At glacial speed

If I stay quiet, calm just long enough, I feel the motion. But it has to be a just-woke-up quiet, the kind where I am still pretty tired but not going to fall asleep again. The 6:53am kind, where 7am is so close that the best option is to roll around a bit, and just try to start waking up.

Usually, I will go for my iPhone to help my brain get started by a barrage of useless activities like Facebook and checking the weather. This morning, it is cold and rainy, what feel like the first day of fall just sneaking in, and even 6:53am seems a lot darker than it did yesterday. And I let myself be calm and feel it.

It is a slow motion, of something big, something heavy. It is the passing of time, the approach of my 40th year, the changing of the guard, the end of the summer I thought we might just get pregnant and without having to do all that soul searching just get thrown into the mess, and chaos and energy and fray of a new life. And I would put off thinking about my career a bit longer, or my age. We would have a few more years of not even having the time to notice that time is passing.

Mind you, this isn't really a sad feeling. It is slow, it is calm. There are probably still a few years in which, if I really want (or just accidentally end up there), I can hop on over to that glacier top. It isn't going anywhere fast. I could probably even just step a bit more vigorously and catch it, with its new baby and upheaval, and blinding in-the-momentness that a new child brings to a family. It wouldn't even require a jump. But where once that 40 years old mark was slowly approaching, it is now almost lined up with where I'm standing, and soon will be receding. It is the next stage of life. I will still enter it, sooner or later, and I realized yesterday afternoon that having another child will not make me 36 again. And many of those women around me that I've felt the second-child-having influence of so strongly, they are still in that 35-38 range.

So yes, of course I can still try for a child. I'm healthy, I've gotten pregnant at least twice now, it is likely possible. But it means something different to me approaching 40 than it did approaching 36. I'm not "too old" to have another child in the literal, can your ovaries and uterus do this sense. My husband is not 65, and on and on. But I did not realize that the cycle of having one child would last 6 years for us, starting with starting to try getting pregnant, through infertility and interventions, through a difficult beginning, a first ray of light and then through a miscarriage and then the recovery. When I started this baby having activity, I was 33 years old. I've woken up this morning and I'm 39.

And I have no certainty about another child or not. I know that this morning I was calm, I had time to lay in bed another 10 minutes and hear that slow movement of life. I had energy to make a nice breakfast and to not pull A to run to the bus. We had smiles and time to talk about how sometimes none of us wants to go to work or school. I had time to sit in the foyer, while she screamed about having her pacifier taken away, until she calmed down - I didn't have to wrap her in a jacket and carry her flailing with boots to the bus.

It is the first day of fall, and I've decided to have a month of calmer, thoughtfulness. I will not be giving up on losing it sometimes, but I will be trying to find one thing per day to do or actively choose that connects me with others. That makes the world a bit better place and funnels some of my energy of not being pregnant with a second child back into the world that could definitely use it. I will slow down this month, for the next 3 weeks at least. I will notice this month passing.

I may not be able to move the glacier back (in my mind it is majestic, grand, solid and slow, its coldness is not really a feature, it is not a sad glacier, it is just ancient and bigger than me), but I can make this time before 40 fuller and honor it. 

What does Schroedinger's cat have to do with babies?

Fresh on the heels of the older fathers studies that I wrote about last time, out came a smaller, seemingly quieter piece of news about reproduction - a study that indicated multiple miscarriages may be caused by a woman's body's inability to reject unviable embyros. It hasn't shown up on the NYTimes Motherlode blog, where all the hottest topics and reports make a visit these days, but I hope it slaps on its best party dress and sparkles and starts making the rounds, because I think it will cause a lot of tears for a lot of women and then perhaps a huge, forgiving sigh.

The researchers claim that their research showed that some women's uteruses (uteri? uteroes? whatever, you know what I mean but can't spell) aren't that good at distinguishing between a viable and unviable embryo, and just go implant the hell out of anything passing through. Including embryos that wouldn't have resulted in a successful pregnancy. So instead of a "why is my body broken and not providing a loving, nurturing space for these embryos" kind of situation, which I think can lead to extreme feelings of failure, really, it is just a "oh, my uterus is just a bit too accepting of all embryos, and what other women's uteruses (it is English, so just let's pretend I can pluralize that way, ok?) wouldn't have even given another glance at, mine just got all "oooh, let's take them all home, and raise them". Like some of the characters...well, all of the characters, on Sex and the City and bad choices with guys. Your miscarriages weren't because you failed to provide a healthy place for a baby to grow, those embryos wouldn't have become babies in anyone's uterus.

