Two for one

Yes, that's right. Another blog entry on the same day. About 10 minutes after posting the previous one, actually.

Life may be ok, but I still don't get a lot of time by myself on the computer to do much other than find directions, order groceries, and the like. So here I am, on a great sleeping night for baby A, awake from 3:30am to 6am....might as well write some more.

What I didn't put in the last post, and is still on my mind, is this. That whole parent-child-misunderstanding-and-try-again dance is way more subtle that I expected. And I'm finding that the biggest problem for me comes up whenever I am in a mindset of not trusting the meerkat. (That's her new nickname because she sits up like one a lot, on her heels, to get a better look at the world. Totally adorable. That's right, I love my baby. But this kind of love took getting to know her, and her getting to like me, to sink in. So my answer to the question "When did you really fall in love with your baby?" is "at about 6 months.")

Anyway, back to trust issues. Whenever I've made the sad repeat mistake of reading pretty much anything about parenting in a magazine, book or online, I come away with these nasty ideas like "she needs to learn to soothe herself to sleep by crying, or she'll be spoiled later." Ok, first of all, that is a STUPID thing to write about parenting because it is so general and has no information whatsoever about how to apply that principle to your child. Sure, I think I shouldn't rock her to sleep if she can wiggle around a bit on her own, cry a little (quietly), and find her sleep. But that doesn't happen most of the time, and the longest I tried with the crying was horrible. 30 minutes of in and out of the room, trying to figure out what the hell to do in our particular situation where she stands up a lot, drops her binky on the floor because she's crying, etc., etc. I hated it. She hated it. She was terrified of the crib for the next nap. STUPID.

I decided two things that day. 1. I keep trusting her - to slowly get better at sleeping on her own and that if she's having a hard time there is a reason. It can just be a tough day and rocking or a bit more help from me is all she needs to sleep. Here I am wide awake for 3 hours at a horrible time, after all. Everytime I trust her like that, and trust that her screams are important, we do so so so much better. 2. To hell with worrying about spoiling. I would much rather she be a bit "spoiled" (which to me just means not always being pushed to the limit of her capabilities but being given time to be more than ready to acquire a new skill like soothing herself to sleep), than a bit feeling unloved, untrusted, or suspected.

When we go with this approach, I'm not mad at her. I'm calmer, I have more patience, I can apply all sorts of skills to soothe her if I decide to, and I find myself silently rooting for her "You go, baby A! Look at you falling asleep on your own after a bit of crying and some help from me! You did SO well!" while at the door watching, or sitting in the room with my eyes closed. It can be hard not to smile at those times.

I'm proud of her little baby self. And that makes the whole encounter so much better.

The middle of summer

We're here. Kind of. Finally.

Baby A, for whatever reason, is only waking up 3-5 times a night now. So M and I get a lot more sleep. Long chunks of it being most important. We even took our first trip with her, at 7 months old, while our niece was visiting. All four of us survived a 3 hour train trip down to the Italian part of Switzerland and back. Glorious weather, palm trees, green mountains sloping down into a blue lake. And food. Great food. Gelato. Pasta. Sea food. Coffee with boiled milk at breakfast. And the last night, M and I stumbled on a newly opened restaurant in Locarno called Il Tartuffo where the chef took us into the kitchen to discuss the meal, explain the spices and herbs, even sent out a shot glass of the base (fish and chicken) he was using for the day's meals. Such an amazing meal.

Now, when I say stumbled, please don't get some image of us languidly walking the old city streets in search of the perfect place. We were staying up near the monastery on the hill above Locarno, and we'd already had 2 meals at one place (and were close to exhausting their fine, but small menu), and one meal at a very fancy place. We were nearing the end of the restaurant list for what was within a 10 minute walk from our hotel. Our niece was in charge of baby A after we put her down to sleep, but we weren't about to waste precious eating and sitting time on traveling down to town. We would have been more than happy to have 2 plates of pasta that night. It just turned out that our path crossed with this great place that had only been open for 3 months.

