Pregnancy and Doubts
We decided to be pregnant once I graduate. I moved to the USA two years back and I was graduating in June 2019. I had been working as an Engineer for over a year now, this was a change of my career altogether. We both work, my husband earned more than me(this fact makes sense once you read my doubts). Even though we wanted to save/invest more before we have kid, like buy a house, go on Europe tour for 2 months, big cars ( you know, the typical immigrant American dream ), we realized we wanted kid more than that. So after all the rational financial, psychological and emotional calculation, we went for it.
To be honest, I don’t like kids nor do I hate them. We didn’t decide to have kid because I was all soaked in motherly-fairy-emotions where I would “aww” kids in supermarket or go crazy when I smell them or have a biological clock ticking (well, I am kinda old but I do have fair amount of time, biologically). We got pregnant because we felt we are ready to be parents, and I thought I was ready to be a mother. Turns out, I was not. When the pregnancy was confirmed the doubts starts to crawl on me. If I have to explain my doubts, here are some:
- Weird incident in my career path:
I worked as a business development manager at my last job in Nepal. 1 year after having my MBA I decided to pursue MS in computer science and I moved to US. With no prior experience in working in computers, it was hard for me to land in a tech job. After one years of studying and volunteering on different projects I got my current job where I work in an Engineering team. The company is a great place to learn and I feel I have a lot to learn. I am taking baby steps at learning things.
At this point of my infancy-career in tech industry, I decided to be pregnant. I have not been able to go to office for last 3 weeks. Can you imagine how dreadful incident it can be for my career? One of my sister told me that I can’t have a successful career because I want to have kids. While I disagree with her opinion, I can see the challenges that comes with being pregnant.
To be honest I am not very ambitious on getting on top of my game in my job, hitting that top 6 figure salary. I am not. And that has nothing to do with me deciding to have kids. I want a normal boring life where I can have financial security, spend quality time with family, not be bored with my job and do something that makes me happy. Turns out these things are of high privilege and hard to get. And the doubt of making it with my experience on my job with pregnancy seems plausible.
2. USA as a developed nation is not the best place to plan a baby:
It came as a shock to me when I realized Federal Government in USA has no provision for paid maternity leave. 12 weeks of unpaid maternity leave is acceptable. Going on holiday and trips are important but not pregnancy, who wants that ? However, the maternity and paternity leave depends on companies. My company gives me 8 weeks of paid maternity leave and my husband gets 18 weeks of paternity leave. I know it doesn’t makes sense, but it really depend upon companies policy. I am not going to argue on that, he will be a stay-at-home dad.
Planning pregnancy costs a lot. Even if you plan you wouldn’t know the cost. I am not kidding. No hospital will tell you around how much will it cost from all the checkups to delivery. They always say it’s dependent on conditions that might occur during the pregnancy and child birth. I can do a different blog post on this. But for now we have calculated, with our insurance and if everything is normal, the cost up to the childbirth will range from 6k to 10k (out of pocket).
3. I haven’t been well for a long time now:
Pregnancy is different for different people. Statistics suggest that about 50% of pregnant women suffer from morning sickness and nausea. You should consider yourself lucky if you are on the other side but if you suffer from these two simple sounding words, you are in for a rough ride. You don’t ever feel good. It’s been 2 month I have enjoyed drinking water when I am thirsty. I would be severely dehydrated after I throw up 2–3 times in the morning but I would have no natural instinct of drinking water and even if I remind myself to drink, water would be like the distasteful medicine you swallow.
Now imagine this with everything you eat. On top of that, your Gastrointestinal tract relaxes due to pregnancy hormones so food travel lot slower in your GI tract. This will result in you tasting food in your mouth even after 3 hours of eating food, it’s right there in your esophagus. To help reduce nausea, you need to eat every 3 hours or so. There goes all your day and at night you suffer from heartburn. Further, your stomach is always bloated. You fart a lot. One or two weeks in this state and you start to realize how wonderful is the feeling of being rested, have energy to do things and be happy because you don’t feel them anymore and they are now just in your memory, distant memory. And there comes the doubt, why did I want kid? Why did I get married? Why did I move to US? Why was I born ? To inflict these same pain in my mother?
4. As an international student, I can’t leave my job for more than 2 months:
There is going to be a lot of US visa and work authorization jargon here, be patient with me. I graduated in June this year so I am working under my OPT ( Optional practical Training) under F1 visa i.e. Student visa. Under your OPT, an international student is allowed to work for 1 year in United States and can get an extension of 2 years if the study qualifies for STEM ( Science, Technology, Engineering and Maths) which my study does.
But the catch is I can’t be unemployed for more than 2 months under my OPT. This makes sense because if you are under Optional Practical Training for your study and you are not working, there is no reason for you to stay in this country. So even if I feel like taking break from work and quit, I can’t do that ( not that I can afford to but still ). We would have happily went back to Nepal, have the baby and come back, because we miss home. But I can’t if I want to stay here for a while and we are not planning to go back to Nepal in recent future. Life of immigrants is all about visa in United States I am telling you. Next time someone boast about living in United States, sympathize with them, they live in fear and horror, show them some love.
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