It isn't you. At least not in that way that I think many of us who had a miscarriage and we didn't know the cause were thinking. It isn't your fault, you're not broken. You're probably an overachiever in life, actually. More than a little over-enthusiastic, perhaps? Especially if you're willing to keep trying for pregnancies after the harrowing experience that is a miscarriage. Turns out, so is your uterus.

Well, who knows what effect this has on women, but for me, I found it to be a strongly emotional result. Sure, perhaps it meant that I'd been producing damaged eggs or something, but at least it wasn't the case that my body was rejecting the baby that my brain and heart had been hoping and wishing for.

And it comes at a good time for me because I think I was pregnant again. Just for a few weeks. I didn't actually have the chance to take a second pregnancy test to confirm what I was feeling or the results of the first one. And while we've been having such long discussions about whether or not we want another child, and kind of settled one the "only one" side of the tracks, I seemed to have become pregnant again, and now not.  Or maybe it was a false positive and I wasn't.

Who'd have thought that pregnancy and quantum mechanics seem so related? Not this guy. Turns out, I disagree, and I think women who have been possibly pregnant, know exactly what this is like. Quantum weirdness has nothing on us. In that time before you can test for pregnancy, but think you may be pregnant, if you are being harshly realistic, you know things can go either way. You can be both pregnant and not pregnant at the same time. Your thoughts switch between, "I am, and what will that be like" and "Nope, I'm not and this is all just hopeful", and until you do that measurement, the system doesn't collapse into just "yes" or just "no."

How old was your dad when you were born?

It is date night here at our house, which means the babysitter is coming and we're heading out to celebrate the end of M's exam week and almost-end of the work week with dinner in the Old City and a movie. Probably "What to Expect When You're Expecting."

Because it has that American-ness to it that we're both craving a bit right now. It doesn't have to be awesome to be comforting.

I keep calling it "What Did You Expect?" or "What Were We Thinking?".  I didn't much like the book of the same title when I was expecting because, as many before me have pointed out, it has that "sad you, who can't live off of no caffeine and fruitjuicesweetened-practically-everything when you are pregnant - you must not really love your unborn child" quality to some of its suggestions. It could be a playbook for out-earthmothering your fellow pregnant ladies. But I do expect some easy laughs from the movie.

And at just the right time. Because the hottest thing on the NYTimes right now is this article about increased risk of a child with autism or schizophrenia with advanced age of the father. This just days after I finished reading this book on a family whose autistic daughter has beaten a lot of odds to communicate with a computer with grace and eloquence, wit and insight, about autism itself, and the rest of the things a teenager thinks about. That is the life-afirming part of the book. The description of the exhaustion, sadness and burnout that the family lives with, and still uses respite care to help combat, is the part that prompted me to start talking with M about why we want another child.

Just to be a companion to A? We have enough crap of our own we're still working through that maybe we are better off teaching her to make close friends, spending some extra money on serious charity contributions that also leave a legacy (instead of looking for an embodied legacy in another child), and just keep working on our own issues.We could donate to places helping families who are already struggling. We could try to make a difference in this world in a different way.

And what if we were to have an autistic child? The book was already in the process of being read when this question came up and almost drowned me. What if all the things that have gone wrong with getting pregnant and giving birth and having a miscarriage, what if they all actually point to some reason we shouldn't try for another child? What if my body, which is almost 40 years old, is trying to tell me about my chances with the next child, and to just stop here?

Then the article came out. Well, gee, that sure helps the picture. Although, I have to say it is nice to hear anything that for once tells the menfolk they too are not untouched by reproductive aging. That it isn't just my biological clock ticking away, it is his, too. I mean to be gloating in a general, I-represent-all-womanhood sort of way, not to imply that I'm thrilled for M to have to think about all of this now. I mean, we're both old - double whammy.

