Moths to a streetlight

What a tiring thing, it seems, to be constantly flying towards the light, at 1am, bouncing off it, and then coming back for more. How long do those 5 months per lamp do that for? Is it just an hour per month and then they've gotten out of their system and go snuggle into moth-nests somewhere? A nice, cool leafy plant or tree, maybe.

Or do the same moths keep going, around and around and around the whole night until they just die of exhaustion?

Let's hope it is the former and they're all just getting their daytime frustrations out at the streetlamp elliptical machine before going off to sleep.

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.

4am yoga

It has been a while since I've been so present during the little, 15 minute yoga routine a physical therapist gave me for my back. I have yet to return to her for our last consult, 4 months overdue now, partially because I keep "falling off" the yoga horse and never seem to sustain a 2-week practice. And she said to call her once I'm doing the routine each day for 2 weeks.

I'll do it for 10 days straight, now after A goes to sleep (sometimes as quietly as possible in her room while she goes to sleep but only if she is no longer aware enough of her surroundings to pop up like a meerkat, glow-in-the-dark nuggi hanging in mid-air), and then on day 11 will just be too tired, or fall asleep while I'm getting her to sleep. And then one day missed turns into two, and then into a week.

At this point often I am still having enough events per day that could strain my back, that I do it. Last week, on a 10 day hiatus, the end of a soap foam massage at a spa saw me almost slip off the stone tablet I had been laying on and crap! Ow. Reset the clock, can't call the physiotherapist until I feel a bit better (definitely no yoga that night), and now I am on day 5 again.

But last night I was just tired. I hadn't gotten a nap. Instead, I'd been prepping for German class, which is still one of the more engaging activities in my week. Once the 11:45am drowsy wears off. The teacher is really good at using little games of socializing to get us writing and talking - yesterday it was "2 truths and 1 lie" and I managed to fool both people I was playing with. I have not, in fact, ever flown a plane for 30 minutes. I have, however, swum in the Amazon river, and almost knocked over Stephen Hawking.

So German class went by, and soon I was meeting my mother- and sister-in-law to pick up A at school, then found myself heading off for an hour's break into town so the three of them could interact. And then it was dinner, and bedtime routines and goodbyes and I just wanted to sleep as I was laying in a dark room, waiting for A to drift off.

Now it is 4:45am, and I have been awake for about an hour, and spent the last 45 minutes in the living room. Sitting in the dark, watching the lights of Zurich, eating some yogurt snack from the fridge. And generally unhappy that I was awake and seemingly not settling. So I did my yoga. It just takes 15 minutes, which although that can feel like a precious long time at 9pm, feels like nothing when you know you have at least 45 minutes before you have a hope of falling asleep again.

And it was the most present I have been in my yoga routine for, what, months? Maybe I've only felt that "there and only there, moving and stretching, breathing and not thinking about 100 other things" a few times in the 8 months I've been doing it. It was great. And then I'd notice how great it was, and bolstered by such a personal "win", start thinking of what I could do next during this awake 45 min. I'd write in my blog! And then, maybe tomorrow I'd make a few changes in my routine, in my interactions with M and it would be a great day. I'd get more work done, and oh I still haven't done X and Z! But, unlike most times, I managed to get back into that "present" of just breathing and stretching some 5 times. Which is rare for me.

Tack that onto actually feeling sunshine on my legs as I walked in town on my furlough yesterday afternoon, on a street I am usually pushing A's stroller down and not noticing much of anything subtle about myself, and having a chance to write for 15 minutes (with pauses and edits, even!) and I'm suddenly drowsy and calm.

Always wondering, not often saying it

If this is not the first blog post of mine you have read, chances are you know already that I am fairly open about my depression, about anti-depressants, and issues surrounding both. And I stopped taking anti-depressants again, after almost a year, a few weeks ago.

Like the last time I did this, there was the feeling that life was way more bearable and stable, that enough things had changed in those 10-11 months, that it was time to try without the medication. And as last time, there was a tiny fear of taking off the training wheels I'd been happily tooling around with for almost a year. How would I feel? Would I start getting angry with A again? Would I start crying again? Would it have been a mistake, and maybe show me that I'll likely be on the medication from now on, at least until my daughter it a lot older?

I probably told 3-4 people that I went of the medication. I told M, my cousin, and a few friends here in Zurich, one of whom has gone through a lot of similar ups and downs as me. They are people I trust to know this, mostly because they have been the ones I didn't get the pity looks and the "ohhhh, you're still on the medication, huh? That's too bad..." vibes from whenever I spoke of how I was feeling. Just a suggestion, if you have a loved one who is on anti-depressants, and is speaking about it openly, not with shame (even more so for those who are ashamed of it), talking to them like this does not help. It isn't nice, it isn't kind, you're not really interested in their well-being if you haven't taken the time to realize how monumentally their struggle was before the drugs and how much better they feel now. So stop it. It is not that different from "ohhh, you're still single?" or "ohhh, you are still in that relationship you hate?" No matter how nice a tone a person tries to put on those statements, they are all, still, essentially, judgmental. They show your disappointment about something in the person's life.

