Balancing Motherhood, Yoga and Writing

Spooky. There really is something going on with computers. First my home PC goes on the blink, and has yet to be resuscitated. Now I’m typing on a public access computer and the blog post I’d just half-written disappears. What’s going on? I’ll start again then.

Seriously, though, the past couple of weeks of being unable to communicate regularly with the electronic world has been a welcome hiatus. Sometimes the only things that stop me being too busy, and finally ‘taking it easy’, are technical breakdowns and illness. I’ve had both recently: a bout of mastitis (an infection of the breast tissue not uncommon in breastfeeding) and a completely dead computer.

I’ve been forced to take up residence on the couch, catch up on my reading (I haven’t read a whole book in a couple of days, for a long time), read countless books to the Pibler because I was incapable of much else, and rediscover the joys of handwriting, rather than typing.

I’ve gone back to the basics of letting pen move over paper, a la Natalie Goldberg and Julia Cameron - ‘just shut up and write’ (i.e. no ‘but I don’t have a computer’ excuses).  I’ve been brainstorming ideas for non-fiction works, re-vamping my novel’s ideas - inspired by Paulo Coelho’s brilliant The Witch of Portobello, a birthday gift, to start writing it again - and continuing with my short story collection.

Of course, I’ve not written much during the mastitis, feeling too nauseous, exhausted and feverish. Despite all my breastfeeding knowledge, experience and training, I couldn’t shift a blockage in my right breast and ended up with mastitis; having to go to the hospital on Saturday night and getting antibiotics. I would have ridden it out stubbornly but my partner was insistent.

In a way I’m almost glad to have had the experience though, because I feel much closer to the Pibler after a few days of spending so much one-on-one time with him, doing very simple things and slowing down so drastically. He seemed concerned about me and gave me lots of ‘cuggles’; he couldn’t seem to understand why I wasn’t bustling around as usual but just lying there. Also, I now have first-hand experience of a breastfeeding problem that I had only theoretical knowledge about, which will be useful in my breastfeeding counselling. I begin the training course on Monday and am very excited about it!

My Kundalini Yoga practice has fallen by the wayside due to sheer physical inability, but I have mostly kept up my  meditation practice. Unfortunately my committment to the 1000-day sadhana meditation only lasted weeks, as last night I fell asleep putting the Pibler to bed at 9:30 and woke up at 3 am, thus missing a day of the meditation! I was disappointed but it was the first time I’ve had more than 2 hours sleep at a time, for ages, so I couldn’t be too upset.

Recently a friend sent me an interesting article about toddler speech development. Apparently toddlers who use more gestures at 14 months, are more likely to have a well-developed vocabulary at school age.

This goes against the general folk wisdom that being more eloquent means using less gestures and more words. In fact, the article reports, a study by psychologists from the University of Chicago showed that families with better vocabulary use more hand gestures. I found this interesting because it concurs with what I’ve read about baby signing: that using baby signing actually facilitates the development of speech by creating more connections in the brain.

We started doing baby signs with the Pibler from about 6 months, including showing him books with pictures and attached signs. I’ve found that although he has only picked up two of the signs (’milk’ and ‘food’ - the only ones he really needs to know!), his speech has developed rapidly, and he often uses gestures to accompany his words. When I think about it, I also use gestures a lot when speaking.

The Pibler is now able to conduct very rudimentary ‘conversations’ with us, answering questions, initiating topics he wants to discuss, and having a little joke. It’s amazing to me that in just a few short months, since the age of one, he has gone from having a handful of very basic words, to being able to make most of his needs and desires known, and understand what we require of him too. This has been one of the most exciting aspects of parenting for me, and provides me with a lot of enjoyment.

That’s the last time I give my toddler more than a tiny block of chocolate. I received some birthday chocolate in a parcel from his grandparents and couldn’t resist tucking into it this afternoon. The Pibler is very partial to sweet things and I gave up shielding him from them completely some time ago. But then his dad gave him some more later on - and as a result he’s been manically racing around the house, romping on furniture and squealing with delight, until nearly 9 pm.He’s finally conked out - but I’ve learned my lesson. That much sugar (and the caffeine in cocoa) racing around in such a little person’s body is not a good idea! 

We spent a pleasant morning at a friend’s house in Hanover. The plan was that the Pibler would do some finger-painting as his little friend, ‘O’, likes to do. I was quite excited about his first foray into art. But he was more interested in ‘posting’ the paint tubs through the stairgate, than actually making any marks on paper. He did a few twirls with a brush and then was off exploring balls and brooms.  Later he had a great time playing peek-a-boo and bouncing on a bed with his little friend, who he gave a ‘cuggle’ (cuddle) before leaving. He is asking for many ‘cuggles’ a day now, but sometimes it’s not so much a bid for affection, as his way of asking to be brought up to our level, so he can see what’s going on!

