Finding Balance Along the Way

Today, it rains. I sit at Cafe Javasti in Wedgwood, my favorite weekend writing spot, and drink Oolong tea (still not drinking coffee, sigh). I almost didn't get away this morning-- two poor nights of sleep in a row have compelled me to ask my husband to let me sleep in, thus cutting into my writing time. But, alas, here I am, if only for an hour or so. I need my weekly moment away from Cedar and the home to sip my tea, breathe, and decompress. Digest.

Today, like many mornings where I sit down to write for this blog, I ask myself what I have to say. More specifically, I ask myself what I have to say that won't take ten hours to unravel and then some-- if there's anything short and focused I can spew out in one sitting that is nevertheless still remotely interesting to anyone besides myself. It's important to me to not wait too long between posts, because when this happens it makes me feel depressed. As I've said here before, this blog is my lifeline to my writing life. Without it, right now, I do not feel much like a writer. Short abbreviated notes scribbled in my journal don't do much to satisfy the writer in me. If this blog is my lifeline, then those disconnected journaling sessions are like little floats that keep me bobbing along the way. Whatever. Enough with metaphors. Onward.

Being a parent to a one-year-old, and not having much money to hire babysitters, there is a lot in my life these days that doesn't get done or satisfied. Of course, we are not alone in this situation. It is part of the reality of being a parent to a young child. It is a part of the sacrifice we willingly make in exchange for the joy of creating a family together. Shone in the right light, it is a rollicking, thrilling adventure-- this thing called our life. Each day, we wake up tired and go to bed exhausted, and somehow tasty dinners still manage to get cooked, family walks have become our main form of entertainment, bills get paid, groceries purchased, dishes washed, and glasses of wine drunk at the end of the night with a sigh of sweet relief. (Have you seen the new picture book, Go the Fok To Sleep? It is hilarious, and if you are a parent, you should go to the bookstore soon if only to read it once.)

Somehow, the essential tasks manage to get done. And what gets left out? Sadly, a lot of friends don't get called or seen, or if they do, it is far too seldom. Late-night collage or dance sessions with my sisters don't happen anymore, and music doesn't get to be played loud at night. Date nights happen only rarely in our household, and even then, I still can't eat most of what is served in restaurants, so we've only gone out to eat a handful of times in the last year. Concerts and shows at clubs are a distant reality too. I envy the parents of good sleepers who are able to easily go out for a night, or-- still unimaginable to me-- even go away for an overnight stay. Someday, yes, this will happen. But we are on the slow train when it comes to weaning Cedar from his dependency on his mama (and I'm not even talking about weaning literally; that isn't going to happen for another year or more). 

Case in point: it was only a month or so ago that we started involving Matthew more actively in the going to bed routine. Before, he'd help with baths, pajamas, and stories, sure, but the crucial nursing and singing of lullabies and falling asleep portion was solely my responsibility. Now, I am gratefully happy to report that my husband and I share this job. If Cedar does not seem to be falling asleep at the breast (which is more often now than not ), then I'll say goodnight and call Papa in to the room, then leave. Cedar will cry in protest for a minute-- or ten, or thirty, depending on his mood-- but eventually (usually after crawling around the bed, patting Papa on his body, and otherwise playing around) he will quiet down and grow tired enough that he will just lie there and fall asleep. Then, an hour or so later, when Cedar usually wakes up again, Matthew is the one who goes in and lies next to him again until he falls back asleep. 

I can't tell you what a huge relief this has been. To not be the one who has to listen closely for Cedar's stirring cries while we attempt to watch an episode of Mad Men, to listen and determine whether he is truly waking or not, then hurry in before he wakes even more and put him back to sleep--and to do this, again and again and again, all night long. I still do it in the middle of the night when we're all in bed, but if Matthew and I haven't gone to bed yet, it's now Matthew's responsibility. We are hoping that if Cedar knows he's not going to always get Mama when he wakes (and especially not Mama's boob), then he might learn to let himself go back to sleep easier when he stirs. So far, this doesn't seem to be happening, but the good news is that he is now way more accepting of the comforting of Papa's presence, and in turn, I feel much more free to go out for the night without worrying that I am going to come home to a screaming baby who has been up for an hour, demanding my return. 

So this has been a big change, allowing me to feel a much overdue sense of expansion when it comes to things I can do in my life. I am much freer to go out and meet a friend at a bar, or even go out to a show if I should so desire. But the truth is, I usually still opt to stay home, because I am tired and I want to go to bed by 10:30 so that I can wake up and feel refreshed by 7:00. And when you only have two hours to chill out at the end of the day (after the baby is asleep and the kitchen cleaned-- for if we don't clean it at night then guess who has to do it anyway in the morning), it often sounds more restorative to me to just sit and talk to my husband on the couch with a glass of wine, and some music playing quietly. To surf Facebook (yes, it's true, sad as this sometimes seems), to read, to take a hot shower (with the heat turned on or else Cedar will hear the water and wake up-- did I mention that he is a light sleeper?), and then to drape my body over the exercise ball and stretch those tight back and neck muscles that get strained each day from carrying around my twenty-five pound baby.

