals gives you advice, with absolute conviction. Each piece of advice conflicts with the advice of the other trained medical professionals.

Eventually we realised that caring for a newborn baby was a matter of blindly re-prioritising dozens of "essential" needs, and blindly judging the validity of conflicting medical advice.

The Internet
- Is Amy in labour?
- Yes! And I'm on call to google anything that the doctor says that sounds dodgy.

I don't know how people -- especially expats -- had babies before the internet. Most anglo expats have more faith in their own medical systems than the country where they live, and whenever any information comes into conflict with our intuition / upbringing, we google it.

• Does she seriously need to be woken up every 3 hours? And for how long?
• How do you use a baby wrap / sling?
• How long before we can use a soother?
• How long does expressed breastmilk last? Formula?
• How to sooth cramps?
• When is sex safe again?
• Why doesn't colic exist in The Netherlands? And how long does colic last?
• When does this start becoming rewarding?

We quickly learnt, however, that Google does not simplify the whole conflicting-baby-advice issue.

Doing the math

Our Dutch maternity care nurses kept us on a busy Dutch schedule for our baby's first days. We were instructed to feed the baby every 3 hours, calculated from the beginning of the feed.

Every three hours = 8 X 3 hour cycles per 24 hour period
A feeding takes a minimum of 45 minutes, and up to 1.5 hours
Burping, soothing, and putting baby back to sleep takes a minimum of 15 minutes, and up to 1.5 hours
The baby should sleep a minimum of 16 hours a day = 16 / 8 cycles per day = baby needs to sleep 2 hours per cycle
Waking baby enough to feed takes a minimum of 15 minutes, and up to 45 minutes

[Horrible realisation]: If baby takes more than 45 minutes to feed, and more than 15 minutes to wake up + put back to sleep, baby cannot have minimum 16 hours of sleep per day! And each time baby gets less than 2 hours of sleep in an interval, baby is impossible to wake up for next feeding, perpetuating the cycle!

What was happening is the wake-feed-burp/cramps-fall-asleep cycle was generally taking 2-2.5 hours, giving baby a mere 30 minutes to an hour of sleep per cycle. Which was completely contrary to her natural rythm which meant we were constantly battling with her.

Battling to wake her up.
Battling to feed in under 45 minutes, but not so quickly that it aggravated her cramps and/or burping.
Battling to put her to sleep.

With both the maternity nurse and the midwife in the room we demanded that they make a decision for us. What is a priority: feeding every three hours vs. feeding the baby fully at each feeding vs. letting the baby sleep uninterrupted? We never really got an answer except "follow the baby's natural rythms...but make sure you wake her often enough to feed".

Feeling good
While I was on my mandatory 4-weeks-before-due-date maternity leave, my biggest job was to feel good. Sure, I had lots of little projects -- knitting a baby blanket, completing my Dutch exams, enjoying the sun, riding my bike daily -- but my primary responsibility was to feel good. In fact, my midwife repeated several times in one visit "You must take more naps!"

If I felt tired, I should cancel my plans and take a nap. If I had lots of energy, I should go out on my bike. Don't feel like cooking? Don't!

After birth, I was much more in need of care, and while I did have 3 people to help me, I was the sole food source for a little creature who needs to eat every 3 hours. And it often takes 2 just to feed her. Even though my best-husband-in-the-world (yours is too!) was doing literally everything else -- changing diapers, soothing cramps, bath time, waking her up, putting her to sleep, feeding me -- it was really a struggle to keep up with feeding her and recovering me.

- How's motherhood?
- So far I mostly lay, bleeding and feeding.

I really under-appreciated the damage to one's body that labour causes. I think we're all so focused on the labour itself and, most importantly, meeting the little "familiar stranger" (borrowed from my friend Sara) we've spent the last 9 months dreaming about, that we don't imagine how mom's going to feel after birth.

Given that we only really had 30 minutes - 2 hours maximum every cycle to wash everything, feed ourselves, wash ourselves, and sleep, the only way to survive was to cut corners. And the pressure to sleep on cue, eat on cue and pee on cue resulted in me loosing more sleep, eating less, and being too lost to remember to drink water.

Six weeks
The one consistency that seemed to pop up across medical advice, Google, and frantic phone calls to our families was that everything seems to come together at six weeks.

Baby starts to smile around 6 weeks
Sleep patterns emerge around 6 weeks
Mom's pelvis is healed around 6 weeks
Baby's cramps ease around 6 weeks
Mom stops bleeding around 6 weeks

It doesn't seem imaginable, but here we are at six weeks (which feels like forever) beginning sleep training with a smiling, cramp-less baby!

