thinkythink

Daycare for Mama

Today is my son's first day at daycare. Up until now, we've had a babysitter who has come to our house while I am working. I am following a friend's wise advice not to expect myself to be all too productive for the first couple of weeks that he's there, because it is apparently usually a bigger adjustment (emotionally) for mama than it is for the peanut. Beyond that, though, one of my concerns is that I won't be as focused or efficient as I was with the sitter and the tot in the house with me.

This thought surprised me. In fact, it surprised our dear former sitter, who said, "what do you mean you won't be able to get as much done even though I won't be chattering away at you and distracting you every time you come upstairs?" Yes, I'd get slightly too caught up in conversations with her when I came up from the basement office to grab a snack or say hi to the little one. And more significantly, if he was crying and I wasn't on a client call I would tend to come up and check on him. I did a middling job of learning to limit the time I took away from my work for a break.

Which I guess we all have to do regardless of what the distraction might be- baby or sitter, co-workers, chores, tetris... or ourselves. That last one is what I am wondering about. Before babe was born, I worked in a quiet house most of the time. There were some things I know I was much more efficient at when I was not alone in the house. I could clean up my office better when my husband was doing the same (or when my assistant was keeping me on task when I had one) for example. I think I've now gone for one of the longest stretches in my career that I have NOT been alone at the house working. But working with a baby and sitter upstairs is different from having a body-double or assistant or just someone working at the same sort of task or in the same room.

Yet having those people in my house helped anchor my attention. That's the ADHD trick. They kept me outside my own internal whirling thoughts, and so, while distracting me, they also rescued me from distraction. INTERNAL, INATTENTIVE-TYPE distraction. So I'm giving myself a couple of weeks, and then I might have to add in some new accommodations for this little mind. We shall see.

A Slowed-down Day

I talk about this more often. On a less spacey day, I'll go back and check what I've said before. It's a spacey day today, and lately my ADHD has been hitting a bit harder than it had been- I think it's a hormone thing, or the stage that my toddler is in at the moment, I'm not sure. Point is, it's not always predictable. My brain's status is not always what I think it would be. Ok, I've grown to NOT rely on it being the same all the time, which is always a big help. That is, assuming some days or moments will be somewhat sucky, makes it easier when that happens.
Ah, but my point?
it's the old flexible structure thing. I'm pretty lucky right now; my son directs my attention a lot of the time, so that I don't need to choose what to focus on, and his needs are fairly immediate and tangible, which is a good ADHD thing. My work time is more limited, so I have to choose pretty quickly what to do- again, this can actually be ADHD-friendly, as long as you let go of all the stuff you think you ought to be doing and keep only a couple things in mind (even if long-term it means we need some desk-cleaning strategies). But I also need some grace. I think grace is how I think of this kind of flexibility.
Lately, on Thursday afternoons, I work on some projects. My client appointments tend to be lumped on other days recently. So I can do follow-up emails and write a blog post, for example. But I may not be able to do as much as I think I can. I may not get down to my office as quickly after the sitter arrives as I would like, even if I've got everything lined up. As long as I've got the grace to just let that be the way it is, that's ok.

As long as I can accept that I DON'T always move in straight lines to get to my desk (or to a task) then I keep myself more at ease, more focused- and I keep the flow of laundry-to-babysitter going (she folds it for us, so she acts as a structure for me to get it in the wash), so I can be less distracted by household stuff (I've done what I'm supposed to right then). And I do get to my work. And the thing is, on a day like today, on a spacey day like today, when I need someone else to tell me whether to eat the eggs or the ham and cheese lest I stand in front of the counter for an hour spacing out and being ambivalent, less work is what was going to happen anyway. But less work is some work, and it's pretty darned good.

Can you relate?

Having a "Where Do I Start?" Moment

I just recently hired a babysitter so I can get more work done. So now I have to remember how to get some work done! That's what I call a "Where Do I Start?" moment. Because one of the things that is so very special about my ADHD- and many of my clients- is that we first have to remember what we wanted to do, but more than that, we have to remember which system we were using to remember what to do. And then, every so often, we have to tweak our systems.

