Balancing Motherhood, Yoga and Writing

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. 

Reading my lifelong friend and fellow writer Rin’s new blog about her last year before turning 30, has got me thinking about how I feel about the end of my twenties. I turn 29 on the 22nd of Feb, and I must admit I feel sad about saying goodbye to being officially ‘young’.

It’s not as if I feel I need to have achieved certain things, before being satisfied with my life before 30. I’ve travelled (though not as much as I still intend to do!), worked interesting jobs (though am still working on becoming successfully self-employed), formed wonderful nurturing friendships, met my partner, and of course have a beautiful baby boy who is rapidly becoming less of a baby. But somehow it still feels like a loss, to let go of being ‘young’ and start to climb towards the second half of life, to let go of feeling I have all the time in the world to explore new horizons.

It’s a new phase, and I’m not sure what it will contain. I was inspired by Rin’s resolutions, to think about my own goals for this year. My sister’s arrival yesterday has re-connected me with a sense of continuity over time, an awareness that the person I was as a child is the person I am today, and that so many of my original ideals, dreams and ways of thinking about things, are still with me now, although in changed forms. This can be easy to forget, as the day-to-day life I’ve created for myself in Brighton has such a momentum of its own.

So, here are some of my intentions for the year I am 29:

To be gentle with myself.

To prioritise time for meditation each day.

To work on my communication so that is more loving, compassionate and honest. 

To keep developing as a parent, remaining open to transforming everything that prevents me from being the parent I want to be. This one, I think I couldn’t stop from happening!

To continue developing my writing skills and extending my ‘writing platform’ online and elsewhere.

To be open to opportunities and experiences that I may not have foreseen, remaining flexible and not getting stuck on particular outcomes. Being gentle with myself in all of these processes.

I’ve been reading a fantastic book, “Letting Go as Children Grow” by Deborah Jackson, author of “Three in a Bed ” which inspired me earlier in the Pibler’s life to continue co-sleeping as a way of life.

“Letting go as children grow” is so comforting and reassuring to mothers like me who like a more ‘hands-off’ approach in our parenting. I’ve sensed instinctively from the beginning that the Pibler can be trusted to grow in his own time and his own way, and that I am just there to facilitate a loving, accepting atmosphere for that. Still, I’m surrounded by messages from my culture that advocate a ‘hot-housing’ attitude towards children, ‘cultivating’ them with lots of ‘educational activities’ and structuring all their time, making it hard for me to keep the faith at times.

That’s why books like this, and of course “The Continuum Concept , are so valuable. They remind us that our parenting is socially situated, and that we can question the assumptions so deeply embedded in our society. One of these is our reliance on ‘clock time’, structuring (and over-structuring) our lives around the clock. Constantly being geared towards the results of our actions in a future time-frame, rather than focussing on the process here and now, as our children are still able to do. This results in parents often rushing their children around and interrupting their process, not giving them time and space to explore and learn naturally. A young child’s sense of time is entirely in the now, and we can learn a lot from that.

Today when I took the Pibler to the park, we had fun looking at half-melted snowmen (covered with lots of dirt!), dogs and a man mending a football goal. The Pibler stopped to watch what he was doing, and I realised that usually I might have hurried him along after a few brief moments. But this time I hung back while he watched, and ended up having a rather nice conversation with the guy about his two-year-old son’s explorations into stranger’s gardens - and how at that age they just want to see everything! When the Pibler had had his fill of observing, we moved on. No stress, no haste - we didn’t have a train to catch, after all - and we remained in harmony.

My resolution at the moment is to try and not over-plan our days, leaving space between activities for the unknown and surprising. When the Pibler starts to walk more than be in the pushchair, this will become even more essential, as I’m told the ‘dawdling’ phase will begin! I’m sure it will be challenging to my productive mindset, but I’m looking forward to our co-explorations into the nature of things: him seeing things for the first time, and me re-seeing them

January is turning into a month full of reconnecting with old friends. My life-long best friend is visiting along with her mom, an old family friend, this weekend, and tomorrow one of my best friends, who I met at university ten years ago, is coming down from London.

