A Shot of a Clear Blue Sky

There is no doubt that art in its many forms has the power to move us, which is one of the reasons why I so lament the generally odious state of our culture of late. So rarely do I see a film that really stays with me anymore, but when I do see one, it tends to really set me on edge. Tonight was one of those nights. I was reminded of the way I so often felt in LA, sitting alone in an art house movie theatre (usually the Laemmle on Beverly) sobbing quietly - some film always pushing the sore buttons of the loneliness and isolation that weighs heavily on me when I am there. Now that, is another story, and yet still tied with this one, as what I'm really trying to get to is the whole human condition - the sharp, pungent, painful sting that is life. The twists that can shake our lives to their very foundations. It's almost irrelevant what film it was; what I'm really getting at is how vulnerable we are because we love -- something that has never been clearer to me than it has become since I had Nahanni.
Now, to appease curiousity, the film was Babel, about which I knew nothing but watched because of Cate Blanchett whom I will watch in anything. I was so easily pulled into the worlds portrayed there, the vastly differing lives of people in so many cultures, and although not exactly comparable, I couldn't help but draw parallels to what happened to Ez and I the day Nahanni was born, and because he is away this weekend, those same vulnerabilities I succumb so easily to on long stretches in LA washed over me tonight. I'm an easy mark these days - I put Nahanni to bed, exhausted after a long day of just she and I and then I see someone holding a child on TV and I miss her - it's like that. So there they are, in Morocco, she bleeding, dying before his very eyes and the most intimate scene I've seen in a million years - he's holding a bedpan for her and in this moment of intense vulnerability they kiss; they remember how much they are in love - it was heartbreakingly beautiful. So many things are called to mind for me - why it takes such big events to help us remember the most basic emotional things. I really understood that moment because when I returned home after the hemorrhage, weak as a kitten and vulnerable beyond words, Ez held me like that, he carried me to the toilet and performed all the things I could not do for myself. In those moments, open like a wound to the world I was at my most vulnerable and I saw not only how much he loved me, but how much I loved him, how often I have taken his gentle kindness for granted. In the film, I watched this man (played by Brad Pitt, achingly un-retouched, lit to look like a man and not a star) suffer the possibilities of this loss and I felt like I understood them in a way I could not have before all of this. I watched as they loaded her onto the stretcher and I knew the look in her eyes to be true and real because I had it on my own face that day - fear, exhaustion, confusion, more fear. There was a shot of the clear blue sky from her POV as they jostled her toward the ambulance and I instantly was transported to that same blue sky above me as the stretcher jerked its way through the grounds here on the way to the ambulance, how dichotomous it was to be covered in blood and shivering under such a beautiful blue sky. I watched him talk to his children from the phone in the hospital; trying to choke back all the emotions that flooded through him and I thought of Ez having to call everyone on the most momentous day of his life and try to sort through everything he must have felt. I thought of how you would do anything not to upset your children, how their pain must be felt tenfold through you even a continent away and I shivered at the thought that my child could ever suffer, be terrified, lost or injured.
I've said it before and I'll say it again - to have a child is to throw yourself under an emotional bus; everything we do is to protect them from ill and our greatest fears are that we might somehow fail. My friend Tracy always says that her mom would say 'You are only ever as happy as your saddest child' and I understand now how much that must be true. It strikes me what an incredibly intricate and complicated thing love is. The love we have for our children, our spouses, our friends, our parents. How vulnerable we all are to one tiny bullet, real or imagined, literal or figurative.

More on Sleep

SO...
An update on the continuing sleep saga (not really a saga at all actually, just the stuff that comes with a young baby) - two nights ago Nahanni and I really had it out. She went down at 9:30 pm and was up at 12:00 and I fed her, fine, no problem. Up again at 1:30 am - so I knew she wasn't hungry -- and thus began the battle of wills; something which is hard to win with a little person who hasn't learned about choice-vs-necessity, need-vs-want yet and cannot really communicate. I knew she wanted, she felt she needed and so we argued about it for about two and a half hours. I just decided that she had to start to understand that I cannot soothe her five times a night, it has just become too much for me and I've been like a zombie from lack of decent sleep. It was hard, trying to teach her that, but I was at the end of my rope. The first hour wasn't so bad, but then she started to get mad - and this is not a kid who gives up easily. Eventually I just turned on the light (after trying everything else but picking her up and nursing her) put my hand on her belly and let her look at me until she fell asleep. It was a tough go, but she did it - we did it.
Last night she went down at 7:00 pm, woke up at 2:00 am to feed and then slept until 6:00 am - not too shabby, I thought. It seemed like she'd learned already (not that I want to speak too soon or anything) and although there is much to wait and see on, I feel like she's a pretty smart little cookie and I have great faith in her. She's doing wonderfully on her naps, not even waking up the majority of the time and when she does (as she did three times in this nap already) she has been soothing herself to sleep almost instantly.
I know it is too early to claim victory, but I cannot help but feel that contrary to the true 'cry-it-out' method, we have slowly but surely been arming her with the skill to soothe herself, to trust sleep and still trust us. For today, I'm feeling pretty darned good.

