As a young woman in India, my life was going as planned. I graduated from university, I got a job… and I did not worry about what I would do next. Then I got married while I was working, and gave birth to our first baby a week after I went on my maternity leave. That is when life took an interesting turn: we moved to the USA (Minnesota), and I was terrified.
With my husband already there to begin work, I found myself a new stay-at-home-mom of a 5 month old with a scary journey ahead of me. The fear started the moment I boarded my flight alone with Jivin, our son. The next 24 hours were pure torture for me as I tackled not only my first international flight ever, but my first time flying with a baby. And I was alone. On seeing my husband’s face while coming down the escalator at the airport, I couldn’t help but feel a huge relief.
After a few days of being here in my new country, I started to realize how hard it was going to be to adjust to my new reality. Coming from a place with a huge public transport system, which is accessible around the clock along with taxi services that don’t burn holes your pockets, I struggled to digest the fact that I had to stay home all day. Because here, there wasn’t easily accessible public transportation and I didn’t have my driver’s license. That is when I really understood the term “STAY-AT-HOME-MOM.”
Granted, at first I was totally fine being alone a majority of the day, as I could always figure a way of indulging myself in my hobbies or interests. (Truth be told, I’m not that good at making friends and making small talk.) But the actual challenge for me was the clingy baby that I had to deal with. He was a nursing baby who would feed round the clock if I let him. I literally could not sneak away from him – even in the middle of the night – without him waking, which made me feel like I was stuck with a baby and no breaks in sight. I would wait all day for my husband to return home and dump the baby on him the moment he walked in the door.
Basically, I was a new mom in a new country. And it was hard.
As days went by, my husband’s work started getting busier. He also began to feel like I was throwing everything in his face when he would return home in the evenings. I had to depend on him for everything, even running errands like getting groceries. On top of this, Jivin would wail if we went outdoors, so even once my husband was home to get out of the house with us, we felt like we couldn’t handle it. This tiny little boy was essentially controlling two adults to the point of defeat.
At Target, I would see other moms with a bunch of kids happily shopping, and my jaw would drop down on the floor. Why weren’t their kids wailing like mine? At 8 months old, we introduced Jivin to a car seat… he never liked it. He would cry his lungs out if the trip was more than 15 minutes. Even eating at restaurants felt impossible for us. Hence, we would stay home even on weekends when my husband was home from work.
Months rolled by, and as winter snuck up on us, everything started to choke me. In despair, I got addicted to TV and Candy Crush on my phone to take my mind off of things. I would feel so bad about watching TV in front of my baby. His screen time was very limited, but mine clearly wasn’t. I would feel so guilty about it. I started to take the blame for everything, and I was very close to being in the darkest phase of my life.
I started visiting my neighbor, who hails from the place I grew up in India. At first, Jivin would cry when we visited her home. She suggested I start bringing him frequently to get used to it. Her son was 18 months old, and I hoped my clingy, not-quite-one-year-old who loved to nurse all day long would actually want to play when with another child. She also gave me some local contacts through which I learned about our community library.
I got to know so many things from the library. The first of which were the ECFE classes. We enrolled Jivin in a class where both of us parents would be there together for the classes. I still didn’t have a driver’s license, so I would wait for my husband to rush home from work in order to attend those classes. It was an 18-week session. By the end, I was so happy and relieved by the fact that Jivin would actually get out of my lap and go around the place. Not just that, he started to sit on my husband’s lap, which was a huge win for all of us.
But during these classes, I noticed that Jivin was lagging way behind in his communication skills. Reluctantly, we had him evaluated which resulted in some recommended therapy for him. I worried he was actually fine but displayed some delays due to my own inability to engage with him out of my own struggle with our life changes. But I agreed to the therapy, if for no other reason than the idea of a third person being in our home every week, which attracted me. I knew we needed some help.
During every therapy session, I learned how to teach and engage babies by getting their attention. I started reading more on this topic, and practiced engaging him in many different activities. Through this research, I came across so many different bloggers and blogging sites (one of which was TCMC). Eventually, he finished therapy as he turned 2.5 years old, and he was able to communicate in both the languages we use at home.
The following summer, I made the decision to get my driver’s license. And eventually, I got it after lots of hard work. We made a plan of me dropping my husband at work so I could take Jivin to different classes. I went to ECFE classes in the mornings, then took him to story time at the library or various indoor play areas nearby. I educated myself a lot about parenting during the ECFE classes, which made me realize I was so uninformed about various things. Ultimately, having and raising a baby is very different here in the United States than in my home country of India. But I was dedicated to learning all about it. And eventually, I started to feel confident in my role as Mom, and that led me to make new friends.
After all this struggle adjusting to a new life in a new country, we never thought we would have another baby. But, I somewhere and somehow got the strength to have another one, and now here we are with an almost 5-year-old and a 1-year-old traveling places. I’m so proud of my husband and myself on how far we have come. We have had to face lots of challenges, over all these years. To be honest, it has been almost 5 years since we’ve had a date night. Yet we manage to find time for ourselves amongst all the chaos.
I’m so glad I realized what I was going through and took steps to come out of it. As moms, we all go through difficult times, just be sure to speak out and get help for yourself before drowning in it.
Moving to this new city in a new country as a new mom has given me so much to learn about – not just parenting, but also myself. I’m so glad destiny brought us here to the Twin Cities. Now, if the same destiny takes us to different places, I know how to approach the challenges that come our way.