And as a nightcap to all that, A had her first exorcist-level meltdown, which I only navigated with so much grace (heck, yeah, I'm proud) because of how much I've worked on myself, and the fact that a close friend's kid had a similar one a few weeks ago. I could chalk up 25 minutes of screaming, thrashing, running in random-including-the-street directions if I put her down, kicking and wailing to a developmental phase. I was one cool customer, even on the bus part of the program. I was exhausted afterwards (and A is now sleeping it off), and amazed at how randomly it passed. And feeling a profound sadness for lives where that continues to be a daily occurrence even for older children and adults. I could get through it because I knew it would pass (today, and in some months).

For tonight, though, we're going to go see What You Didn't Expect You'd Be Expecting, or something like that. And, hopefully, it will be good for a few laughs.

The alumni newsletter just came in! Great.

I just finished filling out an online survey for a Prestigious Graduate School Fellowship I once received, back when I was in Astronomy (about 1500 years ago). It dropped me right smack down in the middle of all the mixed (okay, mostly bad, actually) emotions I had every time I got my yearly "What kind of cancer have you cured this year?" call from the head of a different Pretigious Graduate School Fellowship program. Let's say that I started off my university life as a pretty prestigious kind of student. I studies physics and math and astronomy and I did really well in homeworks and exams. I did research projects and went to conferences and even taught some lectures as an undergrad. I got into all the grad schools I applied for, and I didn't set the bar low. 

And at the end of 9 years in astronomy grad school, I quit. Dejected, depressed, no publications to my name, very little belief in myself. Single. Childless. (Although, I was going to be married soon, which was one of the very few points of light in my days back then). But every year since I'd spent a year at Cambridge, I'd get a call to see what glorious accomplishments I'd racked up. My fellow Fellows had gotten early tenure and professorships, some at Harvard or Princeton. They had research groups and I had a cat with kidney failure that I treated with subcutaneous fluids each day, I small house my mom had been smart enough to encourage me to buy in super-cheap Tucson, and a surprising hidden talent as a swing dance teacher.  These yearly calls made me feel so low, so unaccomplished. 

And let's face it, the alumni updates from, well pretty much anywhere I had attended, were depressing. So, in honor of not having started crying filling out this online survey just now while marking "extremely poor" on a number of aspect of my grad experience, I've decided to put up my own alumni update. 

Or rather, two of them. Because, in the intervening years I've learned that everyone has their pain and failures, even the early tenure at Harvard folks, and that some are just better at masking it, or have it in more private aspects of their life.

Almuni update that makes me feel good about myself

 

"A" received both an NSF Graduate Fellowship and a Churchill Scholarship after graduating with a 4.0 GPA in Astronomy and Physics. She went on to get master's degrees in astronomy from both Cambridge University and the University of Arizona. While completing a PhD in science education, she was asked to talk about her research on the culture of communication in academia at locations as varied as IBM and Harvard, and internationally. She and her husband, daughter and beloved dog currently live in Zurich, Switzerland, where she works part time in academia and concentrates the rest of her time on raising her daughter in Lithuanian (her parent's first language), English and Swiss German. They have been enjoying traveling across Europe especially this summer - to Rhodes, Amsterdam, Torino, Istanbul and Stockholm. Also, she has recently decided just to love her 6 foot tall frame as it is and give up on worrying about fashion trends, instead following her creative instincts.

But really, wouldn't we all prefer the kind of alumni update that made the rest of us feel better about ourselves?

Alumni update that should make you feel better about yourself.

"A" did really well in college, on paper,  and managed to come away with a fairly bad grasp of physics. She rode the good GPA wave to a few fellowships, but wound up not publishing anything she felt she had made an intellectual contribution to in her 9 years as an astronomy graduate student. And as for the papers she made no intellectual contribution to, there was one. She spent many days, after her coursework was done, not getting anywhere in her research, and at least half of those not having the heart to even try. She developed a great eye for vintage clothing and jewelry that she managed to sell for a spell on eBay. She felt she slipped farther behind her peers, until she realized she was clinically depressed and quit her program. After picking a research topic in education that she had no topic-specific mentors for,  she defended her dissertation and left Tucson. Her husband got a job in Switzerland where part of the stipulation was that she get a part time, temporary job. The birth of her daughter ended in an unplanned C-section and her daughter woke up 12 times a night for 6 months. "A" was in a hopsital for a month, returned to antidepressants, and used daycare and a babysitter to help her survive the first 1.5 years of her daughter's life, even though she wasn't back to  work. She's been through a lot of counseling in the last 8 years. Recently, she had a miscarriage, so to try to make the best of not being pregnant or getting pregnant again for a while, she convinced her family to go on too many trips across Europe this summer. In between trips, she was often in bed and unable to even use a laptop, due to a ruptured disc in her lower back. And somehow strangely connected to this disc, she can no longer wear jeans or any other slim fitting pants.