My [Dutch] labour experience

Our little girl was born last week at a birthing centre in Amsterdam, and I just wanted to document my very positive Dutch birth experience while it's still fresh. Best of luck to all my friends who are delivering in the coming months! It's a baby boom!

The Dutch way
The Netherlands is all about natural childbirth, and ex-pats in Holland spread horror stories about pain relief being illegal, home births required by law unless there is a medical indication, and being given only paracetemol (tylenol) to women recovering from c-sections.

There is some truth to this, but these days expecting parents have more choices for their childbirth in The Netherlands than anywhere else in the world. The whole birthing process is lead by midwives, and you can choose to give birth at home, in a birthing centre, or in a hospital (though if there are no medical reasons for a hospital birth, you have to pay a hefty premium to your health insurer), if you've had a c-section, you can try to deliver "naturally" on future children (though only if it is deemed entirely safe), and there are choices for pain relief (though you must be in a birthing centre or a hospital, even for simple pain relief like laughing gas or remifentanil).

And, most importantly, in The Netherlands you get a trained "maternity care giver" -- think "professional mother" -- who comes to your house for 8-10 days after birth to train you with the Dutch system of raising babies.

Labour
I was one week late, my husband had just wrapped up all his projects at work, handed in his thesis proposal at school, and had his last class the day before. I had just finished the baby blanket and hat -- the last of my pre-baby maternity leave projects. We went for a date, dinner and a (very violent) movie, and came home to watch comedies to lighten the atmosphere.

Just as we were showering before bed, my contractions started around 2AM, were straight away 6-8 minutes apart, and almost immediately my water broke. There was clearly meconium in the water (which meant we had to go to the hospital), and the midwife came to our house to confirm this diagnosis.

I was quite relieved that we had a medical indication that forced us into a hospital birth. For months I had been making an ambiguous response to the question "Are you planning on having a home birth?" Natural childbirth at home just sounds so romantic, and is so valued in The Netherlands. Imagining candles, soft music, and an intense peacefulness in our loving home.

- Are you sure you want to be open to a home birth? There's a lot of blood and stuff. Which room / piece of furniture are you imagining giving birth on?

- Yah, I feel like I'd be more comfortable in a hospital, but we also live on the fourth floor in a building with steep stairs and no lift. Do you want to carry me downstairs in full labour? Home birth may seem like a really good option then.

The midwife made all the arrangements with the birthing centre attached to the Saint Lucas Andreas hospital in Amsterdam, and drove us there. It was such a smooth process, timing our movements between my contractions. When we arrived at the hospital, we just walked straight through into our private room, no hassles, no paperwork, no waiting. The birthing centre rooms are spacious, you have your own bathroom with shower, bath, and toilet.

My husband managed communication with the midwives, students, and nurses, and I managed my pain. My tactic to withstand the contractions was that he would pinch both of my Achilles tendons (an acupressure technique recommended by a work colleague), and I would focus on that pain and my breathing. This really kept me in "the zone", and enabled me to keep it together (I only had to ask my husband once to "Please stop talking" -- use of the word "please" constitutes "keeping it together" in my books). I spent most of my labour laying on my side with a big pillow between my knees, enjoying the spaces between the contractions as much as possible. I probably should have moved around more to speed up my contractions, but I was far too content laying on my side.

Almost immediately they ran tests to make sure the baby was not in distress (though I was never doubted it, I just knew the baby was fine), and after a short time we had the results: we were not in the unlucky 10% of cases where meconium is a serious indication, our baby was in great condition.

After about 5 hours of labour, I was nearing dilation but my contractions were still only 5 minutes apart. They explained that it was important my contractions were a minimum of 2 minutes apart before we could push the baby through the birth canal, because if something were wrong 5 minutes was too long to wait between pushes. They gave me oxytocin to speed up the contractions, at which point I also requested remifentanil -- with all the tubes and elastic bands I was hooked up to, it was one more that would actually make me feel good! I didn't find that the remifentanil did anything to lessen the intensity of the contractions, but they made the spaces between contractions even more enjoyable.

- Are you sure you would like remifentanil?

- I wouldn't be asking for it unless I was at my wit's end. Yes.
- Can you wait 10 minutes and then decide if you would like it?
- It will take you 10 minutes to set it up, so no, I don't want to wait an additional 10 minutes.
- Wait 10 minutes, then press this red button and we will start you on remifentanil.
[9 minutes later...]
- Do you still want remifentanil?
- I wanted remifentanil 10 minutes ago...OF COURSE! YES!

After the labour was over and I had my little girl in my arms they asked me if I was glad that they made me wait 10 minutes. I was far too tired to deliver a collected and calculated response which somehow articulated the depth of my displeasure with them, that the unnecessary and non-medical postponement of remifentanil was the only major disappointment I had in my entire labour experience, and that it explicitly states in my birth plan that if I ask for pain relief, I am to be taken seriously with immediate action because I tend to push my body beyond its capabilities.

