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.

A change in the weather

Well, at least I hope it is coming. It has been a cold, cloudy, wet summer here in Zurich, and this coming week is supposed to finally be getting above 70 F. And after all that low-sugar drama last week (which I am still trying to keep up a bit, while M joins in for his own reasons), I realized last night while I was doing dishes that...I was doing dishes. While M gave A her bath. I wasn't on the bed, just trying to recover for 10 minutes enough energy to put her to bed without all my body screaming to go to sleep. That I had enough energy and was just feeling, well, normal.

And again today. I'm not exhausted by the time we try to put her down for a nap, and although I do sleep for an hour, I haven't been feeling like it is all I can do to make it through the day. How long has it been since I've felt this way? Not even noticing the doing of a load of laundry because my back feels ok and I'm not so tired. Or that I decide to get some dishes done because there is some energy left just after I've had A for a while.

It feels good to feel this normal. Life has not been this normal for a while. My body definitely hasn't. And I haven't given myself a break for that. Until now, when I've realized that I just wasn't up to many daily tasks and I was doing my best to do what I could. I don't know if it somewhat due to the sugar I've stopped eating so much of, but it is also because my back is doing better. I'm still trying to not look at my iPhone constantly when I'm on a bus or tram, and to move around more. And my reproductive system seems to finally be calming down a bit from the miscarriage. I didn't realize how long that could take, either.

 I'm the last one up tonight, as the only member of the family to have had a nap (well, ok, the dog always takes the nap and the early bedtime), and I feel awake. I've started a new book (The Foremost Good Fortune) about a woman who moves with her husband and two small kids to China for a year. And has great doubts about it all, and talks very early on in the book about how she has a place she goes to in her head when she gets overwhelmed by her extremely active 4 and 6 year old boys. So she doesn't yell as much. And the world feels like a smaller place to me again as I hear from someone else telling me her struggles with motherhood.

A is continuing to talk more and more, and as she is really getting good at this potty training thing, she has decided to name her poops according to size. There was a Mama, Papa, Baby and puppy poop tonight. And then after dinner she decided we should all go into the living room and dance to the NPR music broadcast by wiggling, spinning, and shaking our heads yelling "No!" as loud as possible.

It is enchanting to see her own ideas and personality coming out. Her imagination, if you let her have it and just go along with it, and her ideas. A few weeks ago, during some meal, I told her to close her eyes to really taste something we were eating. Probably after a trip to a farmer's market, or in Amsterdam. And she took to it. And completely got on board with the idea. She tell us now sometimes to close our eyes. We all sit there, actually tasting cherry tomatoes as sweet as cherries, or a great cucumber or plum.

Oh! Plum season is back and once again I am in love. I've never liked the plums we got in the US. The purple, sour ones. But here, they are magnificent, and the purple ones are only one of 10 varieties you see for a few months each summer.

It is getting cold on the balcony, and dark. Time to think about going to bed. After all, the old lady who seems to be accompanying her cats (or someone else's cats) on a walk down the street is headed to the little plot of grass at the end of the block where the old man who used to let his dog poop on the sidewalk will be waiting for their evening canoodle (as M puts it), is on her way to the rendesvous. Closing time.

That dude outside

Am I normal? Is what I do, want, think, believe normal? Some of us spend time comparing ourselves to others to see if we are “normal” in whatever way concerns us. In work, in child-rearing, in dressing, in talking, you name it. We think that others know what normal is, or just are normal and we might not be. But here is the thing that really surprised me about normal when I read about it for my dissertation – it is constructed by everyone around us, including us. We have such a hard time finding “normal” because it is constantly being defined and redefined around us and by us.

A friend of mine was visiting us last week and recalled when I’d first met her (we were both still pregnant) and told her I was looking for a counselor locally who could deal with postpartum depression because I thought I was at higher risk for it. She said something about the exchange like “you just acted so matter-of-fact about it and I thought, wow, she’s this totally normal woman and just brought up counseling like it was nothing strange. I can do that, too.” It reminded me of something I think is related to academic culture – a person can redefine normal by acting as if what they are doing is normal.

The few talks I’ve given about my research, I’ve spent the talk sitting down in front of the audience. I chose to do this, first, because it is not what “normally” happens at an academic talk. It is one of those little rules that everyone learns by watching and no one ever has to be told by their advisor “you stand up when you give a science talk.” It happens at journal clubs, conferences and class presentations. Humans are good at picking up on this type of, everyone-else-is-doing-it, norms. When someone breaks this rule, people use humor, ridicule, or gossip to comment on it to others and reinforce that it was a break from what is supposed to happen. “What was X thinking, sitting down during journal club? How rude/strange/flippant/naïve.”

But I think there is a power to flipping the situation around, that only a few people ever use, but can change how the action is perceived. If the person engaged in the “deviant” behavior acts as if it is normal, instead of apologizing or being embarrassed, she can start to shake up the process. Suddenly, if X comes out journal club and says to the group “I sit because I concentrate better that way and I think it makes my journal club presentations better – isn’t that the goal?” maybe the group starts to rethink the point of the standing up “rule.” The real power to redefine (or challenge) the concept of sitting as normal, though, happens if X makes that statement in a tone of voice that is completely unapologetic, maybe even slightly mystified, the way you might defend a normal behavior to someone who doesn’t understand your culture. “Um, of course I picked up that piece of litter, that’s what we DO here.” Duh. If you can hold that line, other people start to waiver a bit.

So I’m saying there is a bit of a game of “who blinks first” going on. If you can hold your line, and act as if what you’ve just done is normal (whether or not you believe it), others start to think about what you’ve done normal. Or at least more normal than before, if you’ve broken some norm of behavior within your group. Whether you are a pregnant woman telling a new acquaintance that you are looking for a therapist and that you’ve been depressed in the past, or a science instructor who announces to the class that you keep having problems working with log-normal plots, if you can say it matter-of-factly and act as if it is okay, it starts to become ok. We are all involved in defining, and redefining normal, in the groups we are part of. This is a powerful role that can help us change all sorts of things around us.

Just to be clear, I’m not advocating doing this with sexually harassing your students, or spitting into someone else’s dinner plate. And there is an extreme example in front of me as I write this. A guy who has been talking to himself – and not apologetically, or embarrassed when someone looks at him – and after speaking with the café manager, seems to be collecting the white pebbles out of the mostly grey gravel in out in front. This guy is not going by many norms shared by those around him, for whatever reason. And at some point, he may get shooed away, or arrested, if his non-normal behavior keeps going. There is a point at which you can act as normal as you want about your behavior but you’re going to get in trouble for it.