On the writing front, another paragraph of mine has been accepted for publication on ‘Paragraph Planet’, this one to appear in March. It was inspired by the beautiful snow we experienced recently, and its aftermath. Once a writer for Paragraph Planet has had three pieces published, he or she gets their own page to publicise their work. So this will be my second piece!

I managed to write a little last night, doing a timed writing exercise with one of my short stories, and some free writing. I find timed writing exercises invaluable when I am struggling with writer’s block, procrastination and excuses. I simply say to myself: okay, I don’t feel like writing, so I’ll just do ten minutes. I set the timer and go, without thinking about what I’m writing. After 10 minutes I’m often ‘into it’ and ready to go on, but if I’m not, at least I’ve kept the momentum of the piece going, rather than just leaving it to atrophy.

I love getting together with other moms of young toddlers and sharing our experiences. One of my friends has a son who’s a poor sleeper like the Pibler, and also a prolific breastfeeder. Another friend is doing a PhD and so we talk about trying to balance the life of the intellect with a life of changing nappies, singing ‘The Wheels on the Bus’ and still having something left for yourself (and your partner…if you’re lucky).

Today we chatted about trying to find time for writing and study, and we talked about mothers who seem to do it ‘all’, for example doing Phd’s with newborn babies. I shared with my friend how I often compare myself to other mothers: either I feel guilty because I need other things in my life apart from my relationship with my child, which (I judge myself) means I am not ‘earth mother’ enough - therefore not a good enough mother; or I feel inadequate because I am not fulfilling my creative and working potential by doing so little work.

Both of these comparisons bring us up short, instead of helping us to focus on how we, in our individual families and lives, can bring balance and peace to our lives.  This evening during my meditation I became aware of how being a full-time mother with only very part-time, self-employed ‘obligations’, frees me up to enjoy being part of my community in a way I couldn’t do before.

I felt so lucky today. If I had a ‘job’, I would probably have been sitting in an office or something similar all day, while the Pibler was looked after by someone else.  But instead, I got to fulfil both my need for adult company, stimulation, and even intellectual interest, and the Pibler’s needs for being part of a community and learning from the adults around him, by spending the day at the Breastfeeding Drop-in and the Hanover Stops for Tea NSPCC fundraiser, both held at Hanover C0mmunity Centre.

I felt grateful that the Pibler has a regular place other than home where he knows people and can feel part of a broader ‘village’, that he is so comfortable and safe in that environment; I felt grateful for how many people I now know in Hanover and the sense of belonging that gives me; and for the opportunity to be of service to my community and feel part of something bigger than myself.

Somehow, when I was working I led a far more ‘me-me’, atomised existence. I tried to fit my writing and other hobbies around my work, but was frequently so drained by it that I neglected these things, instead spending all my evenings socialising. I have done volunteer work on and off for several years, but often it ended up feeling like just another obligation on top of my paid work, too much to fit into a busy life. Now I can enjoy my voluntary work - and indeed the concept of ‘work’ and ‘play’ have become a lot closer these days. There is less separation in my life, and the different parts are starting to work together far more efficiently. 

The Pibler has been especially cute today, full of smiles, laughter and jokes. He is now able to identify and name body parts - eyes, ears and nose - on both himself and his teddies (well, Eeyore and Pooh). 

Even without a historical context, he seemed to enjoy the little bit of the Royal Pavilion Tour that he, along with me and my sister, saw today (he slept through most of it). He pointed at and named the chandeliers and the fire, looking with interest at the paintings and elaborate wall designs.

I came away from last night’s sangha meeting feeling renewed. We did a lovely Kundalini Yoga meditation for communication, and I think our group is developing in a very positive direction. We have ideas for ways of bringing the tools of the yoga to the community, and have decided to meet more often, including a mantra session before each meeting.

Tomorrow I will be attending the Hanover Stops for Tea charity event to raise money for the National Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children. I’ve been inspired by the efforts of my fellow moms to organise this event, and tomorrow look forward to catching up with them there, and introducing my sister. I hope the noise of many toddlers is not too overwhelming for her! There will apparently be a ‘rock and rhyme’ session for the little ones too.

It’s half-term this week, so no writing course, but I’m going to try my best to get some more fiction writing done. It’s proving challenging without my own study space to write in, now that the Pibler is temporarily sleeping in my room and the TV in the background in the front room is so distracting. Still, I’m managing to write more in my journal which I had been neglecting lately, submitted another paragraph - on ’snow’ - to Paragraph Planet today, and managed to complete an article on toddler rainy day activities for Suite 101 yesterday. 