For the last few months, I suppose since my little one has become mobile, my work has been extremely focused: client calls. Take care of clients (check-in by email and Google chat; make sure they've scheduled and all that); write a blog post when I get a moment. Before Gabriel was crawling around like gangbusters, my husband could do work at home WHILE I did work at home. Then it changed; one of us could do work, and the other one had to pay full attention to the baby. Not just occasional or fleeting attention. We're fortunate that our child is really happy playing by himself as long as you're around him. We don't have to sit next to him and show him a toy or talk to him constantly, so for a few meager blocks of time each week, it worked fine to take turns taking care of him while we both got something done.

Now, Gabriel tries to eat the laptop if you use it in the same room with him. Then, he removes the power cord if it's plugged in and tries to eat that. Once you've hidden the cord, then he comes over when you least expect it- OK, not true, I always expect it- but when you're hoping to send a REALLY QUICK email and gets some typing practice in. He has sent off a bunch of emails for me prematurely, and possibly concluding abruptly in something like LKJHHkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkk55555566. If you get and email like that from me, consider that to mean "Love, Gabriel."

Point being that our general system for Becca getting work done had to change, so we hired a babysitter who hangs out with him while I work.

And now I have a desk that I have the opportunity to clear for the first time in a very long time.
And I have the opportunity to make extra phone calls.
And work on my pretty darn old website and bring it into the late oughts.
And I can do a little bit of work aside from the individual client stuff.

But what did I want to do right now? This morning? That takes a slow kind of remembering. First, I start to remember that in the land of inattentive, my mind is slow to warm up when it comes to remembering where I was at. Then, as I start to remember the steps I was going to take, I also start to remember whether I'm working from a list. Then, start to think about how I want to start keeping these lists because there was no need for one when I had no time to work off of it!

This is also an ideal moment to update that particular system. I'm basically starting fresh and in fact, a lot about how I work has changed- both since I had a baby and since he started self-propelling. And, so, we're off and thinking about where to keep a list and what is useful to list; how to remember where the list is; and how to get myself shifted to work and started with work as seamlessly as possible even if I am a little sleepy.

Right now, I think I'll clear my desk a little tiny bit while I clear my head on this topic.

I forgot what I was going to post about

I had a little bit of a breakdown the other day. I had the intention of posting several times a week, and I couldn't think of anything to write about. It felt like a writer's block kinda thing, if I thought of myself as a writer. But I know that in all creative pursuits, it's best to just keep on keeping on- ok that holds for other pursuits as well, maybe anything with a goal. It's best to sit down and just write something to keep it going, keep the writing primed in the mind. But I don't want to just publish anything, even if I don't have illusions that what I'm putting out is some kind of earth-shattering work of literature; I don't want to dump any old crap out there. This didn't really help my sense of frustration. I had to get to the bottom of something...
And in those moments, talking to someone about what's going on is helpful. Some call this verbal processing, where you figure out what you need to know and do and clarify by conversing. I might say for me at times it's more of a research expedition, and now is one of those times. I have to fling frustrations at my sweetheart husband's ears in order to blurt out that
#1 I wrote a list the other day of some topics I needed to cover in writing- online or not, just the stuff I aim to capture specifically about the inattentive experience.
#2 The cat peed on the list.
#3 Sticking to that list isn't going to keep me writing, it's stuff to cover, but this blog has several themes I work back and forth from. The themes are getting progressively distilled, but linear writing, as though I started with a book outline and wrote only from there, just dumps all of how I am out the window. I have to have some choices and some spontaneity, especially if I want to get the experience set out there.
#4 I forgot about number 3. That was stopping me. I thought I had to write only from one predetermined list. "Had to" means "decided to."  In other words, I forgot that I had not decided that I should only write from my scrawled-out and peed-on list.

#5 I'd already written a post. Yesterday. In my head. I forget what it was about. I forgot that I had it in my head.

#6 Come to think of it, I've written a bunch in my head lately. I forgot that this was happening. I forgot what they were about. The cat peed on my brain.

#7 Something else has changed... I am not able to grab the laptop and write stuff down for a few minutes. What's changed? Apparently it's not my number or type of ideas, but rather my ability to get them typed up before the disintegrate into the background mental noise again.

So what's changed?

#1 I feel like I'm more tired, which might be true, but I can't be more sleep deprived than when my babe was a newborn.

#2 I feel like I'm forgetting more. That is possible but I'm not so sure.

