holy family, batman!

Tomorrow is Christmas Eve. 

I can tell this because there is only one day left to go on our Advent Calendar. Otherwise, the days with a three-month old baby pretty much all blend into one.  It’s as if time stood still when she was born and we are living in a bubble suspended in it, while everything else carries on around us: more Groundhog Day than Christmas Day.

So, ‘tis the season and all that. The season might not mean much to the three-month old, but the three-year old is rapidly turning into a Christmas-obsessive. Which leads me to the question of how to frame the narrative of Christmas for her. 

I’m what’s best described as a lapsed Catholic, so the ‘true’ meaning of Christmas is one obvious narrative that has been pushing itself forward for my attention. ‘What’s the harm?’ I initially thought. The Nativity is a nice story and talks about a special baby being born; babies are something to which the three-year old can relate.

And, there’s no denying that this ‘true’ Christmas story is a counter to the mindless consumerism of presents, presents, pudding, and more presents that Christmas can also mean. 

But, here’s the thing. 

If you find it hard to believe that Christmas commemorates the birth of a uniquely special baby - the son of God made flesh who grows up to save us all from our sins - then it’s hard to think of a reason for all the fuss on this particular day. There were no angels, shepherds or adoring magi around when my babies were born and I think they’re pretty special. How to explain the lack of lowing cattle and angelic hosts in their post-natal photo-calls?

Perhaps the answer is to reach back even further, to the ‘original’ pre-Christian origins of Christmas, as a festival to mark the winter solstice on 21 December and break up the long gloom of winter. Yep, no problem with that. Except ... we live in the southern hemisphere and the winter solstice occurs in ... June. Those crazy imperialists not only imported a colonising ethos but also an upside down festival calendar, which sees the the winter festival of Christmas take place in summer, the spring festival of Easter take place in autumn and the autumn festival of Hallowe’en take place in spring. Turns out that religion - i.e. that these are Christian festivals not nature-based festivals - is the best way to make sense of these topsy-turvy traditions. Back to the drawing board (with a mental note to put a special emphasis on Matariki as a festival that makes sense in this part of the world come winter-time).

Perhaps the answer then is in the gift-giving and pudding-eating. Stay with me on this one: I’m not about to put in a plug for rampant consumerism as a stimulant to the economy or anything. Regardless of the price-tag, or even if they have a price-tag at all, giving gifts reinforces familial and social bonds and obligations. Think about who you give gifts to: family, friends, workmates, neighbours, communities. Think about who you share food with: pretty much ditto. 

I’ve not been called on to explain the ‘why’ of Christmas just yet - we’re living ‘what’ at the moment - but I think this will be my take: Christmas is a time for family (in the very broadest sense of the word), for taking care of others, for showing others how much we appreciate them (that’s where the gifts come in, big or small), for nourishing the body and the soul (eat, drink, be merry ... and have a snooze after Christmas dinner).

And to remind ourselves that all families are holy families.

to sleep, perchance to dream

‘Twas the week before Christmas and all through the house / Not a baby was stirring nor even a mouse’

Aaaah.. they’re all asleep: baby, three-year old ... husband. It’s mid-afternoon on a mellow Sunday and I’m the only one conscious. Well, semi-conscious, at least. There’s still a patina of tiredness over my days, but it’s - mercifully - starting to recede as the baby starts to sleep longer at night, and get a little more predictable during the day (touch wood). As with the last time I had a young baby, I have become obsessed with sleep - who’s getting it, when they’re having it, how long it is, was it interrupted - the way others might be with celebrity affairs. 

45-minute sleep cycles, 20 minutes of REM sleep, sleep breeds sleep, rocking, driving, walking up and down, even  - confession time - feeding to sleep. 

We remind ourselves that sleep deprivation is a form of torture. Ruefully, we agree that is, but try to grin and bear it. We try to sleep while the baby sleeps, but that often doesn't happen with a pre-schooler about.