Today, I enjoyed catching up with my ‘mom friends’ who I’ve not seen over the Christmas period, at the breastfeeding drop-in where we volunteer or attend. A newcomer to the drop-in, mother of a tiny one-week-old, remarked on how comfortable the toddlers all looked playing with and around each other, in the space at the Hanover Community Centre. Taking a good look for the first time, I saw that it was true. My little one loves it there and now plays for long periods with only occasional ‘touching base’ with me. The minute he arrived this morning he started asking for ‘ball’, and I realised he remembered a particular ball from playing with it on past occasions at the drop-in. Every day there are new insights into what he remembers, knows and thinks.

A bit later I bumped into one of my newer Brighton friends, who I met before we both became mothers, but who is now also a mother. We chatted about how it is to make the transition from each stage of your baby’s life to the next: my friend is currently navigating the stretch from relatively passive baby to ‘the interactive model’, who at six months is much more insistent about what he wants and needs!  Meanwhile, I recently crossed over from baby land to the world of the toddler. We talked about how it seems that we are always one step ‘behind’ them, and have to catch up, learning new ways of relating to them as we realise that their needs have changed, and that the old ways don’t necessarily work anymore. It occurred to me that I seem to have ‘caught up’ with the Pibler temporarily, at last, and his stage of toddler-dom is not feeling quite so daunting anymore. But no doubt soon I will be scrabbling to keep apace with the developments as he moves into yet another phase!

I feel so lucky to have friends that cover all aspects of my life: my writing friends (one of whom is away travelling, but we’ll reconnect when she returns), my ‘mom’ friends, my ’spiritual/yoga’ friends, and the friends who tick all those boxes, who I can really talk to about all of me. Without this sense of community around me, however fragmented, living in the city can be an isolating experience.

Computers, computers. I just spent an hour typing a new article into my Suite 101, trying to meet my deadline of 30 articles by the end of this month (only one more to go now), only to have it all disappear! When will I ever learn to save my work!

I then re-typed most of it, saved it, and went back in: but this time the computer gremlins had more fun in store for me, and it had all been encrypted in some weird type, and most of it was in italics! I had to laugh. It’s now 10:15 p.m. and I still have to RELAX, read a book, meditate, etc. And I didn’t do any yoga today. Nor did I make it to the internet writing seminar I was planning to go to. It feels a little..erm…unbalanced!

Usually I do my yoga in the morning when I get up, but this particular morning I woke up far too ravenous and ate breakfast instead. I find if I don’t get things like that done in the morning, I seldom find time in the evening. Also, tonight the Pibler only went to bed at close to 9 pm after a failed attempt to get him off to sleep at his usual time, 7. Sometimes it just doesn’t work, and I ‘ve got more relaxed about that. I bring him downstairs again and he just potters around (this time playing with my store cards again!) until he’s really tired and ‘asks’ to go to sleep.

I’m amazed at the Pibler’s developing language ability: he’s now repeating back specific animal noises, from ‘baa’ to ‘neigh’ to ‘moo’ when I sing to him (during nappy changes - which have got a little less challenging lately, if lengthy!), and saying the ends of long words like ‘potato’ (’toe’ when he points to a potato - I know what he means )

The two articles I’ve published over the last couple of days on Suite 101 are both about breastfeeding, which I’m as fired up about as ever after reading a brilliant book, Successful  Breastfeeding by the Royal College of Midwives. It went into detail about all the nutritional constituents of this amazing life-force substance, and how infant formula cannot replicate it, despite the companies’ claims. One of my new articles is about Breastfeeding Problems, which I was fortunate to not experience but have learned more about on my peer support course, and one on the Risks and Disadvantages of Formula Feeding.

I think this last one may get me some heated comments on the site - it’s such a sensitive topic, and people are often up in arms because they were formula fed or they formula fed their own children - but I think it needs to be said. I found a new American ad campaign on You Tube which was focussed on the risks of formula feeding rather than the benefits of breastfeeding, as the campaigning has been saying up till now. I think this is far better - this ad showed heavily pregnant women doing dangerous things and said ‘You wouldn’t take risks before your baby’s born, why would you start after?’