So back to now. We are sleeping more. Baby A will be starting daycare in a few months. Those first 5 months of her life still bring a sinking feeling to my stomach. But she and I are doing so much better now. I'm a mom. I see that. And feel it. Especially when my arms are the ones she wants to snuggle in when she falls and bumps her head. Which she does, a lot as she crawls and stands and couch-walks her way around her world.

I still have my moments, when I thought she was tired and she thought she was tired, but there we are with her wide awake and smiling in her crib and me trying to force a nap. Those are still the times that knock me off my balance. But I keep repeating what the one counselor at the hospital said. That parenting is not about knowing what your child wanted or needed, but trying to listen, getting it wrong half the time or more, and everyone having faith that everyone is putting in their best effort, and then trying again. That I can do. I can come back over and over. I can say "sorry, I totally misunderstood. Let's try again." I'm just working on letting myself be in that space instead of feeling embarrassed that I got it wrong in the first place.

Oh, and it is ridiculously hot right now in Zurich for an apartment that doesn't have central anything. It is us and our two fans against the hot sun. We are currently practicing the early morning open-all-the-doors-to-cool-things.

So yeah. Life is ok.

Inhale...cough cough cough...exhale.

Ok, so it is not your standard meditation breathing, but somehow we made it through the night. Dear god, don't make us go through that again.

I'm in the can't-stop-coughing phase of the cold, Baby A kept having a fever despite two separate drugs and crying every time she coughed, and at 1am, somehow M, with his injured knee and little sleep was still the more competent to get her through the next few hours. And when I say "more" competent, that can mean one tiny bit of energy more than me. If I had .0001 energy, he had .00011.

The day had been way too hot and so was the apartment.

Finally the fever broke again (like it has the other nights), I took over at 4am, and we've made it to another day.

Our niece arrives for a long stay today, and I just hope she doesn't turn back around and fly out once she sees the state we're in.

For her visit, we need the foyer to become a guest room. We have a sofa bed on its way, but the thing is, we need her help so much that we haven't been able to set up the foyer for her stay. Sorry! We're so behind that we need you to come help us set up your own guest room....hm.

Anyway, cool morning. Baby A is asleep for some 15 min. in her crib right now, and once again there is a bit of hope.

Wow, there was nothing funny in this post at all. Hmmm.

Oh, I know, yesterday I found myself hoarse, and trying my hardest to ask the pharmacist over the phone in Germ-glish, how we would know if the anti-fever suppository had absorbed or not since she kept pooping 10-15 min after we'd administer them. We didn't really get to a place of mutual understanding, and the connection was bad on my cell phone. He was trying to find the English word for where the suppository goes, and given that he had mostly medical English, I wound up yelling "ANUS! ANUS!" into the phone. That's kind of funny.

What sucks.

You know what sucks?

The fact that I was sick with a sore throat just before coming home from the hospital, baby A had a great night the first night home, only waking once (needing our intervention) to feed, and then got my cold just as I was stopping pumping milk.

I made the decision to finally stop because at 3 hours/day, it was time I could have spent enjoying her or doing a bit of something for myself. And today, I'm still coughing and having trouble sleeping, she is sleeping less and having a hard time falling asleep, and it feels like the one reason I decided to stop feeding her breast milk is moot. Total loss.

I guess I really still do believe that good things happen to good people. And I was trying to be so good, and grown up, and make an adult decision.

We had 24 hours with her home, happy, all of us doing so well. Then last night she kept waking up because she was coughing and the binky kept falling out, or because she just had a hard time settling. A month of good nights at the hospital, one at home, and now a cold.

Yes. I know. The cold will pass. But we had hope that the month of good sleep would rub off on her here at home, at least a bit, and we could work towards good nights here. And this was already pushing our luck. Just to hope that we could piggyback on the good sleep habits.

I hear getting the bare minimum accomplished by is the new black.

Am I in a mood? Sure I am. First day home, and on my own, and she and I are sick. And my spirits are not all that solid yet. I just so wanted a grace period to build up momentum.