#3 Dearest baby G. is crawling. I can't sit on the couch and watch him play on the floor anymore. I could for a while. That meant I could grab the laptop and get this: type my ideas. I had simplified systems, emailing myself stuff I needed to remember, for example. And typing blog entries, at least in draft mode, very quickly. Or emailing those ideas to someone. Now, no sooner have I commenced typing that someone has turbo-crawled to the couch, pulled himself to standing, and I find little fingers wiggling all over the keyboard and jaws descending upon the monitor. Laptop closes, hurries back to its currently safe location, with cord tucked behind the cabinet.

I guess it wasn't writer's block after all.

There are some downsides to the immediacy of our information culture, but a definite upside is the ability to express an idea in a tiny little precious bit of time available. I guess it's time to adjust my strategy, though. If parenting is teaching me anything, with emphasis on the present tense because I'm surely no expert, it's how to find grace in flexibility. Rapid flexibility.

ADD Mom Leaves for Half an Hour

This morning was daddy morning. I have clients at 10:00, but before that, I have time to do my own work. (Before that? You mean I function before 10:00am? I do now, thanks to baby!) I woke up dreaming of going to the nearby coffee shop to write a blog post. The main point here is to have my body in a location away from the baby's.
Mind you, part of me wanted to stay and watch daddy feed baby pears, the pathetic and wonderful of it being that I didn't want to leave the baby for my 45 measly minutes. That mommy-side aside, I wanted some time to myself. So I'm currently sitting with my coffee and laptop, a five-minute drive from the house, counting down the minutes until I have to get back in the car and speed home to have any hope of nursing G. before my next client. Fourteen. Fourteen minutes at the moment (ok, I've already ordered and sat down with a frothy cappucino, opened the laptop, put some headphones on, checked and noted the lack of new e-mail.) And if I pause for a moment, it's long enough to notice that I'm here, on my own! Weeee! Mommy's 45 minutes out!

For those of you who don't have kids, I describe the feeling like this:
you know when you're a teenager in absolute love/lust/obsession, the object of said emotion is constantly in your mind, and always feels like they're with you physically, a monkey you're glad to have on your back? The monkey isn't gone until after you break up, plus a bit of break-up mourning, and finally you've got your own skin back, no one clutching on, checking you for nits,  giving weight to every breath?

That's what it feels like with baby. I only notice my body being my own when I leave for a while. I don't break up, and it's only a few minutes at a time...(now I have 8 minutes). Here's what I have to do to get out of the house for my 45 minutes:

Wake up. Pry myself out of bed even though there's another adult to respond to baby's needs. Nurse the baby. Shower. Tell Daddy he's going to change the baby and get him dressed. Find some clean   clothing that serves to cover my naked body. Ignore the fact that the baby wants some attention. Pump some milk for baby for while I'm gone. Feel like it would be easier just to stay home with all this effort!  Make some breakfast. Make clear that I'm not the one feeding baby pears (convincing myself and reminding my husband). Extricate my wallet and such niceties from the diaper bag and discover where we have another bag that isn't a diaper bag. Feed myself something. Hang out while daddy takes the trash out because baby needs somebody there and I haven't left yet. Figure out how much time I have... that wasn't so bad, and maybe easier than without the baby because then I didn't have so much reason to kick myself out for the precious few minutes. Feel like it's easier just to stay home! Remember I still should nurse the baby before my client appointments; recalculate time. Feel like staying to watch baby eat and chat with husband. Misplace shoes but ignore that because who cares if you have the shoes you want when you have only a few minutes...

Time remaining: 1 minute. I haven't even finished the foam at the bottom of my cappucino cup. I did write this blog post... gotta run,.

Getting back to the workout

I've been writing about exercise, and getting to it.
Now I'm trying to get back to it; baby was sick. Then there was that one workout I missed because my car was being towed. Car was sick. Then, I was sick. I'm nearly better, but not all better.
On Sunday my husband recommended I go to my track workout because I'd feel better read:I'd be nicer. No, he's not that insensitive, but it's true, I'm a better version of myself when I've exercised, usually. But I wasn't all better. I'm still not all better. My eye is still all puffy. Today was all about a sinus headache. Mostly, I'm better though. And it's pretty easy to feel torn.

The longer I wait, the harder it is to go back.
That doesn't mean it makes sense to make myself even sicker by going.

And the complicated self-talk looks like this: "you're just saying it's better to wait because you're trying to talk yourself out of going. Or trying to find a legitimate reason not to go."
Inattentive speedy self-talk is super tricky' the above is not actually true. I want to work out. The real question:

Would it be helpful to exercise now? Or would it be more helpful to rest?

and:

What kind of exercise would be helpful now? Would be possible right now?

when I'm not feeling great:

What will allow me to ease my way in?
How can I bite off as much as I can chew, and then check back in with myself?

