Shee's Having A Baby

Short version:

This is Shee (yes, that’s her name), our beloved housekeeper. We’ve been blessed with having Shee work for us for the past four years, and in that time she has become more like a family member than an employee. Shee is expecting her first baby in January. Although happily married, a baby was not in their plans for a few years. You see, Shee is also a very talented seamstress and designer and while still working for us, she has also been taking classes on weekdays and weekends—literally working 7 days a week for the past two years. 

Although Shee can legally work in Thailand, she is from Myanmar. She escaped horrible conditions and grew up in a refugee camp in northern Thailand. She has built a good life for herself and dreams of being a wedding + evening dress designer and ultimately running her own fashion design company. 

While Shee is looking forward to the arrival of her baby boy, she has been told horror stories about how non-Thais have been treated in government hospitals and is terrified of giving birth in one. She could deliver in a private hospital, but that’s not an option on her income. Our goal is to raise at least 60,000 Thai baht (approx $2,000 USD) so she can deliver her baby in a nearby private hospital and have a positive birth experience without worrying about the hospital bill. 

Shee doesn’t know we’re doing this, we want it to be a surprise. Please give whatever you feel able to give. Lots of little donations add up to a lot. This will mean the world to Shee and her husband, Samuel, and give their baby boy a much better start in life than she got.

Long version with the full back story. Grab tissues! 

When our family moved to Thailand in 2016 we were not planning to hire a housekeeper. It wasn’t in the budget and seemed like an unnecessary luxury. But we learned that hiring help was almost expected, as a way to give back to the local community. What I couldn’t have known then was what a gift Shee would be in our lives—far beyond the obvious clean house and clothes and pet care, which we strive to never take for granted. 

We have come to think of Shee as part of our family. Our boys love her. Our dog loves her. The rescued street cat—who is actually The Devil in feline disguise and doesn’t like any of us—loves her. Shee is hard-working, reliable, trustworthy, unbelievably sweet, and one of the most driven and ambitious people I know. Especially considering the hardships she has experienced in her relatively short years. 

When Shee was just 12 years old, she fled Myanmar (formerly Burma) and escaped to Thailand with her uncle, leaving behind her 9 brothers and sisters, her mother, and her alcoholic and occasionally abusive father. She left because her living conditions were terrifying—random raids by local warring factions, gunfire in her village, kidnapped kids…and worse. Literally unimaginable for most of us. Soldiers from the Thai army found Shee and her uncle in a field near the border—sleeping in a field of landmines. 

They were escorted into Thailand and sent to a refugee camp near the Myanmar border. Not long after, Shee left and made her way to Bangkok, only to find out that no one would hire her because she was too young. She eventually found work in restaurant kitchens but her struggles were far from over. One day the house she was living in was raided and Shee found herself in prison—the Thai Immigration Detention Center—at the age of 14, her only crime was wanting to make a living in a country she wasn’t born in.  

Shee was in the IDC for two weeks before being sent back to the refugee camp. By then, her mother and several of her siblings were also living in the camp. Shee’s mother taught her how to sew and they made and sold hand-embroidered pillowcases to earn money. That’s when Shee’s love of sewing and design was born. Shee worked hard in the refugee camp school, learned English (one of 4 languages she can speak), and took care of her siblings. When she was old enough, she left the camp and found work as a housekeeper in the suburbs of Bangkok. We are now the 4th family of international school teachers she has worked for. 

A few months after she started working for us, Shee very nervously told me that she was getting married and invited us to the wedding, in the refugee camp. I didn’t even know she had a boyfriend but it turned out that Shee had been dating Samuel for 10 years. They rarely got to see each other in all those years though because he worked as a liaison for several refugee camps, communicating between camp officials and the Thai government. He was responsible for making sure Shee learned English in the camp. That conversation was the first time Shee began to share her life story with me. 

Their wedding—and the opportunity to see the refugee camp—was one of the most impactful experiences of my life. It felt as if we were inside a National Geographic documentary. There are so few resources there—a handful of school books, no running water, no bathrooms (as we think of them), and so many children without shoes. And yet Shee’s mother’s house, made out of tin and cardboard, was not only spotless but carefully decorated with rugs and pictures—welcoming and warm. Having seen firsthand how Shee grew up shed a stark light on our privileged upbringing and lives. 

While we’re as generous as we can be, Shee doesn’t earn a lot. I learned that, even with her limited resources, whenever she can she sends money to her mother and siblings in the refugee camp. Shee and Samuel also pay for several of their siblings to go to a school outside of the refugee camp because they know the value of an education and want their brothers and sisters to have access to better opportunities in their lives. 

Soon after Shee began working for us, she started taking classes every weekend to learn advanced sewing techniques. She learned as much as she could for free while saving up her money to take advanced-level courses to learn how to make men’s suits, evening gowns, and wedding dresses. Shee now gets commissioned to make wedding dresses and other traditional Thai and Burmese evening gowns.

Her dream is to be able to make a living from her design business. To get to these classes in downtown Bangkok, three times a week, Shee has to take 4 different buses and travel close to 2 hours each way. (She can’t afford taxis like we can.) She just stopped going this past weekend because, at 7 months pregnant, it’s hard to travel on hot, smelly, jerky busses for that long. 

Since learning that Shee was pregnant, Samuel started to come work at our house with her because he doesn’t want her to do any heavy lifting. He now does everything except the laundry. He has also learned how to sew and helps her with the dresses and other items she makes to sell. (Did I mention that we love him too?) For a while, we thought Shee was going to leave after having her baby because the three of them couldn’t live on one wage. Their plan was to move back to the refugee camp, which broke my heart. But she has been sewing like mad and supplementing their income with the wedding dresses, traditional ethnic outfits, wallets, and purses that she sells.


(You can see—and order them—on her Facebook page .) Now she plans to take maternity leave and Samuel will come back to help us a month or so after the baby is born. (We are so relieved—for them and for us!)

I fully believe that one day Shee will have a thriving fashion design business. And I know she will be an amazing mother. But there are no do-overs when it comes to giving birth. I want to give Shee the most positive birthing experience possible so their baby can have a good start in life.

I think she deserves that, don’t you?