I’m enjoying that quiet time of the morning before the other adults in the house get up - yes, quiet because the Pibler is industriously ‘mopping’ with his toy mop around the lounge. I managed to do some yoga this morning although I have developed an awful cold. Yesterday I started a 1000-day Kundalini Yoga Sadhana meditation  which Yogi Bhajan called ‘Meditation for An Invincible Spirit in the Aquarian Age’.

Yes, this literally means doing the same 11-minute meditation for 1000 days - I think that’s about 3 years! I’ve done 40-day and 120-day meditations and yoga sets (kriyas) before, but this is the longest one I’ve attempted by far. Since it’s only a short one, I thought I could manage to fit it in, especially considering that I find time to write on here nearly every day.

Tonight I have a sangha meeting with some other members of the Kundalini Yoga community - teachers and teacher trainees. We have monthly meetings to discuss whatever concerns we have, issues and questions around teaching, and to meditate and connect with each other. The Kundalini Yoga community in Brighton is quite small, certainly far smaller than the London one, but that does mean that most of us get to know each other well.

Most if not all spiritual traditions emphasise the importance of the sangha (Sanskrit word for ‘community’) to keep the connection with the spiritual teachings of one’s tradition and support and motivate one another. I have found it to be crucial to access this ‘field of blessings’ as the sangha is known in the Buddhist tradition, and even more so today when facing the challenges of motherhood.

The only thing I find a little difficult is that very few Kundalini Yogi’s (that I’ve met anyway) are mothers themselves, at least in the literal sense, which can make it difficult for us to relate to each other’s challenges. After all, without parenthood responsibilities, the time to devote to spiritual practices has far more scope, and going off on retreats or weekend workshops is a more likely route to deepening the practice. Also, being a stay-at-home parent means a lack of money to do these things. That’s why I’m grateful for these sangha meetings, because they are free, and over time I hope we can build the sense of belonging and acceptance that I’ve experienced during my teacher training and at festivals such as Buddhafield.

I set off with the Pibler and his auntie today to explore some of the historical sights in Brighton, including one that I hadn’t seen before, despite moving here 4 1/2 years ago! Sometimes I start to take for granted the rich cultural heritage that is found in Brighton, and forget to keep investigating.

We intended to have a tour of Preston Manor, near Preston Park,  but hadn’t realised that it’s open only from April to September! So instead we walked around the St Peter’s Church graveyard, also at Preston Park, and went inside the church itself. St Peter’s Church dates to the 13th Century, although changes were made to the interior during Victorian times, with 13th Century wall paintings and an altar tomb dating from the 16th Century. I was interested to learn that the parish of the church used to extend all the way into what is now Hove, and that Preston was once a village separate from Brighton.

It was a lovely day - blue skies until about 2pm. Everyone got to do a little of what they enjoy: my partner got some much-needed ‘alone time’ at home; the Pibler ran around the children’s playground and did some walking and climbing around the bowling greens; and my sister and I had a proper catch-up and read tombstones in the graveyard while the Pibler had a nap. We also had a look at the Preston Manor Walled Garden, one of my favourite ‘haunts’ when I used to live in Preston, with its own ‘pet cematary’ dating back to the 19th Century.  Tomorrow we might go to the Brighton Pavilion Museum and maybe take in a movie.

I’ve temporarily abandoned nightweaning attempts with the Pibler, as I now have a cold and he is clearly struggling with teething, plus coming down with a cold himself. I felt we both needed our rest last night, and nursing to sleep is the most efficient way of achieving that for now. I have been trying the nightweaning for 2 weeks now and seen no improvement in his night wakings, and he has also started to cry more the last few nights, instead of less. With many things in parenting it seems to be one step forward, two steps back, but I’ve become more accepting about this and able to trust that someday, he will sleep better - I just don’t know when that will be! In the meantime, I’m trying to ‘keep it in the day’ and just enjoy my time getting to know my sister again, and watching the Pibler develop his relationship with his auntie.

At my writing course last night we discussed how to plan for longer fiction, mainly novels: tools which will be helpful when I eventually get back into writing my novel! Here are some of the ideas that I found useful:

Keep record cards of:

• details of characters: e.g. their likes, dislikes, appearances, fears, worst enemy etc
• what happens in each scene of the book, so that you could can keep track as you write, and avoid re-writing the same scene by mistake (believe it or not, this happens to a lot of writers, and I’m sure I’ve done it too).
• each subplot of the book
  
• details of the locations of the book: the setting should be as lifelike as possible, and a map of the place you write about can be useful.

Write a one-page synopsis to send to future agents -

Aim to write the synopsis near the beginning of your writing process, and include the ending. I wondered about what to do when you don’t know how it will end!