Working out alone, this may mean committing to a little piece and then checking in.
In a group setting, it may mean doing part of the workout, or ignoring the assigned workout. I know I'd want to tell our coach that I've had some flu-like bug and I'm starting slow. Not so much for his benefit; but for mine- it not only lets me off the hook, but it sets up the expectation that I won't do too much.

All that said, I'm kind of hoping track practice gets rained out, because then I won't get more behind everyone else, while I can rest, or even take a walk and work my way back into it! If it doesn't, I think I'll go, do the conditioning exercises, and then take it super slow.

Mommy and Baby Self-Care Checklist

One of the great tips I got as a new parent was the why-is-he-crying list. In other words, when baby (particularly useful for a newborn, but later on as well) is wailing and you don't know what to do, systematically run down the list of things he might need or that might help. This list might look like this:

1. Check diaper
2. Feed.
3. Check skin temp. Too hot? Too cold? Just right?
4. Make sure clothing/diaper isn't rubbing/stuck/etc.
5. Provide movement, by carrying. Or in a sling. Or in a rocking chair. Or in a stroller. Et cetera.
   
6. Change stimulus level: put music on/turn it off
7. Try putting baby down, maybe he needs a little space (again, changing stimulus)
8. Remember to repeat. He may have wet his diaper after step 2, or gotten hungry.

This is just a sample, and it varies a bit by the baby. The funny thing to me is that a lot of adults, particularly those with ADHD, need basically the same list:

1. Go to the bathroom.
2. When did you last eat? Eat something, preferably with protein.
3. Drink some water
4. Is your clothing comfortable?
5. Change your physical state. Walk around or run around or dance around.
6. Put on some music/change the music/make it quiet/ brighter/dimmer.
   
7. Do something different from what you're doing, something more interesting for a little while.
8. Remember to repeat. Eating and peeing once a day isn't really often enough.

Off to change my diaper. I mean the baby's. I think.

I just remembered, he's due for a nap

I was going to entitle this post "working at home with baby," because this morning, my husband and I are both working from home. I work a few partial days per week, while Peter "works" from home. He's the primary go-to parent during those times, and I can schedule clients, but I can also take a break with the baby, nurse him, etc, if I want to.

Now little G. is 6 1/2 months old. That's old enough to entertain himself for a while, if he is so inclined, with toys he can reach for from his recently-achieved sitting stability. So exciting! He can entertain himself! A taste of... being able to hang out with him while doing a little bit of work. Just a tiny tip-of-the-tongue taste, because he is just as likely to want attention, be bounced on a knee, talked to, or rescued from toppling over.

[note: both of us love hanging out with baby and playing. we're just trying to get a thing. or a quarter of a thing done periodically.]

So while I have a brief yet exciting window to do some writing before my next client call, and Peter hopes limply  that he'll finish a desperately needed e-mail, our wee one hangs out in his high chair. And starts to fuss right away. Then I remember the time. No, not the time it is with respect to client scheduling, but the Baby time. It must be baby naptime by now. We both completely forgot about that part. Funny, since it could provide us with glorious e-mailing possibilities. Then again, both of our abilities to forget, say, to eat; my ability to forget I'm in the shower (hence forgetting to get out), and so forth- why am I surprised? Perhaps because the baby spoils me with needed external structure; I can't forget to get out of the shower (he'll fuss); I can forget to eat I suppose, but I've grown used to taking full advantage of the moments he'll let me eat. But one thing he doesn't do is say "hey mom, dad, it's naptime." I need to remember on my very own to run down the list in my head of things-baby-might-fuss-about, and remember all the things on it. And I must remember my list of things-baby-needs in my head. That part? Not so genetically automatic.

Sickly

I'm sick. My eyes are puffed up like I was bitten by spiders and leaking venom, though the neighbors politely claim that I "just look a little tired." How sleep deprived do I usually look, I wonder?

Before I was a Mommy, I didn't understand how people could do stuff like continue to mommy while enveloped by that bone-aching, skin-stinging kind of fluish virus. People said things like, "you just do because you have to,"  adding nothing to my comprehension.

