There are those (my husband) who will think me a little bit nutty for saying this, but windy days breed anxiety.
One might suggest that I am simply looking for something other than my mother to blame my anxiety on. And that may be the case. But I have it on good authority — my acupuncturist, no less — that I am on to something. Windy days make us feel ungrounded, scattered, and, yes, for someone prone to anxiety like me, anxious.
If I require more proof — which I don’t — I need look no further than yesterday morning, when the wind rattled the maple trees in our front yard and rained bits of debris on the tin roof while I held my puzzled, hungry baby in my arms sobbing, “It’s not your fault! It’s not your fault!”
Anxious. Crazy. Indeed
A Windswept Drama
To be honest, as I look back, I am having trouble recalling exactly what was so dramatic about my morning yesterday. Probably nothing. Probably it was my own jittery, scattered, unable-to-focus-ness that made the normal seem impossible.
I do know I started the day slightly disappointed that the one night of Lily sleeping straight through to a 5:30 a.m. feeding had slipped into a four o’clock feeding and finally settled right back on her habitual-of-late 3:30 a.m. Which isn’t so very terrible, seeing as she does go back to sleep after eating and does sleep until seven or so and it is, I am here to report, possible to sleep sitting up without slumping forward so far you suffocate your nursing infant. But no one can debate that four uninterrupted hours of sleep when you had a shot at six can feel like Santa failing to appear after a promising Christmas Eve.
Since our full night of sleep seems to have been precipitated by a few bites of prune baby food that ended an unfortunate two-week journey in constipation, it seemed only reasonable that I get Lily to eat a few more bites of prune yesterday morning. Just to, you know, make sure her tummy wasn’t keeping her up again.
Thing is, Lily didn’t much want any prunes.
I mixed them in pears.
She took three bites and declared them prune-y.
And so, with a slight grinding of teeth, I returned the jar of prune-pears to the refrigerator, where it continues to sit, awaiting the several times a day when I will remove it, sneak a bite between Lily’s cupid lips, and watch her pucker them together in a neat trick of simultaneously disapproving and preventing me from getting any more prune-pears into her mouth.
The eating thing is, on my best days, a lesson in letting go. In my mind, the more Lily eats, the better my chances of finally sleeping through the night. Ergo, the more Lily refuses my hourly offers of tempting pureed goodies, the more frustrated I become. Until, yet again, I have to tell myself that Lily is not programmable and does not read the books that say she should be sleeping through the night now and doesn’t even care when the pediatrician suggests we should be getting there, much as she likes the pediatrician.
But those darned winds. Yesterday morning when I let Lily’s lack of appetite go it just came right back to me, making me shiver and shake in a little dance of anxiety over something I knew I shouldn’t be anxious about.
On the other hand, I had dropping Jake off at preschool as a much needed distraction for both me and Lily. It makes me feel kind of popular, chatting with the other parents as we drop our kids off in the morning. Which is, yes, kind of pathetic, but when you have two children under the age of three and work at home you take your socializing where you can get it.
This was, of course, one of those mornings when everyone is running late and Jake’s lunch has somehow not made it into his lunch bag and we have to search the house for the brand new fireman rain boots he loves so much even though they are still a little bit big on him. The kind of “a little bit big” where he merely falls down every so often, as opposed to walking right out of them like he did with the lovely pair of polka dot rain boots we just returned.
So late were we running (late for what? I wonder, as I don’t have any place I have to be) that at nine o’clock I unthinkingly trotted upstairs with Lily.
Upstairs, you see, is where Lily nurses. And nine o’clock is when she starts to think she ought to have a little snack because maybe she could go back down for a nap. Only she can’t. Until ten o’clock or so. I know this from bitter experience.
Lily, however, didn’t do the higher math in the equation. All she saw was “upstairs” plus “nine o’clock” and she lunged for my collar bone, lips puckered.
It is not the easiest thing in the world to trot up a flight of stairs with a seventeen-pound baby on your hip and a two-and-a-half-year-old yelling, “I don’t want to go to school!” in search of fireman rain boots while your baby slobbers all over your chest. It can, in fact, be rather unsettling.
“Stop,” I whined at Lily in a spot-on imitation of my son.