Someday, things will change. Someday, Cedar will sleep better and my husband and I will get hungry enough for more time together that we will make the effort and fork over the money for a babysitter. But for now, I am resigned to this period and I know it will go quickly. In the meantime, I have adapted to these new parameters of what kind of "fun" a weekend can hold, and to how long it takes to get things done.

For example, this weekend. Yesterday, the three of us plus my mom went to see a Chinese drumming and dance performance at the Seattle Center which I'd gotten free tickets to. We timed it perfectly between Cedar's naps, fed him avocado and rice puffs along the way, and he enjoyed the show from my lap, bouncing and clapping and mesmerized by the lights. We were home by three, with time left in the day for a nap, a long walk with Fergie, a new batch of beer brewed by Matthew, and a dinner of fried rice with chicken, peas, and carrots for all. 

And today, Matthew's brother and sister-in-law are visiting from Olympia. We're borrowing my sister's truck so that we can haul a bunch of branches to the dump from the cedar tree that fell in our yard several months ago, I'm going to take Cedar and Fergie for a walk, and later on, we'll all barbeque. I won't mention all the things that aren't getting done, all the things on our list that have been there forever (like budgeting, doing research and contacting people for our future remodel, mopping the floors, various childproofing tasks, overdue phone calls, and of course, any and all of my more involved writing projects which are pretty much just on hold for now-- though I don't know how much longer I can placidly accept this as the status quo). 

Okay, so I will and did just mention some of the things. But my point is that I have been learning to accept our current limitations-- which almost all have to do with a lack of time. And in turn, I appreciate all the more the small successes that occur when we manage to achieve a relatively health balance between working for money, indoor chores, outdoor chores, family time with Cedar (and now Fergie too), time with friends, down time, solitary time, and finally-- so importantly, and sadly what often gets squeezed out the first-- time for Matthew and I to reconnect as a couple, to try and remember a glimpse of our pre-child reality, the energy that brought us together in the first place.

Balance. Priorities. Acceptance. Patience. Perspective. All of these qualities are necessary and called upon when learning how to become parents, how to create a new family, and how to merge into a new fluid, working organism. And, of course, we can't forget to throw in a lot of silliness, a few tears, and an occasional roar of wildness rearing it's head in a rebellious demand for change along the way.

Baby Notes: A Food Sensitivity, Muscle Testing, Banana Eating, Elimination Diet Saga Update

Every day for the last seven months I’ve written down in a little notebook everything I eat and drink, everything I feed Cedar, every time Cedar goes to sleep and wakes up, whether he’s had any gas or a rash that day, and whether I’ve put hydrocortisone on his face.

I have three makeshift columns: the left side is sleep; the middle is what I feed Cedar plus any gas or rash symptoms for the day; and the right column is what I put in my body—which usually starts with tea (x2) and ends with wine. My handwriting is messy and much of the  notes are coded in a way that only I would understand (AB is almond butter; if something is circled it means I’m suspicious of it; if something is circled and starred it means it is something new I’m introducing; if something is highlighted it means I went back and tried to trace correlations over time; and, if there has been a reaction then I scribble all over the page, drawing arrows and question marks, making my best guess for the source.

As the months have progressed and as Cedar’s gas and rash problems have mostly gone away, I’ve gotten more relaxed about not recording every last thing— for example I might write down “chicken pasta” without listing the other ingredients—let’s say olives, mushrooms, balsamic, and zucchini—because I’m not worried about the dish and I trust I’ll be able to remember what was in it if I should need to go back and double check what I ate the last few days. I also might even skip a few days now, if, say, Cedar is mostly with his grandma for the weekend and thus I don’t know when he slept and woke as precisely; it’s good for me to let go a bit—and tracking sleep is more out of habit now than really necessary. (I will however go back and write down what I ate, roughly, especially if there was anything new or something old that I’ve still nevertheless had my suspicions about).

