Research can often involve moving internationally; particularly in the EU where much funding is dedicated to creating an international research area. My career is largely built on EU funding, so to date I have done a PhD in Hungary (with secondments in Greece and Italy), a post doc in the UK, a post doc in Germany, and now a junior professorship in Germany. My husband and I are both foreign here – he is Czech and I am British. But being in Germany coincided with us starting our family. We have now had two children while based here. In her wonderful article on motherhood and international mobility, Guignardo (2015) argues that the impact of mobility on researchers’ personal lives is often kept quiet or made invisible while extolling the benefits of mobility. So I would like to use this blog post to reflect slightly on what its like to have a baby in a foreign country.
I had my second baby 2 months ago. Based on current, and recent experiences, I thought I would focus here on just one aspect of mobility and motherhood – and that is on the added complexity of having to negotiate unfamiliar systems. I could also write about how isolating it can be to have a baby in a foreign country, where you haven’t been for long, and therefore don’t have the same support system of family and friends. But that is a more personal topic that requires a bit more time for me to write about… so maybe that post comes soon.
The first system I didn’t understand was the health system. We didn’t know that we had to find our midwife and that we wouldn’t just be referred and assigned one. We weren’t sure what tests and scans to expect when. And when ‘complications’ were detected later in the pregnancy, we didn’t know what to expect for our care, or what our options were. It was all so different from the processes that our friends back home had been through, and as it was mainly being done in a second language, we felt limited in our capacity to ask and understand. This certainly added an extra dimension of stress. [I won’t go into the impact this had on our complicated birth!]
I also hadn’t been aware of the way in which antenatal classes worked here. All my friends in the UK were doing their NCT courses and forming strong support networks. I didn’t find the equivalent here. And when I realized that there were options through both the birth centre, and the hospital, I also learned that I was about 6 months too late in trying to sign up for one of these overbooked-courses. So I missed out on meeting mothers about to have babies at the same time as me.
It also took significant effort and time to understand the system of parental leave and how to apply for it, and what documents I needed. I am very grateful to a friend for helping me out with this. It still took multiple trips to various official offices, and much tracking down of documents and numbers that I didn’t even know existed. This was much easier and faster the second time round as I knew what I was doing!
Registering the birth has been a question of negotiating three systems – registration here in Germany, and then figuring out if, and how we need to register in the UK and CZ. We have learned where to get documents officically translated, notarized and apostile-ised (and what an apostile is!). The early weeks of both my children’s lives has been characterized by being dragged around various offices to get stamps and documents.
Written down on the page, these concerns don’t seem particularly big. They are just things that need figuring out. And now we have done them (twice), they all feel much more manageable. But at the time, they added an extra layer of worry to an already-unfamiliar situation. For me, having to learn all these systems required significant time and emotional energy at a time that I didn’t really have any! This practical and emotional overload has been one (of many) impacts of being an internationally mobile academic mama.
Things that have helped me cope as I unraveled and dealt with these systems include:
• Asking for help. Sounds obvious, though I’m not very good at it. But whenever I have asked a native speaker for help, they’ve been amazing!
• Writing it down. The second time round, much bureaucracy has been easier because we made a note of the process we went through last time… its amazing how much you forget in 18months of child-rearing.
• Realising that you have no idea what someone is talking about. The number of times someone told me that I needed X document, and it was only when I left their office that I realized I had no idea what X document is, or where to get it… always ask until you are absolutely certain you know where you need to go next.
Mama is an Academic 