I am now relieved to know that this doing-out-of-necessity isn't some adrenaline-fueled superpower, although I know it would be if the little one were in danger. This is what it looks like:

I sit on couch. Hold baby. Move as little as possible. Weigh need to watch mindless tv with baby's need not to watch tv. Try to rattle rattley toys in front of him. Grunt. Wonder if his language development is being stunted by my lack of speech. Put baby on floor. hold him sitting up between my calves. Shovel pile of toys in front of him. Hope he is amused.
When he's hungry, nurse while lying on the couch, hope he falls asleep. Hold him lying next to me and hope he stays asleep.

I forgot the best part because I was so out of it. Yesterday morning, Peter put the baby next to me in bed to nurse, and sometimes he naps a little extra in the morning that way. Noooooo not yesterday, the day I couldn't see straight. He was aWAKE. He wanted to PLAY. No part of my being was ready for that. I found the minimum that satisfied him: I sat him up next to me and held him there. I think I drifted in and out of sleep while he sat there. I'm not really sure. He did seem to still be sitting there, held in place by these appendages that appeared to be attached to my body.

The doctor says to let her know if my eyes (and Peter's too) are still puffed up like animals with puffy-sticky-out-eyes next week. Great. Given that I'm typing this post, you know it's not quite as bad as yesterday. And the little one even tried out a new food today, so all is well in the universe. Squash! A big hit!

BPA, Pthalates, am I nuts?

Why am I concerned about all this plastics stuff?

I try to stay low-key about all the safety concerns and toxins concerns. I have enough to take care of. I have enough issues without making up no-buy lists I don't have to. I've seen how hard it is for people who really have to avoid foods and chemicals of various sorts because they are clear causes of health problems in their lives. (sugar/diabetes or citrus/hives or various cosmetics/eczema etc)

For myself and my clients, I do try to maintain a "save yourself before you save the world" attitude. This means: if you can't get organized to get the trash out at ALL, work on waste disposal before you work on recycling that takes extra car trips. Once the house is out of public-health-hazard danger, you'll be more able to think about setting up systems that are as great for the world as can be, and more able to actually have an impact. Similarly, once you've ingested some food on a regular basis, you'll be more able to think about ingesting better food.

And then here come the plastics scares. and I'm a new parent. I'm a new parent with a long (25 year long) history of crazy hormones. Sometimes they call it "PMS and we don't know what else there is to do," sometimes they call it "hormonal dysfunction," and sometimes they call it "PMDD." More about all that later.

There are all kinds of things one can do supposedly to improve PMS symptoms, like drastically change diet, cut out caffeine, bla bla. Never mind whether these things work (I tend to think it's just assumed that they do, because I haven't seen much research that shows that less red meat and no caffeine helps PMS); they ignore the fact that my hormones can mean it's hard to get to the supermarket, let alone cook healthy food. They ignore the fact that caffeine is one of the medicines that helps me cope, and helps me distance from my physical discomfort, helps me focus, and helps me get to the gym, and well, to the store, during the 1/2 of my life I may be sick. Oh no! way to much rant on another topic.

Bisphenol-A, used in plastics since grandmother's childbearing years. A synthetic estrogen. I've been wondering about xenoestrogens and all that for some time in my pursuit of a more even-keeled hormonal life, but thought, well, we've had wicked bad pms in the family going back to at least my grandmother.
Before that might be hard to know; the women were preggo for most of their child-bearing lives. What I do know going back to my grandmother is that menopause is something to look forward to. It's when things get better. I know mine is the worst, but I figured those chemicals and stuff can't be so much of a dramatic issue because the rest of the family has it bad. Until I read the timeline for BPA and its use in polycarbonate and realized I can't know that it isn't an issue.

That along with the finding that phthalates are exreted in infants' urine... and I'm changing a couple of things. Don't get me wrong folks, I am not claiming it will change everything or that these chemicals are the root cause of all that is bad. The thing is, that timeline, made me realize, I just don't know.

So I hope my husband will pardon the apparent obsession; it's hard to track down which products contain and don't contain which chemicals, and I'm just trying to clean things up for the sake of the little one while I'm still passing this stuff on to his tiny body. And who knows, maybe it'll help me too.

Helpful Links:
The Environmental Working Group and their Cosmetics Database (also check out their report on sunscreen, baby product buying guide, etc)

www.thesoftlanding.com  - check out their shop and their blog

zrecs.blogspot.com - check out their blog, and their awesome cellphone texting service to check on products.