It's the little things

Been thinking about milestones and how easily they get away from you. I've never actually written down that on July 4th Nahanni rolled over for the first time. Or that August 4th (her four month birthday) was the first day she sat up alone. September 13th, she did her first little crawl, after our hike in Lynn Canyon. September 19 she had her first taste of rice cereal. I was feeding her tonight, her little teaspoon of cereal and as she was opening her mouth toward it I thought of how quickly it will be that she just...eats. How easily these moments just slip into the depths of the past almost as quickly as they come. I'm trying to hold tight to them, as best I can. I love to get her ready for her bath, her chubby, rolled legs, rotund little belly, her crinkly little bum - the most gorgeous sights I've ever seen. So quickly she'll be big and all those little moments will only be the memories that I make them.
It amazes me how fast she is growing and changing. Already she says 'mum mum mum' with regularity and yesterday she said 'na-na' quite clearly (yes mom, I know you're thrilled with that one!). She's so interesting, how curious she is about everything around her - I love to watch it. Today I participated in a script polish that went from 10 am to 5 pm - I was a little frazzled just trying to wrap my head around how it would go - could she handle so much time away from me? I know she couldn't do it with a nanny, but I felt she had a shot with daddy - and she was a star. It was wonderful too, to come out at lunch time after finishing the first read-thru (with no emergency phone calls) and see my little girl in her daddy's arms, her darling little pink hat with the ears on it, one flopping adorably to the side - and she turned her little head, her increasingly dark brown eyes flashed brightly when she saw me and a huge smile flew onto her face - it made my day. Not seeing her for a few hours made that reunion so sweet - she grabbed me and planted a big wet kiss on my mouth, so hard and passionately that she bit me with her toothless gums. I am irretrievably in love with this child - it is an awesome thing.
No, we're still not sleeping through the night, but...it's coming. Eventually I won't even be able to get her out of bed - that's just how it works.

Scratch that...I'm tired

Ha, I'm just kidding.
Mostly.
I'd really like to sleep. I'm not trying to gloss over it with platitudes and pithy prose, but I am trying to see the silver lining in this all. I was up til 2:30 am and for some reason she woke up at 5:30 am wide awake and ready to play - and I just haven't been able to get back to sleep or even nap. I'm so tired I've started to stutter...
but there are moments like this of such gorgeous simplicity that it gets me through.

A Buddhist Approach

It's late. For me, I'd even hazard to say it's very late. Now, of all times, my body has decided it just can't sleep. It seems crazy to me, but perhaps it's my way of stealing time that is just for myself, a commodity of which I have had very little of late. I attempted to go to bed half hour ago or so, and as I lay in the dark, listening to the night around me, I remembered to say my thank-yous. It's something I've been doing more or less regularly for...well, about twenty years now [crazy that I could have been doing anything for twenty years, but that's another entry, I suppose]. I always say 'Thank you for another day and please give me many more happy, healthy and safe ones'. Sometimes there's more, but at the very least, there's always that - but tonight it seems to have sparked a thought for me. It's not secret that I've been struggling lately, just trying to figure it all out and there have been more than a few times in the last couple of weeks when I have felt at wit's end due to lack of sleep. I feel foggy and overwhelmed somedays, I can read the same thing ten times and still not understand it, I lose my train of thought, I forget simple things - I'm desperately tired. It's been hard; it's well-known that one of the best, most widely used methods of torture is sleep deprivation, and so it's clear that I've been suffering and though I am insanely in love with Nahanni, I've been feeling really desperately in need of solutions to get more sleep, to get some separation from her. Tonight as I lay in the darkened room {Baby Sleep tip #457: keep nighttime rooms dark!} listening for the sound of my daughter's breathing in the cool fall night, I had a flash of insight. Those few simple words, that simplest of gratitudes called to mind for me something I recall from a book by the Dalai Lama, where he talked about living life as though every day were your last. I thought to myself - if I were to have no more days, would I not lament the energy I have spent worrying and fretting these few short months? If I were to die tomorrow, I would instead wish to have relished those seven little minutes I spent with her tonight at 11pm, holding her warm body in my arms as she nursed, her soft little hand sweeping the dark air in search of my face, her clumsy caresses, her mouth yawning in the dim light. I think suddenly those minutes would become among the most precious I've spent in my life.
One of the mommies in the mommy group I started here in this community (Raven Moms, Unite!) finally delivered her long overdue baby this morning, 2:11 am, here at home (inspired in part, she said, by my story and some of the other moms who'd had home births) and I popped in to see them and bring some things Nahanni had outgrown. There she was, holding this brand new little girl in her arms, 8lbs exactly - and I thought of how I was there just yesterday, wasn't I? But it wasn't yesterday; it was nearly six months ago already and so many of those everyday things you think you'll never forget have faded into the patina of the past, their edges softened like stone caressed by the steady hand of water.
So here I am. It's not perfect, but it's not horrible either. It's hard, but not impossible and no matter what - this too shall pass. I'm trying to live it happily, to stay in the moment and still push through. I'm trying not to feel overwhelmed by things that won't ultimately matter, by things that my memory will simply alter for me anyhow. Yes, I'm tired, yes I'm addled. But I am also incredibly lucky. I have a really amazing child for whom I am still the centre of the universe. She is happy, content, curious, funny. She has begun to search out my mouth, grasping my head in her tiny hands and pressing her wide open mouth to mine for the soggiest, most disgustingly wonderful kisses I have ever had. It is in those moments, wiping the slobber from my laughing face that I remember that it is all worth it.
Of course, I'll appreciate it even more when I've had a bit of shut-eye...seven hours, anyone? That's not too much to ask, is it?