Oh and I found out that my breastfeeding counselling training is only 2 1/2 hours long, so with the travel time it’ll only be about 4 1/2 hours. That makes me feel better about leaving the Pibler with my friend. We are going to spend most of today with her and her family too, having a braai (barbecue) and later going to the Winter Solstice celebration of Burning of the Clocks on the seafront. I’m looking forward to celebrating this ceremony with my family.

Well, that’s all I have time for tonight..

Yesterday I had a bit of a wobbly about just how dependent the Pibler is on me.

I somehow thought that by six months, I’d be able to…I don’t know, maybe go to the toilet on my own? Then by a year or thereabouts, it seemed likely that he wouldn’t need me to be beside him to sleep more than a 45 minute stretch at a time. And perhaps I could leave him with a babysitter while I went out of an evening.

The reality has been so different from that. It’s only very recently, at 14 months, that I’ve been able to leave him with his dad for a couple of hours in the evening, and that he’s able to be put to bed by him: this was a huge milestone. I started worrying last night because I realised my breastfeeding counselling diploma course, starting next month, isn’t happening ‘at some point in the future’ when the Pibler will magically be less in need of me, but is happening NEXT MONTH. And that nothing drastic is likely to change by then.

I’ve been planning to leave him with a friend of mine, also a mother, who he is fond of and sees regularly, but who I’ve never left him alone with before - certainly not for half a day, twice a month, which is what this will involve.

I found myself beating myself up for being so foolish as to think this was realistic…worrying that it’s going to involve tears, and I won’t be close enough to get back to him, the course being in a town a train ride away…and then wondering if I’ve somehow ‘made’ the Pibler just …well, TOO attached.

I’ve heard people say they wouldn’t wear their babies in a sling around the house because it would make them too clingy - and of course, with my attachment parenting philosophy and knowledge that  babywearing has fantastic benefits, I scoffed at this.

But I have to admit that every now and then, like last night, I do wonder, and I have to have a bit of a sob down the phone to my long-suffering partner, who has to hear the machinations of my self-doubt and merry-go-round reasoning about parenting, on a daily basis. His truth in a nutshell: I should be able to close the door and go to the toilet without the little one in tow. He finds it hard to see me feel so trapped at times.

The truth is, there are more important things to me than privacy right now. Things like being able to detach the Pibler from the breast when he’s fallen asleep for a nap instead of remaining fixed to me, so that I can truly have a break. If I wasn’t a big reader I don’t know what I would have done.

What helped me in the end, though, was realising that it’s not helpful to compare  the Pibler to other babies. I always find myself thinking: “Oh, but Johnny can be left with another carer all day” or “Mary stopped breastfeeding more than once a day, months ago”…and it just doesn’t help.

It’s the Pibler’s individual needs and personality that I have to work with, not that of any other baby, and I believe a lot of that is inborn temperament. I think a revisit to Dr Sears’ ‘Fussy Baby Book’ , which I read when he was still very little, might be in order - I need to remind myself that a high need baby is NOT my fault…and find some tips on how to deal with it as he gets older.

My decision about the course is not final: I’m going to try taking the Pibler to my friends more regularly in the lead-up, which can be tricky  because of Christmas and all that entails, and try leaving her with him for an hour or two, see how that goes…my hopes aren’t high though. But I felt reassured after talking to one of the tutors on my breastfeeding peer support course today, who said that I can always try it and if it’s not working, I can pull out- they will understand.Sometimes I think I have to have all the answers, and right now too, but thankfully it doesn’t work like that.

This year, as last year when I was still in ‘newborn shock’, I seem to be more in tune with the natural rhythms of moving into Mid-Winter and the approaching Winter Solstice. I’m enjoying just ‘calling it a day’ earlier in the evening and curling up with a book.

I’m reading a wonderful book called ‘An Irresponsible Age’ by Lavinia Greenlaw. It’s always one of life’s unexpected joys to discover a new (to me) writer and also discover they have other books! So I checked out her ‘Mary George of Allnorthover’ yesterday at the library.

‘An Irresponsible Age’ is one of those amazing books that manages to be both poetry and novel at the same time. I wish I could strike such a balance. It also has some of the most well-drawn, convincing and multi-faceted characters I’ve met, and all without over-dramatisation. This is something I struggle with in my own novel-writing attempts: character.

