On My Mind

Guys, I’m back!

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Leute, ich bin wieder da, read my Whatsapp message to a group of climbing friends.

Not too long thereafter, I dusted the chalk from hands sporting four open blisters (rookie mistake: continuing to climb when the baby-soft skin first begins to rub away), went through my stretch routine, and packed up to go home.

I didn’t, but I could have skipped down the street. I could have grinned at every passing individual. My heart felt carefree. My body felt used, tired, worked. I took a deep breath and savoured it.

The last time I was in the climbing hall was on my birthday. I was at the beginning of my eighth month of pregnancy and had spent the previous months waiting for the moment when it would be time to stop. I’d felt a little too much pressure on my lower belly, a little too much tension on stretched muscles that I wasn’t supposed to engage. Objectively, the top rope route had been easy and boulders before it even easier, but I owed it to my baby and to myself to answer honestly when my belayer asked if climbing felt okay. “Actually no,” I replied then. “I think I’m done.”

And now, with my baby six months old, I was ready to come back. In some ways, ripping open my hands in exuberance was a reminder of what it means to return to a sport after so much time away: Go slowly.

While pregnant, my joints softened and pelvic floor stretched; my pretty darn good abs disappeared; my belly stretched out and knitted back together. My hands are no longer calloused. My body is not what it was.

Go slowly.

Early on in my pregnancy, I stopped climbing three days a week. And then I stopped climbing twice a week. I was content when I stopped climbing altogether, and surprised at the fury that took hold when I couldn’t start again once the baby was born. Everything that had been was no longer, and I didn’t recognize myself in the life that had begun. It took time until I stopped looking for who I had been and lamenting what I used to do. And then I found who I had become.

As a new mother, I am living in the very real luxury of a time that will not come again. I am home with my daughter, and this means that I can focus on her without having to worry about balancing work just yet. When I have the time, I can attend to myself.

Now that she is getting older, now that my body is fitter than it was, I’m back at the climbing hall, this time with a new appreciation for the time spent independently, in physical exertion, and as part of a community that knows a very different version of me. I’m a tiny girl’s mama, and a climber, too.

Parenting

Sleeping Like a Baby

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My friend said to her husband, “The baby is going to wake up soon. I just know it.” And, as if conjured, he did. I was duly impressed.

And then I became a parent and experienced sleep regression (I know, I know, it’s a progression in a shift from baby to adult sleep cycles and should be celebrated rather than dreaded, blah blah) and could set my watch to my baby’s nap times. Thirty minutes. Not one second longer.

My friend wasn’t the wizard parent I had long thought she was. (I mean, she might be, but not in the context of a napping four-month-old.) Out of seemingly nowhere, I found myself in precisely that phase of having an infant. Suddenly, I understood.

Add “sleep regression” to the list of reasons I now cringe upon hearing that someone “slept like a baby.” Unless something has gone very wrong, they have not. In fact, I would not wish sleeping like a baby upon anyone.

First of all, babies are terrible roomates. They are loud, particularly newborns. For such teensy creatures, they emit a whole range of grunts, snorts, and breathing sounds that could keep one awake, assuming one were not a freshly minted parent seeing double from sleep deprivation.

And babies wake up a lot, which seems to be forgotten by anyone who trills brightly that they’ve slept like a baby. The bright trilling indicates that, in fact, they have slept like an adult, which is the polar opposite of sleeping like a baby. Babies wake up because they have not yet developed the circadian rhythms that regulate the sleep-wake cycle, because they’re hungry, because they’re wet, because they have tummy aches, because they’re lonely, and because they’re babies. Part of what makes those first weeks so exhausting is that neither the parents nor the baby know why the baby is awake, and a process of elimination is sometimes needed to finally put everyone back to sleep.

However, babies are also quick learners, which means they develop circadian rhythms at around three months and thus have a “day” and a “night.” The longest sleep stretch happens at night, but baby’s night and mama’s night (I feel you, nursing mothers) sometimes only overlap for a very short time. And “sleeping through the night” for a baby actually means from midnight until five in the morning, which is less than optimal for the adults responsible for baby’s care.