Were there some good things, too, today? Of course - I had a baby nestle into my chest in her carrier many hours today, just to be close. I got more tissues for the house. We saw baby A's future daycare and it was sweet.

So, head down and keep plowing forward. This all doesn't have to mean anything, or to be preparing us for something else, or in any way intended or directed at us. There is no greater power because if there were, I'd be pissed and expecting some answers. Today is just hard. And I'm just tired. And if I'm not the best me, that is fine.

Enough

I've come to see this word, "enough," as pretty two-faced. Like that friend who was all buddy buddy with you outside of school and then at school you weren't cool enough or interesting enough, and suddenly acted like you weren't that close.

Ok, maybe it isn't like that, but I wanted to dis a bit on those kinds of people this morning.

It is a two-sided word, though.

There is what I think of as the powerful, positive side of "enough." You are a good enough ________. Fill it with "student," "researcher," "parent," or any other category and if you can believe that, you feel pretty good. It lets you feel ok just as you are, doing what you already do, not needing to change to be a member of that group. Or, "You have enough." "You've done enough." All very accepting, forgiving, gentle. The judgment starts with a positive outcome, and you go from there, retroactively reaping the benefits of this pat on the back, whether it is from yourself or someone else.

Then there is the nastier side of "enough." When it is used as a vague guide for trying even harder on something hard or impossible to do. "You will hear God speak to you if you have enough faith." That one is my poster-child for the destructive power of the word. Just keep trying, and if you keep not hearing God, you're still not doing enough.

Or, "if you relax enough you'll get pregnant." Another winner in the "makes me feel like a pile of poo" category. If you get pregnant, you did (in retrospect) enough. If not, you were at fault. You didn't do enough. It is a way to tie your worth to an outcome. And like I said, the outcome may well have nothing to do with that action.

It happens when people start with the belief that "there is a God who will speak to you" or "there is nothing medically wrong with you that you can't get pregnant" or any number of things that seem way more about belief systems than about logic, or actual cause and effect. And they put such pressure on the one who gets the "not enough" tag. Since God can't fail, you must have. Since medicine is infallible, you must be fallible. They start with a dogmatic belief in absoluteness.

The first use of "enough" places such great faith in the human being and her or his intrinsic completeness, just as they are. The second seems to never bestow that faith in the first place and make the human struggle to prove her or himself worthy.

I hate that. Just thought I'd mention it.

And since, by definition, my blog post is done when I'm done, I've written enough. Phew.

Oh, but here's a family photo since I don't put many photos in anymore and I like seeing photos in other people's blogs....

Goin' home

We're almost at the end of our stay.

Baby A is now crawling fast and standing when she can. She eats carrot mush and Zwieback crackers with the best of them. And she thought the new backpack hiking carrier was pretty fly. She's a daycare champ.

She still doesn't sleep so well on our visits home (waking 5-7 times a night instead of 10-12 like last month), so things will still be a bit rough. But this month has been about my connecting with her and having enough rest to do it well. And about learning to handle the thought of a small, simple, slow life better. So what if we don't do a lot of what other parents are doing with their 6 month olds. This is our life, and it is enough.

We'll probably never know what the issues with sleep were. That's a hard one to let go of given the academic background and how much the exhaustion can slow down the days. But if we, I, can learn to roll with this reality, I think I'm better of in the long run anyway.

It won't stop me from wanting to bring some serious pain to that 80 year old Swiss ladies who told us we HAD to get baby A's ears surgically corrected because they were so big that they would make her life hard. Yeah, ok, bite me. Oh wait, after a month of therapy I can just smile and walk away. Lucky biddy.

Balboa makes for much better soothing a baby than a lindy basic

“Inside each joy was a hard kernel of sadness, as if I was always preparing myself for impending loss.” 3am and I’ve just started reading a book called Devotion, by Dani Shapiro. It is light and heavy all at the same time, and I like the sense of humor, mixed in, lightening the dark fears and big questions she carries around with her. And this line appears, in the middle of a paragraph. And I know exactly what she means. Moments like this make me feel less alone in the world. That my worries or fears or troubles are just part of being human.