Vary the pace of the book

• Generally start with a hook into the story, not building too slowly.
• Try to end chapters on an unresolved question or suspenseful moment. You can even switch to a different subplot on the next chapter.
• Vary the mood - don’t be dark or light throughout the book.
• Vary chapter length

A little while ago, when I was working on re-drafting my novel, I read a book called ‘The Weekend Novelist Redrafts the Novel ‘ by Robert J. Ray. Unfortunately I only got as far as the second chapter before realising that what I had was hardly a first draft - more of a jumble, so I had to really start from scratch organising it all. 

I also realised that my settings and characters were unconvincing, which is why the list of ‘questions to ask your character’ that we received on the course yesterday, sparked off some interesting thoughts. At the moment, though, I’m focussing on my linked short story collection, the first story of which I have written a page so far.

The toddler years are so different from infancy. I’m suddenly interacting with an individual who has an opinion about everything, and who very  much knows what he does and doesn’t want to do.

His communication becomes more clear by the day as he learns to repeat more words back, and makes up for gaps in expression with gestures (for example, throwing unwanted food on the floor) and body movements. What I love watching is the way the Pibler throws his entire body into every movement and emotion, not holding anything back. Compared to the held-back, restrained way most of us move as adults, he is so in touch with the impulses moving through him, and there is complete congruence between what he feels and experiences, and what his body language tells us.

He hasn’t yet  learned to hide his feelings or show a different face to the world. When he doesn’t like someone or is not ready to interact with them, he turns his face away, but his unrestrained joy when he does want to interact is contagious. When he first met my sister on Sunday, he was wary, but within a couple of hours he was ‘asking’ her to pick him up (with upstretched arms) and playing with her. I look at him and feel both awed by this quality and sad at the inevitable fact that he will have to lose some of this free expressiveness in order to fit in in our social world.

The last few nights he’s been up a lot with teething, and this, added to my third attempt to nightwean him since October, has caused a fair bit of crying-in-arms. Over the past 2 weeks of nightweaning (stopping nursing/breastfeeding him between 10 pm and 6 am), I’ve noticed he is starting to sleep longer stretches in the early evening, though not yet the rest of the night, and is able to put himself back to sleep with minimum intervention from us, sometimes only raising his head to see I am there.

Nightweaning is by no means an easy path, but it’s far preferable to me as someone practicing attachment parenting, than any form of crying-it-out or controlled crying. A lot of parents think these are their only options when trying to reduce night wakings, but the crying-in-arms approach is a way to be there for your child and contain his emotions without abandoning him. I don’t want the Pibler to have night terrors and dread bedtime - I want him to have positive associations, and leaving him to cry alone would not accomplish that. I hear a lot of anecdotes about children who were forced to sleep alone early and, as they matured, were more ‘clingy’, wanting to sleep with their parents, whereas children whose need for night-time closeness was honoured, were keen to move on to their own bedrooms out of their own choice. I’m hoping that this will be the case with the Pibler. But right now it’s a transition phase and these are never easy.

I’ve just finished reading a book of short stories by Frances Hwang, called ‘Transparency‘, which deals with themes of modern alienation using the most beautiful yet spare prose.

The stories feature Asian characters, most of whom are American-born, with the gap between the generations as a cause of misunderstanding and distance. I was also struck by the gap between the characters’ emotions and thoughts, and their ability to reach out and express, and get what they needed. 

A conversation with the author, at the back of the book, inspired me because she mentioned studying creative writing formally, and how much it helped her to be part of a community of writers. As writing is such an isolated occupation, being with other people that validate the importance of the writing process is crucial to morale and continued creativity.

Two years ago I decided to do a Creative Writing Masters Degree at the University of Sussex, but was put off after finding out I’d have to pay foreign student fees. Strangely enough, in the month that I would have been starting my studies, I gave birth to my son. This year I qualify for residency so would be eligible for normal fees and associated bursaries/grants. I’ve been seriously thinking about doing this in the next couple of years. It’s something I’ve never allowed myself to do, despite loving words my whole life: immerse myself in the world of literature and learn all I can about how to write. Instead, I followed a course of study that I thought would lead to highly-paid work helping others: psychology. 

Most of my writing experience has been self-taught so far, and I think there’s a lot to be said for that. But I’m looking forward to being able to be part of an intellectual community again. I think that’s one of the things that’s hardest about being a mother for me (aside from the practically zero time alone): the intellectual part of me not being fed as much. I have to seek it out through parenting philosophies and books on the politics of breastfeeding.

Yesterday, though, my two worlds were able to come together at the breastfeeding drop-in as I was referred to counsel a woman with a breastfeeding-related issue, in my role as peer supporter. My book-learned and practical knowledge and training about breastfeeding was complemented by my ability to go beyond the intellectual, really listen to someone without preconceptions, and make creative connections. I don’t know how much I succeeded, although the mother did come to thank me later, but it felt good.