I am about to turn 30 so I have been having some emotional ups and downs lately. The biggest question on my mind right now is "do I want to have another baby?" My immediate answer would be to say Yes, however after further contemplation I end up arguing with myself the pros and cons of having another child.
Pros are as follows :- I can afford a nanny while we are in Thailand to help me, I have alot more spare time to spend with a new baby, Judd is in school 4 days a week so I would just have Lillie most of the day, Lillie is older than Judd was when I got pregnant the second time and if I wait until after Nicole and Leigh's wedding in May then she will be 2 and a half when the baby would be due to arrive (that's figuring I fall pregnant straight away and according to Marcus I will since he has SUPER SPERM!) So she would be slightly easier to handle, I hope.
The cons would be that we would be starting all over again with the night feeding and breast feeding, the weight gain from being pregnant which I am still trying to get off. Being restricted to the house again and working around the babies nap times and feed times, I would have to purchase alot of the baby stuff that I already have sitting back home in storage (that I am OK with as I love to go shopping, especially for baby things). We wouldn't be able to travel as much or as often with 3 kids and considering we are living as expats in a foreign country it would be a pity not to be able to be free to just hop on a plane and start exploring this part of the world. We would have to get a bigger company car and since it was such a drama to get the car we have now I cant imagine how long it would take to upgrade to a bigger one. I would have to get another car seat and cot as Lillie is still in the porta cot. Marcus doesn't particularly want to have 3 kids, he is happy with 2, he feels we can afford 2 quite comfortably and possibly be able to send them both to private schools when the are older, but maybe not with 3. I don't think I handled my stress very well with the first 2, I am still coming to terms with being a mum, even after 3 years.
It seems that I have alot more cons than pros but the one thing that overrides all of these objections is that my body does not feel like it is time to shut up shop, I don't feel finished. As much as my selfishness tells me to give up now before I sacrifice another 3-4 years of babies and toddlers and tantrums and shitty nappies, I keep telling myself that maybe I could handle another one, maybe I am getting better with each kid, learning to handle situations better, maybe? Also I ask myself what am I going to do with my time once both the kids are in school and I have the hours between 9.30am and 3.00pm to fill? Will I get a job? Where do I want to work. Will I go back to study? What do I want to study?
Now there is the possibility of waiting until we return to Australia and then see if I still want to have another baby, the kids will be older but will we all then be passed the baby phase and into something else? Do I wait and enjoy Thailand and all it has to offer, use my freedom to explore and take up new hobbies and grow and change? Do I really want to put more pressure on my marriage adding the stress of another baby?
It seemed like a holiday at first, but then the reality of how far away we are from all of our loved ones and friends set in and how hard it can be to negotiate our way around this country as neither of us don't speak any Thai. Yes there are Thais in the tourist towns that can speak very basic broken English but it is only enough to barter a price or buy some milk or petrol. If you get stuck in a bad situation and need to talk your way out of trouble, it is a bit hard when you don't speak the same language. So it is all these little stresses that eat away at the happy couple on an expat holiday in Thailand. The cracks start to emerge.
We may seem like we are living the high life over here, and quite possibly we are. But the fact is that this is a hard country that has poverty right next door to wealth, literally. We see young children living in tin shacks with dirt floors and torn clothing everyday as we drive around in our new car spending money freely. The guilt of that plays on me and sometimes on Marcus too, it makes me feel like a very selfish person some days. Wanting to do more but not knowing how, and being warned of trying to give charity as some of it can be scams that never reach the children or the families. This is a country of contradictions, smiling happy faces, Amazing Thailand with white sandy beaches and clear blue water. Not here in Pattaya, yes the people can be lovely, but the beaches are filthy and full of rubbish, the sand is rocky and lumpy with rubbish all the way through it, the streets along the beach stink with sewage coming from the open drains under the roads. There are Bar Girls at every bar you come to, all there trying to coax men in to buy them drinks and hoping they will buy the girl too, to take them away from a life of sex and prostitution and become either the mistress or the wife of a foreign, desperate man. Alot of these girls have young babies and children back home with the grandparents and they work to send them money for their care. They have either been abandoned or divorced by a Thai man. A fact which is astonishing to me as it is to most Westerner's, it is socially acceptable for a Thai man to upgrade to a younger, thinner wife and also to keep a mistress and even sometimes a girlfriend as well, where do they find the time, let alone the money? There is no law to force this man to pay maintenance for the care of his children or to evenly split all assets and money with his ex wife.
Now in saying all of this, this is how this country contradicts itself. After spending 4 months here, I admit I was shocked and appalled at first, but I have now grown accustomed to this city, I feel familiar with is streets and back lanes. I am becoming more knowledgeable about Thai culture and customs and their way of life. I am trying not to view their world as I would view my own back in Australia. I cannot and must not compare the two, it is impossible to try and force my world view and my ideals on these people, it will not work and I am the one who will suffer from it. Once I resigned myself to this I was able to start to see the beautiful parts of this city, the quaint little shops that pop up everywhere, selling everything. The people who sell flowers at the street lights for 20baht each, I bought some the other day and they smell wonderful. Even the gardeners that work around our village, now we have gotten to know them, we see beyond the weather worn faces and and stern demeanor from working hard manual labour with minimal pay. Gardeners in Australia are paid like kings in comparison to these men. But they now smile and wave hello to me and the kids everyday when we go walking and Judd rides his bike. Even the scary looking Guards that patrol the grounds stop and play and one of them even bought some fish food to share with Judd up at the lake yesterday afternoon.
Cities and Countries are like people I guess, we always judge upon first impressions but its after getting to know someone or in this case Pattaya, Thailand. I begin to see beyond the obvious and start to see the beauty that is underneath the smell, the sex, the bars and the poverty and realise that this really is an Amazing Country and one I feel privileged to be able to enjoy.
So how does having a baby tie into living in Pattaya? I don't know, but I guess in the end my decision is that I will wait, keep my options open and use my time here to really discover this country and its people and take advantage of this great opportunity we have been given. And if I can find a way to enjoy this country but also somehow give something back it may ease my conscience slightly when I drive past those poor kids playing in the dirt outside their tin sheds.
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