I’ve woken up at 1:30am, to pump, and knew I was going to have a hard time falling asleep. I often do at this time of night. Especially, like tonight, when I’ve had a lot of sleep already. I put baby A to sleep in the room next to mine here at the hospital and the night nurses are taking care of her tonight. I’ve already slept some 5 ½ hours.

So I laid there, listening to the rain sound on the white noise soundtrack I’ve got going. I breathe, I try to calm down, I try to stop hearing Lady Gaga’s “Bad Romance” in my head. I do that – play songs in my head over and over. It keeps me from going to sleep, like some little nudge to push me back in to consciousness. Doesn’t have to be pop music, could well have been the Sesame Street theme song, or one of the strange concoctions we’ve introduced to soothe Baby A. And it is usually just a snippet of the song, over and over. With how much it resembles a mantra, I should be enlightened ten times over by now.

Open the window to cool off the room.

“…caught in a bad ro-mance!”

Turn over and put a pillow over my ears.

“Oooooo, caught in a….”

Try to release that feeling that has been with me so long. That grip on my heart. The one that I’ve never been able to relax through meditation. And believe me I tried a lot. It is like Dani Shapiro’s hard kernel. Yoga used to work sometimes, or a long session of dancing. I need to be exhausted to let it go. As if I’m the one holding it.

Like waiting for the other shoe to drop but it is not only clenched in my hand, it is superglued there.

“I want your love. La la la, I want your…”

So I’m the patient this time, at this hospital visit. They gave me a schedule, and “music and movement therapy” was on there this morning. Um, yeah. Really? I’d better not have to bang on some non-Western rhythm instrument, naming my demons in time with some beat. Or do some sort of theater movement exercise where I pretend to be angry, then, sad, then curious, then…do I have any idea of what exercises theater people do? No. But I can sure imagine some stupid ones!

But it was okay. And the person leading the session was young, and hip, and friendly, and most importantly, really normal. She had all sorts of great CDs in her case – the kind that make you relieved. Music that has once been on a radio station and not in a new age shop. I am happy to report a total lack of pan-flutes. And there I was, with a group of other people all with their own sadness or pain or exhaustion or questions. I danced. For the first time in 14 months, I danced as a single, self-contained individual. Not to make Baby A smile (although that is fun), or to rock her to sleep with a Balboa step. Not adapting to the need to hold her. My arms were mine, my legs, I could bounce or jump as hard as I wanted and not worry about a little brain in a little skull. All I had to worry about was not knocking myself out. Mission accomplished. It was good.

In the afternoon, in the daycare, I sat with a few other moms and we had craft time. Another chance for a totally dumb or cliché or infantile experience that was just really nice instead. Someone had said we were making bracelets…great, can I just end it all now with the nearest blunt utensil? But we used fishing wire to string together handfuls of different buttons. A teething toy, full of textures and colors, and totally spit-up resistant. A chance to make something for Baby A, and just sit and play with something tactile instead of just trying to pay bills and do laundry and get her to nap and and and…for those 2 hours. Of course, little miss “it goes in my mouth and if it happens to be any part of your skin, all the better, but I’ll settle for anything within reach” loved it. How nice to have a chance to think about her development stage with intent instead of just rushing to the store to buy yet another toy to keep her growing curiosity satisfied. Completely un-sickly sweet experience. Sentimental in a nice way, not in a lederhosen and cuckoo-clock way. Or in a “Precious Moments” way. In a way I could actually appreciate – quiet, simple, clever.

I just heard her crying next door. I let the nurse take it. I stayed in my room, and listened to it. It was fine. It is okay for me to have some alone time, even if I can’t sleep. I can read, write, stare at the ceiling. I can just be for a while.

“la la love, I want your love…”

Oh shut, up.