Babies Booming

If you are a foreigner married into a Chinese family, you can expect culture clashes that never reared their heads during courtship. For example, scheduling a C-section. In the West, this is done only in the event of real danger to mother or child. In Beijing, the bulk of my Chinese friends have consulted an astrologer to line up the luckiest times and dates for scheduling a C-section before clearing it with the surgeon and hospital. First, the family fortune could fail if Baby arrives in an inauspicious moment. Second, everyone knows childbirth is difficult at best and worse, your pelvis (for want of a less graphic term) will never be the same. My friend Mei put it this way: Just go to sleep, wake up, Baby is there! What's so hard about that? Well, I suppose if I'd had a full month in bed to recover, I might have been a bit more open to the idea of alternatives to childbirth, but instead I was up in a few hours cleaning the bathroom. As a former nurse, I have been trained to avoid all unnecessary surgery and know the risks of C-sections. As a woman in labor, I would have killed someone to have one. True story: after giving birth to my daughter, the first words to my mother were, "You went through this three times? Were you crazy?"　

Care of Baby is another one of those areas where you just don't know what you've signed up for until you're elbow deep in diapers and filth. Diapers were unknown to my Chinese family: They trained Baby to pee on command. Disposable diapers were and are anathema to me: What a waste, pardon the pun! They're expensive and pollute the planet. If you have access to a washing machine and a clothesline, great. But in China in the 90s, water was considered the precious resource it is, washing machines were rare, and the model at the time, with separate tubs for rinsing and spinning, was not the models of convenience that machines are today. Cloth diapers were an unheard-of luxury and yes, finally, at six months, I gave in, and let my daughter go commando, largely because it was so hot.　

The ultimate culture clash story is that of my friend Mark, who arrived in China with his wife and infant daughter. Mark let the blanket covering his daughter slip ever so slightly, exposing perhaps two square centimeters of bare flesh in the 25-degree Celsius heat. His father-in-law screamed in outrage, snatched Baby from his arms, and wrapped her up like a mummy, scolding all the while. Baby took it calmly - she's quite the philosopher - but Mark started screaming in terror as grandpa, holding Baby in front of him like a turkey on a platter, plunged straight into the traffic at the taxi pick-up point in the airport, barreling forth without looking to the distant parking lot where a kindly neighbor with a van was waiting. Several buses and cars hit their brakes hard to avoid hitting him, but he persevered, unruffled and undeterred, while the family followed, Mark screaming and shaking. Once they reached the van, unscathed, Mark's wife turned to him and said, deeply annoyed, voice dripping with contempt, "Quit being such a baby."