Advice From Overseas Moms, Please

[ellsie22]

We are expecting our first child at the end of April, the same time my husband finishes his Masters' degree. He is currently in the process of applying to jobs overseas (Japan & Middle East), most of which begin in August/September. Being a first time mom, I have a lot of questions about preparing, moving, and living overseas with a newborn-toddler. Any advice on the following would be greatly appreciated.

1) Getting a passport right away
2) Immunizations?
3) Buying gear in the US and shipping vs waiting to buy overseas
4) Differences in safety standards/requirements
5) What can/can't you get that are must (great helps) to have
6) Other cultural info
7) Sites to connect with expat moms
8) Anything else

[rachelh]

Hi. I don't live overseas but have been overseas quite a bit with DD as an infant and have been to the Middle East. (not exactly sure where you are considering in the Middle East though.) I can answer a few questions...

1) We were able to get a passport for DD within 48 hours. You basically just need to do a lot of leg work and pay an expediting service/company. I don't remeber which compnay we used but you can find a lot of info on the internet

3 & 4) I have noticed on my trips overseas to Europe and Middle East that the carseats are different. The ones I have seen on my visits did not have a 5 point harness!! I saw some gorgeous brand new carseats that also are sold here (ie. peg perego) and they did not have chest clips!! Scary!! So I would recommend buying a carseat here. Additionally, I noticed that the strollers were super expensive! On one visit, nearly eveyone I saw was pushing a bugaboo so I figured they must be cheaper if everyone can afford one - they were not. Also checked out prices of Peregos among others and they were significantly more.

[american_mama]

I lived in Europe from the time my daughter was 1.5 years old to almost 3, and my second daughter was born there (albeit for just 5 weeks before we moved back to the US).

PASSPORT
The passport should be no problem. For an infant passport photo, the baby can be any age. I had one done for DD1 when she was a year, one for DD2 when she was 3 weeks, and another one done for DD2 when she was a year. You will either hold baby in your lap, floppy head and all, with a white piece of cardboard behind baby's head, or some places take baby's photo in the carseat with a white backdrop. The passport will be valid for 5 years as opposed to 10 years. Believe it or not, there is no requirement (or ability, with the new more secure, fully digitized passports) to update the photo without replacing the whole passport.

IMMUNIZATIONS
I had DD1 get one vaccine a bit early before we left the US and declined all others while we were abroad, which was easy to do since the immunization schedule really slows down at those ages. I declined overseas immunizations with no research, just a sense that I wanted to be able to track the manufacturer lot number, etc. in the exceedingly rare event that my child had an adverse reaction. For all I know, vaccines worldwide are made by the same organizations- my Belgian pregnancy test for DD2 looked EXACTLY like an American one I'd brought with me - but I didn't know and decided to be cautious. In your case, since you will be living abroad during the key immunization phase, I would ask your pediatrician for advice and lean towards getting vaccinated. One thing - I think chickenpox vaccine is less common overseas, so you may need to ask for that more specifically. It is not given until age 1 or 2 years, though, with a booster at age 5.

GEAR
For gear, I would say if you can afford the shipping, ship the items you will need within the first 2-3 months and/or adore and want with you. There will be so much to adjust to at first that buying gear you need right away will be frustrating. Take it for someone who had a lousy experience buying a baby gate her first month overseas. Gear will almost definitely be more expensive. US is a consumer paradise with low taxes and friendly return policies, and you won't find that elsewhere.

I shipped stuff like a high chair, crib, crib set, U shaped changing pad, car seat, and baby frame backpack (never used the thing). Once there, I bought a cheap changing table at IKEA and wish I'd done that with the high chair and crib too. I shipped a pack and play, which we used a lot because we traveled. I pushed baby in a stroller through the airport, so that came with us (plus three more strollers joined us in the course of our 1.5 years. I had kind of a stroller thing).

Although the gear is more exepnsive overseas, it is often better quality and better suited to the environment you will be living in. Your tastes will change as you live abroad too, and you'll probably come to prefer some of it. Trust me, a plasticky Graco travel system SCREAMS foreigner. In Europe, people buy beautiful, plush prams for both cultural and practical reasons - you're on foot in call kinds of weather, so why bother with a travel system? They believe in letting a baby lie down fully in comfort, and they get out the rainshield/sun canopy/footmuf if the weather changes. You need big wheels to handle cobblestones. And no one seems to complain about these huge, heavy, expensive prams despite the smaller spaces. In Europe, parents also get cash from the government at the birth of a baby, and many use that to pay for their uber expensive strollers. I bet the Middle East has some strollers that are well adapted to the heat or the terrain, and Japanese strollers are probably small and adapted to urban environments (and probably shorter people, so watch out whether you and hubby would have to hunch to push it).

I am currently into baby carriers, and I'd look into those before you leave the US. There are so many more options than the Baby Bjorn, and so many of them are made by American women working out of their homes, a kind of small business that I don't think you'll find overseas.

SAFETY
I would not be concerned about safety standards, mostly because that's my personality. Remember, children are raised safely all over the world. Embrace that fact and combine it with your safety knowledge of US products, and use it to make "best call" situations wherever you find yourself. Doubtless you will do things or use things that you would not in the US. That is not a failure: it's just life outside your norm.

HARD TO FIND ITEMS
As for what to bring, do you mean just baby things? Hmm... I remember longing for cheap kid shoes, boxes of Kraft macroni and cheese, blanket sleepers. When I was pregnant, I wanted cheap maternity clothes and maternity swimsuits; I guess I already had some nursing bras because that would have hard to find too. For non-kid things, I always tell people bring an all-purpose American cookbook, American measuring spoons and cups, baking soda and powder, vanilla extract (I like to cook). If you are plus sized, bring extra clothing. I'd also bring tylenol and other over-the-counter medications you use and like, for both you and baby. It is harder to figure out what OTC items are called overseas and where to find them (not at a CVS style drugstore, that's for sure.) If you will be using formula, in Belgium, it was sold at those pharmacies as well.