Giving the pacifier back

My daughter loves her "nuggi" (the Swiss German name for a pacifier).

I don't love it. Sometimes I'm just embarrassed by it - that some other kids her age (and seemingly every last child in Istanbul) gave theirs up months ago. Granted, I feel embarrassed when I'm in that "my parenting is what makes her who she is" state of mind. Sometimes I just know we're getting close to 3 years old and both the pediatrician and dentist say that is the time to be done with it.

We've gone through so many cycles of my pushing to limit it. She doesn't use it anymore, even for naps, at daycare. And now that constitutes much of the work week. At some point when she was around 20 months old, after a long trip, we found ourselves in double-binky territory for sleeping, and I was beside myself with anguish about it. First world problems, indeed. Except that, if she awoke in the middle of the night, and couldn't find both pacifiers, I or M was called in, loudly, to help.

I imagined that by this time, close to 3 years old, she's be over them for naps. For a while, she was falling asleep in her stroller without them. But not for long.

Now the challenges of convincing her to go sit on the potty in the morning, and getting her cooperation to get dressed (generally and issue of mine, but vital when my back is acting up), have gotten greater. They are accompanied by a lot of whining (I'm not saying whose is louder), and me finding myself trying more time-outs for not putting on socks when I've asked. That isn't what I need time-outs for. And in general, I can always use some practice in negotiating and compromise.

So the nuggi is back in our life, no longer removed once she is out of bed (although for a month or two that helped her stay in bed a bit longer and me get that last 5 minutes of sleep I needed to not be a zombie). It stays with her as long as she is making progress on the taking off of the pajama, the diaper, the sitting on the potty, the getting dressed. And in the evening it calls her name, encouraging her to sit still a bit more while I finish brushing her teeth.

I get it, it is bad for her dental something or other. Looking at that last sentence, perhaps I don't get it. It is bad for something. But so is having a morning full of tears and cajoling and general unhappiness.

The pacifier has taken some ground back. For now. And if a second binky tries any campaigning, forget about it. No deal. But one nuggi, I've conceded that ground.

Art week

Sometime during my cousin's visit with us, she mentioned wanting to get back to more art in her life, and we talked about how we wished we did more creative things as kids. And I remembered that A loves painting at daycare, and that I hadn't yet broken out the watercolors I bought her a few months ago. So there we were, the whole family, sitting at the dining room table, painting.

From the fingerprints series. My cousin L, the interior designer, has always said that A has a great sense of color. I agree. Just wait, it gets better.

L and I agree, we're not so enamored of water color painting. It's hard. Not to overlap colors, to get the right thickness or watery-ness of paint, is not easy. And, although I can pencil-sketch the heck out of a portrait, I'm no color expert. Color is my weakness. Luckily, my child is a natural, and has been putting together great color mixes since she started mixing Lego Duplo blocks into towers.

I'm a better copier than "out of thin air" artist, so I started pulling out some art books from our shelves. M found a book of O'Keefe watercolors and we looked at it a few evenings ago with A on the balcony. We talked about the colors with her, and talked about what different paintings could be of.

At that night's painting session (which M was in on, too - we are officially water coloring fools over here in Switzerland, at our house), I mixed a bit of purple up, and check out what my kid produced, yet again, with no input from me. Suddenly, she's filling up the paper, horizontally.

That's my kid's painting. You can tell because it has an interesting combination of colors. If I was going to push this whole point, I'd call this her landscapes period. If I was going to obnoxious about it, I'd call it her "young O'Keefe" stage. 

Art week has been a lot of fun. I hope we do it again soon.