I’ve decided to make some major character ‘cuts’ in my novel - in fact considering cutting out a whole segment of the story, which feels about as painful as excising a wound, but I think must be done for the general health of the book. Sometimes I’m not sure if the novel will survive - I’ve been writing it for so many years now, on and off, that it feels as if I have a duty to finish it, and am too invested in the story to let it go..but for now, I am putting it aside until the new year, unless I feel inspired to do some character work or jottings. It feels right to embrace this time of the year, of the darkness and cold and inward-moving, giving more time to meditation and reflection, and not try to force the outward flow of creative expression.

In fact I’ve been revisiting the past in the form of looking at old journals again. Yesterday I read one from when I was thirteen! It was fascinating to see the kernel of who I am today, how some parts of my character - like being dramatic and mood-swingy, being obsessed with music and books and having an easily bruised, sensitive soul - have not changed, but others - like being materialistic and wanting ‘things’ all the time, have almost entirely disappeared (for now). If only there was a way of similarly locking into how I felt at the Pibler’s age, so I could understand him better - I now feel I understand 13-year-olds better, or at least the 13-year-old of the 1990’s - I have a feeling they’re quite different today!

My turn inward is also about replenishing myself - I am exhausted from the sheer hard work of mothering lately. The Pibler’s tantrums seem to be back with a vengeance, and I’m struggling with it. Yesterday when leaving a first year birthday party it was literally impossible to put his coat on, and I had to bundle him in the Ergo and wrap my coat around both of us. Once we were outside like this, he kept looking up and grinning at me: I concluded that he simply loves to be in the sling, and knows having his coat put on probably means going in the buggy. It’s hard, though, because being consensual also means meeting my need to not have a sore back!

His teething seems to have abated, at least the sleeping at night is less disturbed, but I think it’s possibly still affecting his mood and making him quite anxious, as he is needing to be held and picked up most of the time. I feel a little nervous about Christmas week, staying at my partner’s family, because I always feel self-conscious in front of them when the Pibler is breastfeeding so often - I know they don’t understand why we’re still doing this, and why a toddler would still nurse as often as a newborn at times. I also worry about being judged for a perceived ‘lack of discipline’ as that is what consensual living can look like to the uninitiated. Sigh. I never did choose an easy path, that much is clear, and I guess by now I should be used to being different. But it’s still hard.

Do you ever have one of those days when things just don’t flow? Today I struggled to enjoy myself and as a result I feel exhausted although I’ve not done much - I think because I was fighting things rather than flowing with them.

Half way through the night the Pibler’s fever lifted, thank goodness, and he seemed much perkier this morning so I decided to escape the dishes and dirty living room floor and take him to a new playgroup not far away. I felt indecisive about whether to go or just stay at home, but in the end I went, and the minute I got there, I regretted it.

It was basically just a lot of rather tatty plastic toys and dirty-looking dolls in big piles all over the floor, and some scooters and tricycles and jungle-gym type equipment, with an arts and crafts table for the older ones. My little one seemed to be one of the youngest (it’s a toddler - under 5’s group) and he sat there bleating little baby noises every now and then and cuddling dolls, but didn’t want to do much, so in the end it was just more work than being at home. None of the other moms talked to me and I felt very uncomfortable. I left after half an hour, at the first sign of the little one rubbing his eyes - oh he needs a nap!

It’s strange because several of my ‘mom friends’ go to this playgroup and enjoy it, on another day that I can’t make. I’ve got better, recently, at realising what I really do and do not like, and accepting that the Pibler might not like something even though it’s ’supposed’ to be good.

He fell asleep on the way home but then woke fifteen minutes later when we got in, and as a result was even more clingy and cranky for the rest of the afternoon, due to tiredness. When my partner came in from work I shortly afterwards made a grateful escape to go and write in a cafe not frequented by moms and babies, or children of any description. Aah the relief!