- No.

Once the contractions were every two minutes (and I was already involuntarily pushing during contractions), we started the pushing phase. After 5 minutes, they said I would need an episiotomy because the baby was showing signs of distress (but again, I was not worried about it). I didn't really feel anything, and then we resumed pushing and within about 5-10 minutes I had a beautiful slimy baby placed directly from my womb onto my chest.

Although I could feel everything (the remifentanil is only used for a short window before the pushing phase, and leaves your system within 4 minutes), I almost couldn't believe that this little creature on my chest was our baby. All I could see was this little head, which shielded the rest of her body from my sight.

We waited 15-30 minutes or so for pulsations to cease, and then my husband cut the umbilical chord. She breastfed within the hour, and as soon as I was stitched up, everyone cleared the room and left us alone with with our baby for two glorious hours -- she was alert, calm, and such a delight for us. A while later they came with food and champagne for us. Eventually they weighed the baby with my husband (the elation of birth started to be replaced by the exhaustion of labour, and I spent the rest of the day laying down), and we were released.

Maternity care
We walked out of the hospital 5 hours after our baby was born, and a maternity care giver (in Dutch, a "Kraamverzorgster") was at our house within an hour of arriving home to help us settle in. This is something which I think is exclusive to The Netherlands. All new parents and babies are cared for in your own home by a maternity nurse / care giver for the first 8-10 days of your baby's life. The maternity care givers provide daily checkups to the baby and mother, assist with breastfeeding, diapers, cook, clean, fetch groceries, let you sleep, shower, and provide daily (Dutch) parenting tips. 

24 hours of bliss
The first 24 hours, the baby doesn't really need to eat much, and it was such a blissful and joyful time for us to spend with our calm and happy baby before the feeding pressure started the next day.

Always get pregnant in September

Most couples trying to conceive do not have much choice in the matter, but if you live in the Netherlands and can manage the conception date of your baby, I suggest always getting pregnant at the end of September:

1. In the Netherlands, woman must take maternity leave 4 weeks before their due date (but can take up to 6 weeks), and 12 weeks after their delivery day (or 10 weeks, if you've taken 6 weeks before your due date).

2. The Netherlands only has a few public holidays a year, and most of them fall in April / May. Check your calendar and see when the last public holiday in May is for the following year, add 4 weeks (maternity leave) to it to arrive at your ideal due date, and then count back 40 weeks to see when the first day of your last period should be.

This will optimise your chances of good weather + not losing any public holidays while on maternity leave. I was, sadly, one week too early and missed Pentecost this year.

Other great advice that I was given, and really worked for my pregnancy (but find the advice that works for you and your pregnancy):

1. Pregnancy is really long. Don't talk about it, think about it, or make decisions too early. It will go on forever.
2. Slow down, but don't stop. Once you stop doing something, you often can't pick it up again (I stopped jogging for 3 weeks halfway through my pregnancy, and couldn't jog after that again. But I did cycle throughout my pregnancy and am still very mobile on my bike 5 days before my due date). Being active has been so important to me in my pregnancy. However...
3. It's not necessarily all downhill. Every time I started getting cramps at night, or exhausted for a week, I thought to myself "This is it. This is how I am going to feel for the rest of my pregnancy." But actually I felt much more comfortable and was more active and mobile from 30-40 weeks than I was around 8 weeks, 22 weeks, and 36 weeks. But everyone's different.
4. Keep planning social activities right through your due date. Life must go on. Most women are late with their first child, and thinking beyond your due date will relieve the stress and pressure mounted on that day (and may also speed things up).
5. Get maternity clothes and a body pillow as soon as you start to feel uncomfortable -- don't wait. The body pillow can be used for nursing after baby is born, and you don't need to spend a lot of money to buy a few pairs of maternity trousers and some long shirts.
6. Find what works for you. It took half my pregnancy to figure out what I needed to make my pregnancy smooth. In my case, I really needed to micromanage my liquid consumption (drinking water all day did not come naturally for me), I needed to take iron, fiber, and magnesium every day for me, and just vitamin D for the baby (and folic acid for the first 12 weeks). And I ate sushi every week (for baby's brain development, and mummy's sanity).
7. Relaxed parents make relaxed baby. The only complications I had was when I was highly stressed at work leading up to my mid-pregnancy holiday in Italy.

Advice I didn't take, but wish I had:

8. Take a prenatal yoga or other course that encourages you to embrace your pregnancy. For at least 1 hour a week you can really take the time to enjoy being pregnant. I didn't really embrace my pregnancy, I only embraced my maternity leave.