CONNECTING WITH EXPATS
The two expat websites I recall looking at were xpats.com, but I am almost positive that is specific to Belgium. The classifieds there were a big help to me, once I discovered; you can get stuff dirt cheap from people moving to another country and just trying to unload. There is a British organizaztion called National Childbirth Trust that had an organization in Belgium, and I believe they have others in other countries. You might also look into the Republican and Democratic parties in your countries (for overseas American - we were abroad during the 2004 election, so those organizations were very active). Let's see: I also tried English speaking churches, alumni contacts from my US alma mater, and international contact clubs from the university my husband was affiliated with. IT was very slow going at first, meeting other mothers, and made for an unhappy adjustment. But give it a few months and things will improve.

Feel free to PM with other questions.

ETA: Car seat regulations differ in other countries: specifically, some countries require that there be only one point of release on a car seat which is why there are no chest buckles. Technically, car seats are designed for the specs of cars sold in that country, so you could make a case that you should buy a car seat designed for the car market you'll be part of. What if Japanese cars, for instance, are much smaller and a rear-facing US car seat is too big to fit? Or Middle Eastern cars have no shoulder belts, much less LATCH, and you can't figure out how to install your US seat? (I am making those examples up, but they sound plausible.) On the other hand, what if you absolutely want the convenience of snapping your child in and out of a car seat base, which is standard for US infant seats, but you go to buy a seat in your host country and bases don't exist (they were uncommon in Belgium)? I'd try to get more info. about car seats in your host country before you decide whether to buy there or here, but if in doubt, I would bring my US seat and maybe even pre-buy the next size up.

[Neatfreak]

I've been living in Thailand for the last nineteen months, and I delivered my new baby here 3.5 months ago.

We're Canadian so I have nothing to add about passports!

2. Immunizations: my older daughter received the same travel-related vaxes that we did for HepA/B and typhoid. She received one booster a few months early before we left. We'll be overseas long enough that delaying is impractical so she will be continuing with the schedule that she was following at home. I am friends with many former nurses here and they discuss the vaccinations here all the time, so I have faith that they're the same ones that DD would get in Canada.

3. Gear - I took all that I had at home, and I am glad that I did because it's incredibly expensive to buy western gear here. A Mac Volo is about $300USD when converted and I won't get into how much a carseat costs. I have to giggle at the previous poster's comment about Japanese strollers b/c the ones that I see for sale here are indeed narrow! But I would say to bring your travel system, if you have it, because it's a shame to waste the carseat portion and it might be good to have a stroller at the beginning.

3. Safety - where I live there are no carseat laws so we pretend that we're still in Canada when riding in a vehicle and my kids are harnessed accordingly. I get nervous because nearly all of the outdoor pools are ground-level and ungated. I've learned that different cultures have different thresholds for what appropriate child supervision is.

4. The hard-to-find items that I stock up on from home are also OTC medications. There is Tylenol a-plenty here, but not the melt-away version that my preschooler favours. Children's vitamins are another thing that I haven't been able to find. Same with prenatal vitamins. One of my friends with a toddler also bring toddler-type snacks back from the USA with her. Our supply of Cheerios is random and snacks like fruit leather, graham wafers, etc don't seem to exist here. Thai toddlers would be eating completely different things, of course. I've also concluded that Asian baby wipes just suck. They are small and thin and I use tons for a change! Instead of importing crazy amount of Kirkland wipes, though, I'm just using cloth wipes for my new baby ...

4. Connecting - there is actually a ex-pat parenting group in Bangkok, but I've made most of my friends here from my DD's preschool and running into other parents on the playground.

And to add to the previous poster's comments about carseats, I brought my kid's Marathon to Thailand (no regs about even using carseats here). There is no LATCH, no top tether anchor, and I don't even have manually-locking lap-and-shoulder belts in our Toyota SUV. Luckily, I used the vehicle belt all the time for installations in Canada and the US, so I wasn't thrown for a loop. If we didn't have a carseat with built-in lock-offs, though, I would have to use a locking clip to lock the vehicle belt. It might be good to throw one of those into your bag before you go, just in case.

[ellsie22]

Thank you for all the great info. This is helping to give me an idea of where to go from here, some things I hadn't thought of. I know the impending move is several months off, but I figure when the baby is here, I will be plenty busy that whatever I can do now, research and otherwise, is all the better.

[mommy111]

I'm new to this wole living overseas business, but basically agree with everything that the PPs have said, for immunizations, I would go to a travel clinic, the schedule and the epidemic/endemic diseases may be different from what we have over here and a travel clinic consult should help you sort out what you want and what you should get for yourself and DC.
As for things.....I still don't have that figured out. Most things here are available there but not the niche things. I find myself craving for the clothes for kids that you can get here even though you get perfectly decent clothes there....but they are not gymboree or hanna and I always end up buying that stuff on sale here. Higher end brands are available all over Asia and the Middle East but you don't get them at the prices that you do here. Also, I tend to really worrk about the lead laws and so European niche products like wooden toys with non-toxic paint I get from here. There is a proliferation of very cheap and very plastic :) toys there that I'm not sure are safe and so I tend to go nuts and buy here and then store so that when DD wants a cheap triketty necklace there that I'm sure has lead, I can distract her with something I bought from here....she's never quite as happy, but....
All in all, once you get over the stress of it, its quite a wonderful experience living abroad!!!!