Aaaaanyway, the withdrawl from the Cymbalta sucked. Lots of nausea, even now once every few days, out of the blue. A nasty 4 hours of stomach cramps, maybe. Other than that, I'd love to say I didn't notice any change, but there were small ones.

As I was boarding the plane to Copenhagen a few weeks ago, I could feel a little wave of sadness about something I had been thinking or reading, when I said "goodbye" before my trip to A, I cried, at the thought of something happening to me on the flights and not coming back, and every few days, I can feel the not-so-happy hormones surround my thoughts. It reminds me of the swings in the park. When A sits on them, her feet wave freely about, high above the gravel. When I sit on them, if I don't lift my legs, my feet drag in the gravel. Being on anti-depressants was like having shorter legs for a while - I didn't have to put in effort to lift myself out of the sad gravel, and pretty much every day my feet were clear of it.

So, for a few weeks, I've felt my long swingset legs come back, and that has been ok. Sure, I wish I was a more unflappable person, but my brain doesn't work that way. And it is the reason M and I always kiss goodbye when we part in the morning, because many years ago I was keenly aware of how fragile life is and I wanted to make sure we had a proper farewell. Every day. Now it is just habit, and a nice one, even if one or both of us it upset with the other.

Then a few days ago, Monday afternoon, I had to get A from daycare early because of a holiday, I had stupidly brought her big tricycle for the park but not thought about having to corral that and the stroller on the buses and trams, she was on day 5 of a nap-strike (which is now over, thank everything!), I hadn't napped, and I almost lost it, 5 minutes after pickup, on the way to the bus. I couldn't find M on the phone or text, and his building was locked (because of the holiday) so I couldn't leave one of the vehicles there, or even go cry in his office for 5 minutes.

Shit. Shitshitshitshit. I don't want to cry. Why do I feel like crying? Do I have to go back on the meds again so soon? Can I not even handle one messy 30 minutes? Shit. Don't cry! That's dumb, not actually crying doesn't mean I'm not depressed if I then spend all my energy trying not to cry. How will I know if I have to get on the meds again? What limit of shitty behavior or mood will I set this time? I don't want to wait too long? Oh, I'm so disappointed in all of this. Crap!

It passed. I went about the rest of the afternoon, lugging that tricycle around, and then catching A as she sped across the park and down the block, and it was tiring, but fine. 

Last night I got my period. 

Big, huge, loud sigh. A once a month, weepy afternoon, I can handle. I can learn to take more easily and gently. I can cancel all plans but those that help me out. It is probably not the depression again, after all. But from now on, now that I've realized that I might have this tendency long-term, now that I've been on medication twice, I'll always wonder.

(The image is a painting by Chris Bellamy. It is already sold, but if I weren't I would want to buy it. That is what it looks like to me when I walk in the forest without my glasses on.)

That first time must have been a fluke

You know sometimes you have such a strong experience that it colors how you remember all subsequent experiences with the same person, place or event? Yeah, I think that is what Baby A's first flight did to my at Christmas time. She was a bit feverish from a vaccine shot, and slept most of the time. On the first flight to Frankfurt, then the one to Toronto, then in Toronto. A lot. No jet lag, really snuggly baby. I got a lot of sleep, as a result, and thought "Hey, my kid is a great traveler!"

Well, I think I'm ready to admit she's just a regular toddler traveler. Because after another long flight, I finally opened my brain enough to remember that apart from that first flight, she has screamed to sleep on every flight since. Ah, the power of positive thinking. It only took me 10 more flights to realize that. I guess it was good to have the illusion for the time being and it probably helped me more than anyone, to feel like it was going to be fine.

Not that she's a maniac on flights. But it is good to remember that if it isn't night time and the plane isn't all dark, and she isn't a bit sick, it will take a bit to get her to wind down, and that will include some crying. And making sure she eats enough fiber on flights is going to take a bit more work than I put into it this time.

Oh well. At least she can eat prunes straight out of the bag now.

As for the louder-than-necessary comments from the business man in back of us on the one flight she just drifted off to sleep on, about "the earphones don't work! when does the entertainment system come on so I don't have to hear crying?", turns out my baby is less of a whiner than you are. That is all.

