Culture shock, Germany: Baby Issues!
Photo by Taisiia Shestopal, Unsplash
So, if you’ve read my other four posts, you know that I wanted a crock pot, which seemed a necessity between the short hours of German stores, which closed for lunch, and the tiny refrigerators. But my biggest challenge wasn’t food for us grown-ups. It was how to manage with a six-week-old baby. I wanted to continue to nurse him, if possible, but I had to return to work.
So, there I was in a German medical supply store, looking at a machine the size of a small suitcase, trying to explain why I needed the breast pump. The two women’s faces were full of sympathetic pity at first, assuming that the child had a cleft lip or some other difficulty. But then, when I reassured them, “Oh, no, no. It’s just that I’m returning to work,” their expressions changed to surprise, perhaps even revulsion.
“Why are you breast-feeding him after two years?” they asked.
“Two years? He’s only six weeks old,” I said, perplexed. Why had they assumed he was two?
They gasped in unison. “You have to go back to work now? How barbaric! Here, a mother gets two years of maternity leave.”
I braced for their judgment, but instead, they tsked in sympathy, and went out of their way to help me. I left lugging the giant beast of a pump, worried anew about babysitting options, with my time almost up, as well as what else would be so very different here.
Luckily, the military network is tight-knit, a lifesaver. The wife of the pathologist set us up with a wonderful lady–or perhaps I should say ladies, since the household contained not only the woman but her mother and oma–and we were set, not only for my son but later my daughter, in another two years.
In Desire in Deutschland, I’ve tried to capture that early feeling of being new in a foreign country, as Lieutenant Lee makes his way, the tricky way that assumptions can make life difficult when interacting with folks in another nation, and how ultimately, people are kind and accepting.
Want to read it? Get it through Amazon (this affiliate link will net Kodi more puppy chow at no cost to the buyer), everywhere else, or ask your library for it!
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direct from the author, everywhere else, or ask your library for it! Folks have already borrowed it as far away as Australia!
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