You might think I’m being a bit obsessive, but keeping this record has helped me figure out a lot of what would otherwise still be mysteries. To explain this, I’ll need to back up a bit, and also refer you to my old elimination diet saga post if you want all the background details. But in a nutshell, after many months of self-sacrifice, I figured out that Cedar was sensitive to: dairy, soy, garlic, tomatoes, plus various gassy vegetables and beans that I’ve continued to stay away from to this day. By now, with Cedar being almost one year old, I’m willing to test or retest virtually anything, but this process is still very time consuming. There isn’t a day that goes by where I am not either gauging the reaction of something new I’ve eaten or something new that I’ve fed Cedar, and waiting the requisite three days in between each new food. Plus, so often, results have been inconclusive and so I’ve had to go back and test things multiple times.

Cedar’s gas symptoms mostly went away once I figured out the main culprits. But they never went away completely, and nor did his rash, and then once I started introducing solids it became even harder to be sure what his lingering reactions were now from. Finally I got it together to visit a new naturopath, and she let me know an appropriate dosage of fish oil to give Cedar each day (1/2 a teaspoon), in addition to the 1 tablespoon I was already taking myself. This was for his eczema, and seemed to help a lot. I also started taking probiotics, and gave Cedar a pinch most days too for his tummy, which may or may not be helping, but it doesn’t hurt. The ND also suggested I check out the ingredients in my prenatals, and to my shock and frustration I discovered that there was soy lecithin in the coating! Soy was something that Cedar had some of his strongest reactions to, and here it was in the very pill I was taking every single day for his benefit. Oh, the irony.

Around the same time that I visited the ND, I also decided to contact a woman in Olympia who does muscle testing for allergies who had been recommended to me by several friends. “Applied kineseology” is a method of holding a series of little vials filled with different foods and potential allergenic substances against your body (or in my case, the body of my baby while I am holding him), then holding out your arm and having the practitioner press down on your arm to test for various levels of “muscle weakness”. Theoretically, when your arm stays strong and solid, there is no allergy detected. But with some substances, your arm goes weak and will offer no resistance to the person pushing, try as you may. I know this sounds a bit strange, and I’m sure you could get a better explanation of it somewhere online (along with sources that call it hokey which I’m glad I didn’t read before I went in or it may have prevented me from going). All I knew was that several of my friends had tried it for their children and wholeheartedly recommended this woman -- and these were intelligent, informed, open-minded women. It cost $60 for one hour-long session to test scores of substances and it was non-invasive. I figured it was worth a try.

I ended up taking Cedar to this woman twice. The phenomena of feeling my arm go weak in some instances and not others (without knowing what was being tested at the time) made me a believer. That, and the fact that the sessions confirmed what I already knew: that Cedar was sensitive to dairy, soy, tomatoes, and garlic. But more importantly, I also discovered a few surprises: sensitivities to onions, citrus, coffee and chocolate, too. Now, mind you, I had tested each of those things via the elimination diet; in fact coffee was the very first thing I reintroduced (which tells you how much I like it)-- and I had detected no reaction. But when I’d first tested coffee, I only had half a cup (then a little more a couple days later, until gradually over time I was drinking over a cup a day again). And when I tested onions several months later into the diet, I only had a little bit (knowing that Cedar was super sensitive to garlic, I was worried about its cousin). I had been a little suspicious when I’d tested citrus, and thereby concluded that a few squeezes here and there were okay, but whole oranges or glasses of juice were not. Now, I realized that it was entirely possible that these were all foods which, if I had a little here and there, there would be no obvious reaction. But if I ate or drank some combination of them every day, the cumulative effect would take its toll.

Sure enough, once I eliminated these last four things, Cedar’s lingering gas disappeared, as did his rash for the most part. I was bummed to give up onions and citrus since these added a lot of flavor to my no garlic, dairy, or soy diet. And though I knew I’d miss my coffee and chocolate, it was not that hard to give them up knowing that I was finally so close to solving the food allergy puzzle that I’d invested so much energy into for months now. There was nothing more satisfying than to finally get to the end of this intensely consuming investigation!

Of course, I wasn’t going to just blindly trust whatever the muscle lady confirmed, but once my own experimentation corresponded with our session’s results, I had no problem in believing in her methods. Sure, it still sounds a little hokey to me when I imagine explaining the method to those whom I know are going to raise their eyebrows with suspicion (e.g. my parents). But all I know was, it helped us, and this wasn’t any ‘placebo effect’ since we’re talking about Cedar’s responses and not mine-- and Cedar doesn’t know what I’m eating or not eating.

Our bodies are mysterious, sensitive, and complicated organisms. We manifest and register illnesses in such a magnitude of ways. Within the natural medicine world, this muscle testing practice is widely accepted and it is also used by many chiropractors. My mother-in-law, who is a counselor and hypnotherapist, also uses a form of muscle testing known as EMDR as a part of her practice, specifically for patients who’ve experienced trauma. You ask them a question and they respond by raising different fingers for yes or no. Our bodies know so many things that our minds suppress.

