Babies Get Jet Lag Too

Culture shock in my home country

Artwork and photos by Kelsey Breseman

Baby’s first flight is a transatlantic: ten hours over the pole from London to Seattle. It’s February, so we’re changing one gray sky for another — but it’ll be chipped trails rather than cobblestones beneath our feet; forest rather than city.

These seats at the airplane’s bulkhead were assigned to us because it’s the one place the bassinet goes. A table fits onto the wall, and a padded box straps to the top.

The flight attendant grins in delight at his successful installation of the contraption. “First try!”

He’s already warned us that it’s usually a bit of a show: all the seats face forward towards our baby, and he’s perfect viewing height for the bathroom line.

Because my three-month baby is nine-month sized, the airplane bassinet is comically small — other than a bit of kicking time, hammocked in the box, Robert and I just pass him between us.

Luckily, our baby is pretty tractable. He only has one little meltdown on the flight, and every fuss is solvable with a feed. People are still telling us he’s cute as they file past after landing.

As a mixed-citizenship family, we all have to go through the “foreigner” line in my home country. The baby and I are citizens, but my husband is here on a “B” visa: multiple entries across five years, up to six months at a time, no employment allowed. Robert had to prove he had a reason (his job) to return to the UK after paternity leave.

It’s a confusing toss-up: as is often the case, the visa parameters are set by whomever reviews the application, and the decision rests ultimately with the agent at the border. My Indian brother in law got ten years of multiple-entry applying for the same visa.

“And what date are you returning to England?” The agent asks. Luckily, even though it’s months away, we do have tickets back. So he lets us through.

Just past passport control, a uniformed woman with a gun calls out to stop me: “Wait! I can’t let you go on like that!”

But this isn’t an official stop. She wants to show me a more ergonomic way to carry the baby car seat I have swinging by my side.

“Here,” she demonstrates, threading her arm through the handle. “Oops, runs into my gun on that side.”

I copy. It really is a more comfortable hold. I’m still carrying the car seat that way on the way out the door to the parking garage, skirting the Christians handing out leaflets for God.

“Are you enjoying America bingo?” I ask my Aussie husband, self consciously. The people of my country are friendly, but strange.

There’s no public transit that reaches the house I grew up in, so we’re getting a ride from my cousin. It’s the opposite of taking the Tube — a borrowed Honda Odyssey: the right size for all our luggage, Robert’s bike included.

“I feel like I’m steering a boat,” my cousin comments, climbing up into the driver’s seat. And it’s true, the Odyssey has really grown into its name. I rode in the same model of van back before I was old enough to drive, but that was before every American car was effectively an SUV.

“There was exactly one chance to meet Robert before I married him,” I’ll explain to my aunt and uncle, two weeks later: when Robert and I had been dating a month, he visited from London and I hosted one big dinner.

But it’s not strictly true. I have friends who’ve met him in Alaska and London. And before we were together, he went to India for my sister’s wedding — which is where this cousin met him.

Robert isn’t sold on the idea of cars, and specifically using a car to then ride a bicycle — but by the end of the car ride she has talked him into mountain biking plans. We get to the familiar front porch in darkness, open the front door with the spare key.

I’ve lived in my parents’ house often enough as an adult to be confident in the dynamic: we’re good roommates to each other. We share food, watch each other’s cats, cover each other on the little tasks that keep a household running.

They’re not here when we arrive: we have a week to see what works for us before they return from their own travels.

Coming back to a place will tend to give you fresh eyes. Especially now that I’m bringing my new family, I’m conscious of the need to carve out a space.

I see three decades’ worth of accumulated objects, wear on the edges of cupboards. My room, which is now our room, still has the giant cherry wood desk and printer cabinet-turned-closet from when this was my father’s office. The old oak dining table that’s been stored there since my teen years has finally gone (to the living room) to make space for a crib.

We don’t get a lot of sleep the first night. I’m antsy. I recall that when I was here last, there was barely room for all of my own things — and this needs to feel right for all three of us.

I throw out all the expired condiments from the fridge, a toothpaste that expired in 2012, hair scrunchies I last remember wearing in middle school. I donate a suitcase full of belongings to the local Value Village, but there still isn’t space for my husband. He colonizes the linen closet upstairs to have a place to store his clothes.

Of course, we’re both exhausted. It takes about a day per hour shifted to adjust to the time zones. We’ve just spent weeks clearing out an apartment, and now have similar work to continue here. And there’s the baby — and he’s jet lagged too.

I’m awake at four the first few days. I bring the little one into the living room so Robert can sleep. He needs the quiet, so I finish the first draft of my novel in the small hours: baby wrapped in my father’s polar fleece quilt on the floor nearby.

Robert unpacks all the boxes on the morning I sleep in. He needs a desk, so we move old generations of computers off the ones in the bonus room.

Baby gets a changing area in the sewing room, once we unbolt the vice from the high table.

Things have been the way they are here for some time; it can be hard to reconceptualize a room.

We get a Costco membership. I drive. Robert suggests a plan to include shopping with a rock climbing excursion, but I’m skeptical:

“Costco is a whole thing,” I explain. And the closest climbing gyms are at least a half hour’s drive. In London, there were two we could walk to.

I like Costco: familiar foods, quantities I’ll use, free samples. But the crowded warehouse stroll takes getting used to. There’s a line of cars to get into the Costco parking lot, a hunt for parking, the stroller to unfold from the car. The first time we go, it’s most of what we do that day.

If I were living in Europe long-term, I’d want what they call an “American fridge,” i.e. a bigger one. I cook family-sized meals and tend to shop for the week.

In Europe, this is a silly instinct. There’s a produce shop on every corner, so why not just buy what you need on the way past? Every day the veggies sit in the fridge is a day of freshness lost.

Here, the grocery store is a twenty minute drive. The aisles are guaranteed wide enough to fit a baby stroller (a real challenge in the London stores), and you don’t need to go to a second one to get the good produce.

My family home is big, with full cupboards and a deep pantry. In the week before we arrived, the big hill you have to drive to get out was impassable with ice. It makes sense, here, to shop this way.

I feel the isolation of our forest home more than I ever have. Monday comes around and I’m not having the mums’ lunch I’m used to with my London friends. On Tuesday, I’m not volunteering at the park, and there’s no mum and baby Barre class on Wednesday.

In London, any mom with a baby under six months is on maternity leave. There’s a market for new-mum activities every day of the week, because all women are guaranteed this time to heal, bond, learn, and feed.

Because there’s a market for it, with-baby workout classes are common and walkable in London. The movie theaters have baby-friendly cinema once a week. I walk to lunch at the park cafes and run into fellow mum friends.

Here, I have a weight set in the bonus room, a plan to host dinners every Sunday, and the project of overwhelming my introvert husband with my very large local community.

But first, we have a week for just us.

Even though it’s February, our first couple of days back in Washington State are sunny — warm enough that we buy a picnic blanket and lay on the lawn. We commit to family walks every day on the trails encircling the house: the baby held seated in Robert’s arms.

This is home: sunlight on fir trees, warm wood fire, a freezer full of Alaskan fish. It’s important to me that my baby knows the smell of a forest after rainfall, that he will get dirt on his tiny hands. When cities are masses of lonely people shoved together, this is what I miss.

There’s sunshine this morning. I step out the front door with my baby asleep in my arms to stand barefoot on the warm front porch. The smoked salmon on my breath mixes with the smell of wood smoke from the chimney, layered over the moss smells of spring.

Photo by Kelsey Breseman

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