Back down the stairs we ran, Lily complaining the whole time. “Why don’t you want to go to school?” I asked Jake wearily, playing the part I play every single school morning.
“Because Wendell isn’t there,” he said, putting a fresh twist on his usual, “School isn’t open,” response.
“Maybe we should go see,” I answered, putting my own twist on it. “If he’s not there we can go home.” Far trickier strategy than saying if school is closed we can come home since I can pretty much be assured that school will not be closed. Whether Jake’s best friend has arrived at school, on the other hand, is not a sure thing.
Still, the ploy worked, and, finally, we made our way out of the house, me loaded down with baby and lunch bag and extra clothes, Jake jumping down the steps in his fireman rain boots, and Lily looking around wide-eyed in what I thought was anticipation of a fun time at Jake’s preschool.
It may well have been, but she did not approve of having to go to school strapped into her car seat. Not that I can blame her. The little mirror perched on the seat back in front of her probably had its appeal for those first few months, but after nearly seven months of spending every car ride starting at a wall of gray leather, you can’t blame a girl for complaining.
Our troubles, however, really didn’t start until we got back home. I settled Lily into her bouncy seat for a little picnic on the floor of the living room. We started this routine just a week ago, and for a few days it was a rousing success. Turns out Lily appreciates a little TiVo’d Glee in the morning. “Music,” I tell myself. Or that self who two years ago was incensed when my mother-in-law let four-month-old Jake watch t.v.
Today, however, Lily didn’t want the prune-pears. Or even the raspberry pears I opened in recognition of her legitimate gripe. She wanted to nurse. She’d been wanting to nurse for an hour now, and she was getting pretty annoyed with me for ignoring the obvious.
So, naturally, I became annoyed with her.
“Fine,” I sighed dramatically, sweeping her up and heading toward the bedroom that is increasingly feeling like a dairy farm. There I sit on the bed, nursing yet again, reluctant to so much as read a book while I do so lest Lily think I don’t love her enough.
Better, I guess, to focus all of my attention on her (until my mind starts to wander, that is) and mumble, “Relax and eat.” Poor girl was just expressing her deep, deep gratitude by kneading my boob with her hand. It’s not her fault I’ve neglected cutting those sharp little fingernails.
“Ow!” I complained as she pinched that starting-to-droop skin under my chin.
Lily opened her mouth and looked at me wide-eyed.
“Eat,” I commanded.
Obligingly, she did. And, as I know they will if I am just patient, her kicks and windmills, jerks and stretches abruptly ceased as her eyes closed and she started to move toward sleep.
This is when the tickle, tickle of a child pacifying instead of eating began.
I can’t say why the pacifying thing irks me so. I’m afraid it’s just because a lactation consultant I saw when I was new to the baby game and scared and impressionable repeatedly announced to the women gathered in her clinic, “Don’t let the baby pacify unless you want to become a human pacifier!”
Well, who wants to be a human pacifier? I pulled my breast away.
Lily cried. Because she really doesn’t care whether I want to be a human pacifier or not. She was just getting comfy and drifting off to sleep, and I messed with her mojo.
I gave her another chance. She pacified. I tried again, gritting my teeth. I switched sides. Still, she wouldn’t settle down. Not even crying with a sad, vexed tone seemed to tire her out enough to fall asleep to the agitated jiggling of my arm under her head.
“Fine,” I finally said. “Let’s get you a bottle.”
Letting my baby pacify to sleep with a bottle is perhaps not the most far-sighted solution to her pacifying on the breast. But it’s a whole lot more comfortable for me. And I figure I’ll deal with breaking her of that habit when I break her of it.
It was while I was putting together a bottle that the winds swept a big, fat hairball of mother-daughter fear into my head. In an instant I saw how unfair I was being, blaming Lily for just trying to feel good. It wasn’t her fault she was born to a mother who wouldn’t — as I’m sure every other mother does — sit beatifically for hours on end with her little one cuddled against her bosom being all Mary-and-Baby-Jesus-like.
I took a deep breath to clear my head. “I’m sorry, sweetie,” I said.
Lily looked at me warily.
“It’s not your fault,” I said sweetly as I carried her and her bottle upstairs.