Visiting, thinking, wondering...obsessing?

I don't think you can spend time with your family from far away, with four generations of women together, see your grandmother as 'old' for the first time...all of it, without starting to really think about things. It's hard for me to not contemplate my parenting when I spend time with my parents, to think about this generation as well as those behind me which have led to me here.
I'm feeling insane in so many ways - insane from so much time with just Nahanni while Ez finishes up the season on the river, from the visit in which she wouldn't let anyone have her but me, from being home again with a baby that's all out of sorts and has her first cold to boot, from not sleeping enough...which gives me lots of time to brood over my choices about what is leading to the not sleeping, to her making strange, to all of it.
I know it drives Ez crazy when I second guess things, but I can't help but wonder if the choices I've (we've) made are currently biting me in the ass, if somehow I was misled about how crucial it is to form strong attachments with my child. As my mom said recently 'Oh, it's working - she's attached alright!' and it is true - this child lives in a world that clearly revolves around mommy - so much so that I'm starting to suffer and wonder if I should've just stuck her in a crib from day one like so many others do, like everyone seems to be implying I should have done. Then she'd be sleeping through the night, then she wouldn't make strange, then she'd blahblahblah...
I don't even know how much of it is true - I mean she is still only five months old, she's still a very small baby. I look through and the books seem to be saying that most kids are in fact not sleeping through the night at five months, they still need more food in the night, and that sleeping through the night is actually 5 hours straight anyhow. I feel like I just don't know what to think at all and I'm just driving myself nuts.
I keep thinking about the whole 'attachment' thing and really, when I think about it, how could she not be attached even if she had been sleeping in her own room from the start - who else would she be attached to? Would she love me less? Would she even know the difference? My whole intention had always been to instill confidence in her, for her to feel safe and protected and to know that we were always here for her and she had no reason to ever be frightened or feel abandoned. When I toy at all with crying-it-out, the look in her eyes of fear and confusion speaks to my very soul - I can't bear it, and yet - how many of us were put in our cribs to cry? It's hardly like I wake at night in a cold sweat thinking back on it. One girl in my mommy hiking club put it this way - that she envisions it like a bow and arrow - you pull it closer to you so that the arrow flies farther and straighter - but here I am, and I can't leave Nahanni with anyone other than her Dad right now because she makes strange. I tried today to leave her with a sitter for two hours and after one hour I got the call I was almost waiting for. Did I screw up with the best of intentions? Have I ended up creating this or is this just a phase that many kids go through - making strange?
I suppose it's all about weaning - piece by piece. First I instill confidence and then I teach her to move out more on her own. I guess. That's the idea, isn't it? I just don't know right now - I feel so confused, I feel like I'm judging my parenting and, even if it is not true, I feel like others are judging my parenting. I suppose only time will tell - and perhaps then I'll have had enough sleep to articulate it in a fascinating yet light-hearted fashion for your amusement.

Love you, you're driving me crazy...

Back in Ontario visiting family - Nahanni was a star on the plane, not a peep, but she cried the whole car ride back to Sarnia and has given the hairy eyeball to anyone who tries to hold her - which is making mommy insane. At first I just felt bad, but now, I have to admit, it's just driving me nuts - I can't even leave the room without her starting to cry, and I feel terrible in so many ways - I feel bad for the people here who were so looking forward to meeting her,to my mom, my grandma, to her auntie Jenn who bought her presents and couldn't wait to cuddle her..for myself who can't even go pee for goodness sakes. This could be a long week...