Crying it out

When we first got the Pupper from the Human Society, we signed her (and, more importantly, us) for an 8 week training class. The head trainer was amazing, equally patient with dogs and their humans. The other trainers helping him liked dogs, but often got short with us humans. And really, the class was meant to train the humans to carry out commanding correctly. This class was a no yelling, no punishment class. All positive reinforcement. The basic principle was very simple and applied to every command:

1. Say (or hand motion) the command;

2. If the dog does nothing, you do nothing;

3. If the dog does what you wanted (perhaps coming by a gentle pull of the leash toward you those first few times), say "Yes!" all excited and happy as soon as the command has been executed and give a cookie.

A few years later, at a dog park in Tucson, the I saw the power of positive reinforcement used for a horrible purpose. A "trainer" was working with a man and his dog just outside the fence of the dog park, having the man yank the dog's choke chain harder and harder each time the dog misunderstood a command to heel while walking. Harder, harder, until I was close to an anxiety attack for the poor animal and the beautiful German Shepherd was cowering and whimpering. It was grotesque. And the "trainer" seemed to be having fun, calling out "yank! yes! yes! harder! good! good job!"

It was the first time I'd had the nerve to say something to someone else about their behavior and I managed some wavering "if you don't want to hurt your dog while training, the Human Society has great classes. This isn't training, this is abuse" the former directed at owner, the latter at "trainer." Of course the "trainer" got pretty upset with me, and I don't know if I got through to the owner. I was shaking, heart pounding.

Only later did I realize the irony of the situation - the dog had learned nothing through punishment and pain. The real results came from the positive reinforcement. The trainer was getting the owner to be more and more violent with his dog by applying the same principles our dog class teacher had - praise and encouragement. You can bet that owner would have walked away had the "trainer" said something like "you idiot, can't you even hold your dog right?" I wish I had realized that at the time.

Just as before, the dark side of positive reinforcement hit me this morning as I was reading a moms' forum about using the Cry It Out method, applied to kids who just kept crying and getting sick with despair. I've mentioned before the one incident where Baby A smacked her mouth on the crib and started bleeding which convinced me that Cry It Out just wasn't going to work for us - it went past my limit. I'd rather have a kid that wakes up more often than a bloody kid. And just like with that dog, I don't think Cry It Out works on all kids, and that it is harmful to keep using it no-matter-what. That can just land certain parents and kids in a traumatic place.

But these books, be they about Crying It Out or other parenting techniques that encourage us parents to do things that make our kids cry, bleed, throw up, get so upset...they are doing the same damn thing. Using positive reinforcement on us the readers, the parents ("Keep at it! Nothing comes easily! It's okay for kids to cry! You're a better parent for doing this!") to get us to do things to our kids that may not be where we wanted to be. That put our relationship with our kids in conflict. That encourage us to stop listening to them, in lieu of listening to some author who does not live in our house with our child.

I know, sometimes we have to say "No" and kids will cry. A lot. But I'm realizing that I want to be a whole lot more skeptical about books and blogs and "experts" who prey on my desire to be a good parent to encourage me to do things that make me uncomfortable.

On being human

When I told friends that M got baby A to laugh for the first time, one of them emailed me to say that in Navajo culture, the advent of the first laugh is considered a special moment when the child truly becomes human. And the person who gets the first laugh from a baby is supposed to throw a party to celebrate. Well, the party has yet to be thrown, in line behind so many others we have yet to throw - to meet our neighbors in the building, to have M's students and postdocs over, etc.

Last night was another tough one for baby A, and us, by extension. She seemed to have a lot of painful gas and would cry for 10 seconds, whimper, scream, then fall asleep again on the bed next to me, or on my chest. This went on for a while, and at times I was frantically looking for her binky in the dark, because I was sure that this time she might finally fall off to sleep for longer, taking me with her. Well, usually we have 2 glow-in-the-dark binkies in her room - one in her possession and one for when that first one gets chucked into some far corner of the room, under or behind something and we can't see it glowing. Last night, however, at bedtime, we couldn't find anything more than 2 non-glowing binkies.

Seriously? Two?! And neither glow?! This is cause for great alarm in our still sleep deprived household. Nothing is open at that hour, and we'd better be ready to find a stealth binky with our hands and knees in a dark room full of hiding places if things get unsettled.

Luckily, the unsettling of last night didn't have to do with plain-old, sub-glorious binkies. M wound up feeding baby A a bottle and rocking her upright until she fell asleep and the rest of the night went pretty well.

This morning, after a heartier than recent breakfast, baby A was playing in the dining room as we were getting her ready to leave for daycare. She started playing with a cardboard box by the window, and as M went to go help her open it, they both gasped. And he started laughing. "Guess what's in here."