I read a bit more of ‘The Mother’s Tongue ‘ by Heid E. Erdrich that I mentioned in my last blog. I was disappointed to see that she too knocks Dr Sears and attachment parenting - saying Dr Sears’ book is ‘oppressive’… I had to wonder, to whom? I think it’s equally oppressive to force mothers into jobs (if they don’t want to) when they are already doing the most important one on earth. I must remember to email the BBC Radio 4 ‘Women’s Hour’ - after listening to the show last week in which the new moves to cut benefit provision to single mothers was discussed without a single mention of the importance of a free choice to be a full-time mother (or at least to work hours that are flexible around her childcare commitments), and of the implications to children of that happening even less than it already does…and nor was any mention made of the rights of the children to be looked after by people who love them, instead of an endless, changing parade of ‘care-givers ‘.

Today there was further discussion on this on BBC Radio 4, and the comments were that people need to ‘face up to their obligations’. This phrase was repeated over and over to justify why most people on benefits should be forced into work - for mothers, from the time their youngest is a mere three years old. I’m all too aware that there are people who ‘milk the system’, but that shouldn’t justify creating a situation where mothers are stuck between a rock and a hard place.

Back to the ‘anti-Sears’ backlash and its connection with feminism…it makes me think about how I reconcile my own feminism with my attachment parenting principles. Do I think it’s oppressive to women to validate their intuitive need to be close to their baby, in the face of all the enormous pressure in our society to force babies to be ‘independent’ from a very young age? Do I think it’s oppressive to give them information and support on how to provide for their children’s very real attachment needs, borne out in numerous studies? And yet, I can see how it could be perceived as oppressive, if you read Dr Sears like a ‘bible’ of ’should’s’. My instinct was to parent this way, and so I found what Dr Sears said validating, but there are obviously as many ways to parent as there are individuals. But just because Dr Sears might be perceived by some as smug and ‘know-it-all’ doesn’t mean that attachment parenting isn’t based on solid principles and real-life experience.

The poor Pibler is ill again - he’s only just got over his cough and cold, and now has a fever again. I’ve been quite concerned because the fever is the only symptom - other than him only wanting to be nestled up against my chest all the time.

We just had a bath together - the first one together in a while - and he lay on my chest the entire time, not moving or playing. I felt overcome with protectiveness and love, because he’s quite a big boy now and I remembered bathing with him as a newborn, how small he was.

Today at the breastfeeding drop-in there was a one-week-old baby… it’s so hard to imagine I was once in the throes of that stage, and utterly clueless about what I was doing.

I borrowed a poetry book by Heid E. Erdrich called “The Mother’s Tongue“. I’m excited to read some poetry about the experience of being a mother, as my own poetry has run so dry since the Pibler’s birth, and I could do with some fresh inspiration.  I was blown away by reading ‘Sisters, Stay on the Other Side’, her poem that speaks from the world of motherhood to those who have not entered that state. It perfectly captured the sense of never being able to go back, and that making the choice to be a mother is not a choice all mothers should make:

Sisters stay dry on the banks, do not even
touch toe to test the water. Stop your ears
when you hear siren sounds: wet, sweet wails
that insist you can never understand
life, love, woman, man – until you birth
or nurse or raise a child in this world.

So I’ve been trying out some of the ideas around Consensual Living the last few days, mainly with my toddler, but also with my partner.

One thing I’ve noticed is : it’s a lot easier with my little one. Is that because I give him the benefit of the doubt more often, or because he’s cuter? Or because he’s non-verbal? (well, mostly - he’s pretty verbal when he wants something).

I’ve been trying things like taking the Pibler just outside the front door when he doesn’t want me to put his coat on, and we’re about to go out. Then he sees that the temperature is cold, experiences that for himself, and willingly has his coat put on. Amazing!

If only everything were that simple. Sometimes, I just want to get on to the next thing, and I have a list as long as my arm of things that should have been done yesterday. Laundry that has to be put away before there is space in the laundry basket to get the newly-washed load out, but there’s still other stuff hanging up to dry…and a sink full of dishes…but the Pibler wants to play and read a dozen books before he has his nappy changed, and then when I let him romp around a bit first, he pees all over the bed, soaking right through the duvet and sheet. He has no idea that there are these ‘other things’ to do…he is ‘in the moment’, enjoying himself.

So, now I have more work to do, and I feel a little foolish. I know my partner, and most people, would probably just have wrestled the Pibler onto the changing table and Done the Deed. But I know our relationship is intact, because I have not been forceful with him, and that feels good. Even if I have to handwash the duvet because it doesn’t fit in the washing machine.