But things get better! And you think you’ve got it! The loud newborn sounds fade (and you miss them), baby has a bedtime routine, bedtime gradually shifts earlier. And then sleep regression happens.

Sleep regression could be thought of positively: Baby is growing out of the 45-minute newborn sleep cycles and into the 90-minute adult sleep cycles. Yay! However, baby wakes after 30 minutes and cannot manage the transition to the next part of the cycle and is therefore awake. And suddenly, baby is awake a lot, meaning that baby also needs to be occupied. Huh.

The funny thing is, and this caught me completely by surprise, sleep regression seems to cause more of an upset during the day than at night. After all, baby has figured out night and day. But daytime naps are suddenly hardly enough time to eat something and take a shower/fold the laundry/clean the bathroom/call a friend/have a nap. Previously, baby slept a lot. Now, mama and papa are spending a lot of time trying to get baby to sleep. The rest of the time is spent trying to figure out what to do with a baby all day.

Like everything, this new rhythm gradually gets easier, too, and the new parents are now aware that regressions, which happen around important periods of development, are temporary and will pass. And babies start to do cute things, like wake up talking to themselves or kicking their feet up into the air or, as is the case with my six-month old this week, experimenting with the sounds they can make while blowing the tongue against the lips. Adorable though this is, I still would not recommend a baby as a roommate. That being said, I also can’t imagine being in a separate room, so I guess we’re stuck.

Point is: No adult is sleeping like a baby.

But being a baby does have advantages when it comes to sleeping, namely that babies can sleep anywhere. (And again, I know this isn’t the case for all babies.) On shoulders, in the car, in the snuggly, in the stroller, on the floor, on the couch, in the bouncer, in bed. When baby is young enough and tired enough, baby will sleep. And no amount of noise seems to disturb them. (I can hear you, parents of older babies and children. There are more fun times around the corner, I know.)

Perhaps this is what “I slept like a baby” refers to. But frankly, you don’t want to sleep like a baby. And new parents of babies are obsessed with getting baby to sleep like an adult. Half a year ago, I couldn’t have imagined how all-consuming this topic would be, and I now bristle at anyone who asks how my baby is sleeping – it’s a sensitive subject!

But if I’ve learned anything, it’s that as soon as I think we’ve adjusted to something, baby grows and changes, which is exactly what we want babies to do. My baby is sleeping like a baby, and that’s all there is to say about it.

On My Mind

Asked and Answered

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A few weeks ago, after years without contact, I wished an old friend a happy birthday via text message. She replied simply to thank me and wish me well.

I needed a moment to get over my disappointment. And then I needed a moment to ask myself why I was disappointed in the first place.

Several months ago, one of my oldest friends got in touch to ask how I was doing as a new mother. We hadn’t spoken in a very long time but our parents are friends, updating each of us about the other. She caught me at a moment when I was feeling a little lost, a little isolated. Her touching message prompted some writing back and forth, and we have had further contact since.

Not long after writing my old friend on her birthday, I considered reaching out to an ex-boyfriend. And instead of doing that, I asked myself why I wanted to.

Because I haven’t wished him a happy birthday in over a decade. Because I don’t know anything about him anymore. Because nothing happening in his life is any of my business, and vice versa.

I think I wanted to gloat a little bit. To have an opportunity to share the news of my beautiful daughter, to mention my partner, to let him know that I, too, had turned out just fine.

Pride goeth before a fall, they say, and I kept the birthday wishes, disguised as an excuse to show off, to myself.

I had reached out to one old friend in the hopes of rekindling contact, and her answer was a kind rejection. It was in my hands to ask and hers to answer, and she is as entitled to her answer as I am to asking the question. Without the question, one would not have the answer, and the least I can do is honour what I’ve been told.

Because that’s the thing about human connection: it really has to go both ways.

On loving, learning, and living