I had no idea.

Baby A stuck her hand in, and came out with 4 glow-in-the-dark binkies.


We both started laughing. She's been creatively stashing all sorts of things lately, in her onesie (toy cars from school), in her diaper (not just things coming out of her back end), in her pajama feet. And the girl is most serene and grounded when she has one binky in her mouth and another one in her hand. Having 4 of them to stash in the cardboard box must have felt like a mindfulness meditation workshop to this baby.

I remarked to M that she's getting to the age where she makes him laugh. A very important quality to him. Especially these days, when things can still get overwhelming, and it still feels like a trudge to bedtime some nights.

And he said, "Yeah, she makes us human again."

Bedtime blues...and red (shudder)

Baby A and I had quite the afternoon yesterday. Let’s just say a lot of crying happened around nap time. And while I had a bloody nose in the morning from my cold, she managed a bloody mouth from something she did while seriously protesting being in her crib. I have no idea how she did that to her gums, but I was pretty freaked out when I first picked her up in the dark and saw dark red on her chin.

Other than those 2 minutes each of bleeding, we were okay, but in the middle of the 5-step process that she seems to need most days to fall asleep, I just realized I can’t keep doing that. It makes me tired of being a mom. Hold her, sway her, bounce her while walking, bounce her while sitting, let her roll around on the big bed to settle down. It is too much, too many options, and it turns her into a too finely-tuned baby. Not for her, but for me.

Really, as with most other realizations, it is a realization about myself, borne out of frustration. I’m not super-mom. I don’t have the patience, when I’m tired (especially then…I don’t do tired very gracefully), to go through all those steps calmly. I just want it to be over, at least for my part to be over. I want to sit down, lay down, just rest, even if on the floor. I realized it is okay for me to be the kind of person who is not so great when she is tired.

And while it is my responsibility to keep trying to get enough rest, and put sleep ahead of a lot of other things I might also want to do, it is okay that Baby A has to meet me a bit more towards center. Not because it is fair or not, but because I can’t do more than that sometimes. Because her mama is imperfect and that is totally okay. It is okay that I disappoint her sometimes and that she knows I’m not superwoman. And I think it is much better than being angry with her, for me to fall short of some of her ideals.

Don’t get me wrong. I don’t think my 9 month old baby should learn to put on her own pajamas, make her own bottle, or even scream herself to sleep. I just mean that I’m coming to the realization that it is okay that I may only have enough in me to sway with patience, and I don’t have to be embarrassed (and then angry at her for asking more of me), if she cries a bit more than if I could bounce and walk, too. This morning, she cried a bit in my arms, screamed a few times while arching, and then, as I kept really nicely calm and kept swaying, she readjusted once more in my arms and fell asleep. It was all I had for her, and it turned out to be enough. She met me a little bit closer to center.

We’re starting to read a few books (I know, I know, but they come recommended this time) about sleeping and babies. Granted, head hitting the crib bars or whatever that messed up thing is that brought about a bloody gum, we’re not going to let her go that far when we can help it. This baby isn’t made to be left completely on her own to figure out sleep. But her mama isn’t made to completely put her to sleep every night, either. And that is okay. She doesn’t have to make it to some classic, babble for 5 min and drift off stage. Because I don’t think she can handle it. And in our family, I’ve decided that it is okay for each of us to have some things we can’t handle and for everyone else to pitch in (in whatever way they can, big or small) on those issues. It is part of self-acceptance for Baby A, learning by seeing us accept our own limits. Without shame or guilt. Practicing being complete beings, just as we are.

My main point….I’ve come back to this paragraph after a day. My point is that I’m going to start acting like (and hopefully eventually believing that) my okay-ness, or good enough-ness, is intrinsic. That I start with that, just by being, existing. And that then my actions, my capabilities are okay and good enough by extension, and not treating the whole matter the other way around. Until now, I have spent most of the time judging whether I’m okay as a mom (or student, or woman, or person) based on my actions. And that just leads to a lot of harsh judgment. Kind of like what I read once about love. If you are constantly trying to decide whether someone loves you enough based on their actions, you’re going to constantly be either doubting or disappointed. They will always fail you in some way. Instead, if you start with the assumption that they love you, then you are free to look for all the other reasons that he didn’t bring you flowers or she didn’t get you that thing you like so much.

So, sleep is going to change somehow. We started last night by putting teeth brushing, face washing, and pajama wearing a bit early, and then all of us piling on the big bed in her room to quietly hang out until she got sleepy. So more wind-down for Baby A, less crying about being tired and having a diaper changed, and at least last night, a baby who fell asleep with 4 minutes of walking/swaying by me. That I can handle. We’ll see what else the books have to say.