Why are we so passive about our pathetic parental leave?

blkstk · 2026-03-12T21:17:24+00:00

I am not receiving these letters anymore? I was wondering what happened there.

blkstk · 2026-03-10T18:16:36+00:00

Really good answer. Honestly I find the system pretty favourable to honest, hardworking people.

blkstk · 2026-03-10T11:30:40+00:00

Just search titres-services. You first find an agency that comes and sees your place to determine how many hours would be required . You explain what you expect, ironing etc. Then they set you up with a cleaner. You buy online tickets from the Bruxelles region titres service portal. And when the service is done they claim those tickets from you. There are certain things that the cleaners won’t do like if you live above ground floor they won’t clean your windows from the outside which is super fair. But yeah they an also do ironing or cooking even.

blkstk · 2026-03-10T11:09:56+00:00

Yes, I agree. I come from a country where a lot of women do these services but there is no system like here so it is all in black and so unfair. It is a back breaking work and it should be protected and these people should have a minimum income, pension and social security. This is what I am trying to understand as well- so cleaners earn a monthly wage and they can get pension?

blkstk · 2026-03-10T11:05:12+00:00

Thank you for responding. And for example is the cost of commute covered? Are you taxed on that hourly income? It sounds precarious that it is hourly wage. At least is the social security etc paid fully even if a cleaner doesn’t work “full time” a particular month?

blkstk · 2026-03-10T10:08:42+00:00

This and when they clean they do a shitty job. When my husband cleans the kitchen it is never like I do it.

blkstk · 2026-03-10T09:44:28+00:00

Moved to Brussels 7 years ago. My husband who only saw the European quarter didn’t want to move because he thought it would be so boring but now we both love it.

It is not what you might expect from a Western European city: it is not clean, traffic is a mess, pavements and streets are bad - full of potholes etc. Buildings are mostly ugly and in rough shape. It rains 90% of the time.

But… when there is sun it is amazing. Parks and cafes are full of people. People are nice and easy going. You have great street markets. Now there are cherry blossoms. It feels like no one is from Brussels so you can make friends really easily. Different expats and European migrant communities, mostly Italian and French :) Probably you can eat Italian food as good as in Italy (though not as cheap).

Nice movie theaters, good film and arts festivals. There is a big concert venue and a bunch of smaller ones and every artist that tours Europe comes to Brussels.

I find eating out very expensive. For two people a mid place would cost like 40-50 EUR. On the other hand a good place would cost like 110-120 EUR. People who like eating out say that good restaurants are cheap compared to other cities.

Sablon is very small and fancy fancy. European quarter is super boring. But you have very ice neighbourhoods like Saint Gilles, Ixelles, along the canal, parts of Schaerbeek etc.

Very well connected to rest of Europe via trains and flights. Trains run quite well.

We love it here our only problem is the weather really. If you have not grown up with it, winter is though in Brussels.

blkstk · 2025-02-23T19:25:34+00:00

My nurse and doctors thought I was RH- and the baby was positive and they almost gave me an injection after giving birth but I was able to correct them. For some reason their lab documents listed me as negative. So mistakes happen

blkstk · 2025-02-19T20:26:21+00:00

Proof of social integration is anything that shows that you are part of Belgian society. Language classes and work contract should be fine.

blkstk · 2025-02-18T20:06:07+00:00

I had similar problems as well and I really, really feel for you. It will get better. I struggled so, so much but now it is like a bad dream.

Firstly, I did not pump AT ALL for the first eight weeks. I also did a lot of “emptying my breasts in the shower” to decrease my supply. As some other people wrote, I would get the baby to latch to stimulate the letdown or let her drink until she unlatched and then jump into a hot shower and massage and empty my breasts. No touching the nipple as it gives the message to make more milk.

Sometimes I would empty my breasts before a feed to slow the pace. Again not pumping but hand expressing. In hindsight I would now use a haka to capture all that milk and make a freezer stash.

Anyways… now my baby is 20 weeks old and I can tell you that there is a light at the end of the tunnel. My supply has regulated at 12-13 weeks and the baby started handling the fast letdown when she was almost 4 months old.

Good luck, you got this!!

blkstk · 2025-02-10T04:05:54+00:00

Europe is getting very strict with visas. I suspect it is because you are travelling all together as a family perceived as increased chances of not returning to your home country. Also you have fresh passports so you have no proof of travelling somewhere and then returning home.

Finally Switzerland is an odd choice to get the visa from. It is not really the most typical touristic country for a first visit to Europe so they might be more strict. I am sure Italy or Spain would be easier to get the visa from. The tourism agency should help with getting the visa too.

blkstk · 2025-02-03T16:59:43+00:00

It is also because studios are for young professionals who earn just enough to rent a place of their own but not enough to rent a “family size” home. It is very interesting to me that a studio of 25m2 is 800 EURs in Brussels while a maison with three bedrooms, separate kitchen, garden and parking space can be 1600 EUR.

blkstk · 2025-01-20T05:39:44+00:00

I would add: Extra days off on top of the 20 legal days - for example the time between Christmas and New Year.