There is also a process of “clearing” an allergy which involves holding the offending substance (in the vial) next to your skin while having certain pressure points massaged at the same time, thus reconditioning the body to accept the substance. Although we did try this for Cedar for a couple things (why not?), I have less faith in this process (and time or money to invest in it), since it supposedly can take a few sessions to fully clear it. It does sound a little “too easy” to me, and perhaps I’m a little too traumatized to want to rush into giving Cedar soy or garlic again. But I am open to the possibility that it works in ways that are beyond my own abilities to easily explain. I’m also convinced that the world of naturopathic medicine has a lot more to offer to the growing rate of those who suffer from food allergies than Western medicine has been able to come up with. Where the pediatric dermatologist told me, “We mostly never know what causes the eczema,” the naturopath said, “Something is causing it and we need to figure out what it is.”

That said, I’m content for now with just staying away from dairy, soy, garlic, onions, citrus, tomatoes, coffee and chocolate, knowing that I won’t be breastfeeding forever and that Cedar will likely outgrow most of his sensitivities in time. I am however planning to try little bits of cheese (I heard that some dairy-sensitive people can often tolerate mozzarella), along with other foods that Cedar may be able to handle the older he gets. I want to try some organic soy sauce we found versus the regular GMO kind, as well as try cooked tomatoes versus fresh, and try dairy that’s baked into foods versus raw—all of which I’ve heard from a conglomerate of random sources that a some food sensitive people can better tolerate. We’ll see. In the meantime, I’m still oh so eager to introduce Cedar to more foods (it’s so fun- so satisfying to see his facial reactions each time, not to mention to keep building a varied, flavorful diet for him), so it’s always a trade off—who gets to try something new this week?

Sometimes it seems like this is all taking so long, so I get impatient and thus more sloppy, not waiting the full three days in between trying new foods, or else eating something and giving Cedar something (both of which I’m not positive are okay) around the same time. I have tried goat cheese three times already, and every time I haven’t been sure about the results. (Was that slight rash from the dairy or from the cold air? Or was it from the coffee, onions, or citrus I was still eating back then?) Speaking of citrus, I only recently realized that lemon was in the Canola mayonnaise that I’ve been eating (with relish, I might add, once I deemed that eggs were okay). Which means that the food reaction I noted to banana during that time I was having a plethora of chicken salad sandwiches was not necessarily the banana. Sigh. Even after months of this process, I still make mistakes. If nothing else, this diet is a practice in careful regimenting and patience.

Yesterday, I gave Cedar banana again, letting him have a third of one. He loves tasting banana, and often reaches for it when I am eating it, so I was really hoping banana would be okay. It’s one of those easy foods that everyone always has around, no need to heat up or puree. Well, a few hours later—and all night long—Cedar squirmed and cried out in pain. All night long he sucked on my boob for comfort. Poor guy. Poor mama. We are both very tired today, and I’m not sure his tummy pangs have fully gone away. Now I know for sure: bananas are not okay. They may be fine for me to eat, but this is no way to gauge whether Cedar’s delicate system can handle it.

And so the food, gas and rash saga continues. Overall, however, the diet is much less work now, but still our life is not without it’s occasional wakeful nights of discomfort or regret for not being careful enough. And Cedar’s rash is way better too; I only put a dab of hydrocortisone on it about once a week versus almost every day, and otherwise keep his skin well hydrated with all-natural oils and creams.

For now, I experience a small triumph every time I eat something or give Cedar something new, and there is no reaction. Yay- chicken is okay for Cedar! Yay- shrimp, beans, collards, and ginger are okay for me! The main thing I’ve been craving is CHEESE, in all its luscious forms, and by extension of this, also PIZZA. First, I’ll need to test that tomato paste though, and then we’ll have to make it at home of course since I can’t have garlic or soy oil which could be in many crusts.

Yes, it’s a constant challenge and game to see what I can get away with. And, it’s a constant return to feelings of remorse and weariness when I discover what I can’t. But never once throughout this process has it occurred to me to give up breastfeeding. I love breastfeeding, the bond it creates between me and my baby. And, I know that Cedar is getting so many essential nutrients and antibodies through my breastmilk that I could never fully replicate with even the best combination of formula and solid foods. So I celebrate the fact that amidst these trials, my milk supply has stayed healthy and strong, and so has Cedar’s immune system. It’s kind of amazing that neither he nor I have barely had one cold during this entire first year of his life. I can’t say for sure that it’s from the breastmilk (or fish oil, prenatals, probiotics and healthy-ass diet), but it doesn’t hurt anyone for me to take some credit here. No one else has been tracking our progress as closely as I have, so I might as well bask in this moment of satisfaction.