And — boom — I became an episode of In Treatment. “It’s not your fault,” I repeated, speaking to myself as much as to her. “I’m sorry!” I bawled, certain that everything was my fault, that everything being my fault was my mother’s fault, and that I would make my own daughter think everything was her fault because we are doomed to relive our mother-daughter relationship with our own daughters because of all those times our mothers said, “I hope you have a daughter just like you! Then you’ll be sorry!”
Crying hysterically in front of your infant probably isn’t any healthier for her than griping at her for being too hungry to go down for nap and too tired to nurse properly. On the other hand, I consoled myself as I wept, I’ve broken down more than a few times in front of Jake and the psychological damage I’ve done has yet to surface.
And then I looked at my beautiful daughter and I saw her, not me. I saw my home, and this moment, and a windy day that was making me nervous and edgy and anxious.
So I closed the blinds, settled my girl into my arms, and felt downright yummy as I held a warm bottle for her as she drifted off to sleep.
Learning to Observe Even When You’re Observing Yourself Acting Crazy
I’d like to say that was the end of it. That Lily napped for two hours and woke up happy — which she did — and I was rendered impervious to a windy day.
But I wasn’t. Even after I dropped her off at day care, I found myself full of loose ends, not sure what to do next. Before I knew it, it was almost time for the yoga class I knew I so desperately needed. And as soon as I pulled up to the yoga studio it occurred to me that I had completely forgotten to pump and would be practicing with one boob two bra sizes bigger than the other and a great likelihood of ending class with milk stains running down my tee shirt.
I hesitated. I wavered. I considered turning the car around and flopping on the couch to pump to an episode of Mad Men. (Does this give my pumping in front of the television a political dimension? I wonder.) And I went to the yoga class.
Because windy days and cranky days and sleep-deprived days — they’re all like an uncomfortable yoga pose. Part of the practice is learning to just observe your discomfort and be okay with it.
Training the mind to observe — it’s a big piece of an asana practice, and perhaps the hardest part. We can twist our bodies into pretzel-like shapes. We can lift them off the floor on our hands as if flying. We can bend and stretch and breathe without ever once practicing yoga.
Because the point of all this, as I so frequently forget, is to calm the mind.
It’s one thing not to think about what I’m going to make for dinner during an asana practice — and sometimes I can’t manage even that much mind quieting. But even more challenging is to turn off that voice saying, “You can go deeper. You should be stronger. You should be able to do this. You should be able to do what that awesome looking woman on the mat next to yours is doing.”
“You should ….” That’s the mind deciding. Deciding how much Lily should eat and when she should sleep and making it my fault if she doesn’t.
Training the mind to observe, on the other hand, lets me not make the difficult parts of parenting any more difficult.
Sleeplessness, in a word, sucks. But it only gets worse if you make it a big deal. Just note that, yeah, I’m dragging, and then move on. That’s observing.
Or say, “Gee, that wind is making me all anxious and jumpy and short-tempered. I wonder what horrible thing I’m going to do or say to my kids.” Maybe, just maybe, if I don’t fight the anxiety — if I simply observe how it feels and honor how I feel — I won’t do anything horrible. Maybe I’ll lose my temper and forgive myself. Because I know my kids will forgive me. Maybe I’ll sob in front of my daughter. She’ll forget it. Can I?
Observing is letting things be. It’s experiencing the difficult stuff along with the good. It is, as the Dalai Lama puts it, not feeding the negative emotions.
It is, in short, observing what it’s like to be human. Which seems like a pretty great thing to be able to show your kids.
Observe and Release — Eka Pada Raja Kapotasana (Pigeon Pose)
After I made the wise choice to go to yoga class instead of hurrying home to pump yesterday, I found myself weeping one more time — in pigeon pose.
Eka pada raja kapotasana is a deep, deep hip opener. The hips are where we hold past hurts and emotions. You do the math. As I settled into the pose, all the mother-daughter-fault crap bubbled to the surface, came out my eyes, and then went away. At that moment, I decided eka pada raja kapotasana was the pose I would offer along with this piece.
Just as importantly, most people find eka pada raja kapotasana somewhat uncomfortable. So it’s a lovely opportunity to observe. Use props to find your edge — the point where you feel discomfort but not pain, where you can stay with intensity instead of backing off with frustration.
In other words, use this pose to find a place where you can relax and calm your mind and observe just what needs to be released and how good it feels when you let it go.