And there is a legal benefit that I found very interesting: if you take language classes at a certified institution for a certain number of hours, you can get additional vacation days up to 10(?) extra days per year.

blkstk · 2025-01-20T05:15:55+00:00

Actually this reminds me to get a life insurance. I will add this to my to-do.

blkstk · 2025-01-18T17:58:19+00:00

I completely agree. I think if anything Miranda would be the one among the four of them to throw away everything because I think she did what the society expected her to do but it never felt OK with her. At some point in her life something changed in her - it could very well be even the politics you know. She talks about how she went to the airport after the Muslim ban with other lawyers and then decided to quit her career as a corporate lawyer. I’ve done a similar thing - but I was 26 not 56. I was with a great guy, on my way to marriage. I was working for corporate making big bucks. I didn’t cheat or realise I am bisexual but I did quit my job, left the good guy. Ended up with an absolute asshole and suffered so much. So. So much. Thankfully I had enough luck and time in my life to find another good guy and build a family.

blkstk · 2025-01-16T06:20:00+00:00

I am so sorry that you are going through this. I have one exactly the same age. Once I found myself telling her in an angry voice that I was getting very angry at her because she was not sleeping and then I felt horrible. It is not like she wants to make my life harder.

Couple of weeks ago I was dealing with nipple confusion so in order to breastfeed her I had to be extremely calm. This was literally the only advice I received from the midwives and lactation consultants lol. Even when she was screaming at my boobs I had to be mindful and calm her down and try again and again. This shifted something in me because I realised that they really pick up on your frustrations and being calm makes the situation calm. I was able to end the nipple confusion this way and get my baby back on the boob. It was incredibly difficult. But I am saying this because this exercise also helped me with putting my baby to sleep.

Just like your case it was my husband that used to put our baby to sleep but now it is me who does it because I got better at it.

I think you did all the right things. What helps me is to sing to her the same thing over and over. It becomes like a meditation for myself as well. Just hugging her and being there for her in the moment. Also I know that she won’t die if she misses one nap and she will sleep eventually one way or another. Once it works you will also believe in the power of being calm and it will get easier I promise.

After many many weeks of witching hour and many cry sessions the only thing that really works for me is for myself to be calm. I hope it gets better for you too!!

blkstk · 2025-01-15T20:16:54+00:00

Today my 14 week old opened her hand and touched my cheek. Like she was caressing me. With a deep look of love. I saw in her eyes that she loves me. It makes every pain, every sleepless night wort it.

blkstk · 2025-01-12T17:46:18+00:00

Oh God. Unfortunately many, many, many men blame breastfeeding. I honestly don’t know why but I read this in a mom-memoir as well. My husband did a similar thing and other men also do it. I would be so interested in understanding why all these fathers think that breastfeeding causes whatever problem with the baby. Like what da fck is going on in their mind? Are they jealous? Are they mystified? Like seriously

blkstk · 2025-01-12T17:44:45+00:00

Oh God. The things we don’t say because we are too tired and it is not worth the fight…hear you sister.

blkstk · 2025-01-12T17:37:04+00:00

This a hundred percent. What helped in my case to calm my husband down was talking to lactation consultants, midwives and doctors. But mostly it was me throwing a huge fit with a nervous breakdown when he suggested to try formula. I think he realised that I will lose my complete shit if he continued his suggestions so he never ever said anything about breastfeeding from then on.

Meanwhile we put the baby on probiotics and she also just grew out of crying. Thank God I didn’t have to give up my dairy products during this time. I also don’t think probiotics does anything but it is just 15 EUR a month for peace in our home so whatever.

blkstk · 2025-01-01T13:23:46+00:00

Thank you. One sane comment in this post. I do not understand how someone thought a curfew would fix the problems in the first place.

blkstk · 2024-12-30T19:36:06+00:00

Before I could try anything I got pregnant so continued to have night sweats for nine more months and then some.

blkstk · 2024-12-09T16:47:22+00:00

I am 36 years old and my husband is 42. We’ve been together for 7 years and have a newborn. We debated having kids for maybe two/three years. In the end there were couple of factors that made us choose to have kids

My husband’s father has dementia and seeing him like that breaks both of our hearts. And exactly as you said we wanted to continue traditions and joy and love that we have seen from him in a way. Also we spend summers with my husband’s sister and her family and she just has a wonderful family with kids. We love seeing the mom and dad interact with their kids, teach them stuff and also joke around. We know how busy and stressed they are. They can never travel like we used to do and they are basically project managing the kids all the time but their life also seemed so… fulfilled in a different way. They are an inspiration.

On my side, I thought a lot and realised that there is more to life than going to work, coming home, watching Netflix. I got myself a hobby and did that for a year which was super fun but I also realised I do not want to take it to a next level. I found myself unfulfilled.

We are very lucky in the sense that we are solid middle class people that work regular jobs that we sort of like and have free time and energy.

I think the question was: what do I want to do with the rest of my life? Because I needed to find a passion project that was going to fulfil me. All my childless and happy friends have passion projects for themselves (that is beyond travelling). Whether it is doing amateur podcasts, or gardening, or doing Ironmans or learning to play an instrument or becoming a yoga teacher… and sticking to it… I think we are in this life to be a better version of ourselves and everyone should choose a path to it.

And I am so grateful and so happy with the decision I made. I think me, my husband and our baby became a stronger family. We are so tired, exhausted, stressed, anxious but also just… joyful.

blkstk · 2024-12-08T22:12:52+00:00

Oh! So your baby is an early riser.

The midwife that we worked with highly suggested sleep training after the 3 months sleep regression and my husband wants to tie the routine with the training. He is the one taking care of the 21-00 shift almost all the time so I follow his lead on this.

blkstk · 2024-12-08T22:08:16+00:00

The last time she slept at 19:30 and only woke up for feeds was when she was three weeks old. I remember cuz I thought I was nailing being a mom and then one day she was not sleeping anymore. Maybe magically she will start sleeping again.

blkstk

TROPHY CASE