I’m amazed by how wonderful I can feel with a decent night’s of sleep, how wretched with a broken night. On those latter nights, I wonder how humanity managed to survive so long. Lucky babies are cute, I guess.  It also makes me wonder about the role of sleep in the lives of those who shape history. Margaret Thatcher famously slept only four hours a night, opining 'sleep is for wimps'. I wonder if she would’ve been less of a ruthless warmonger if she’d got her head down for another two-three hours a night?

Sleep can even be considered a feminist issue. In 2010 Arianna Huffington and Cindi Lieve spearheaded a sleep challenge to raise awareness among women about the effects of sleep deprivation. They commented:

Americans are increasingly sleep-deprived, and the sleepiest people are, you guessed it, women. Single working women and working moms with young kids are especially drowsy: They tend to clock in an hour and a half shy of the roughly 7.5-hour minimum the human body needs to function happily and healthfully. The negative effects of chronic sleep deprivation are well-documented, but that doesn’t inspire enough people to prioritize rest, and women often end up in a vicious cycle (sic) of sacrificing sleep in order to do extra work and make sure their domestic duties are fulfilled, causing all of the above to suffer.

Reporting their comments, Kate Harding at Salon similarly compares the faux-heroics involved in dieting and in depriving oneself of sleep: ‘it’s strikingly similar to how we talk about sleep — functioning on five or six hours’ worth is seen as a heroic accomplishment, while getting a full eight hours on the weekend is regarded as indulgent (“Sleep is for the weak!”)’. Harding calls ‘bullsh*t’ on both puritannical atttitudes, putting them down to the need for ‘cultural approval’ or ‘reward[ing] those who endure the deprivation of biological necessities, regardless of any toll it takes’. 

There have even been recent studies recently which show that poor sleeping or sleep deprivation can affect women more strongly than men. A Duke University study showed that poor sleep affected women’s mental health more than men’s (charmingly reported by the Telegraph as women being ‘grumpier’ than men). Another Canadian study showed that men sleep better than women, including falling asleep more quickly and being able to fall back to sleep once woken. I’m a little bit skeptical about some of these findings: how do you account for diverse social and economic factors, and family statuses in this research? Is the reason for women’s worse sleep experiences down to nature (hormones, circadian rhythms, breastfeeding) or culture (anxiety, motherhood, making ends meet)?

Of course, there’s a difference between ‘choosing’ to deprive yourself of sleep in order to fit in all of life’s demands and being woken by a hungry baby in the middle of the night. But the impact on one’s mental and physical health is the same. And it can create a vicious circle: once you know you can ‘soldier on’ with less sleep than you need, how much of a pattern does it set for managing multiple demands on your time later on? The fact that I’m sitting here meditating on sleep rather than, say, trying to actually get some, is more than a little ironic in this context.

A couple of years ago, someone said to me that once you become a parent you’ll never have another good night’s sleep again. I thought they were either nuts or just plain mean-spirited (I was not sleeping well at the time), but since my first child was born I’ve never been able to sleep my previous personal norm of eight hours a night - even after she started routinely sleeping through the night. The best I’ve been able to manage is seven and a half hours (which is perfectly fine and healthy - I’m not complaining about that at all. In fact, at the moment, I’d definitely take it!)

Needless to say, all I want for Christmas is a good night's sleep. Or several reliable nights from here on in, actually.

As Huffington and Lieveve comment, getting a good night's sleep is especially important for women: ‘we’ve already broken glass ceilings in Congress, space travel, sports, business and the media — just imagine what we can do when we’re fully awake’.

It's a girl!

I'm back!

With a ten-week old baby asleep - for the moment - in her basket.

And a three-year old in childcare.

I just have a few snatched moments as I hear the baby stirring a little. But what I have learned in the past ten weeks is to snatch the time to do things for myself here and there when I can. Waiting for a clear half hour or more makes for a crash course in frustration.

So! We have another baby girl who is getting bigger day by day and is slowly becoming more settled and a little less unpredictable. I’m obviously biased, but I think she is adorable. Just like her big sister.

In the last thirteen weeks since I went parental leave, I have:

• done a two and a half hour job interview six days before giving birth (not recommended. I was so shattered afterwards I went to bed straight after dinner)
• given birth via elective caesarean section (of which more another time when it feels a bit more in the dim and distant past. But, in brief, everything went well this time around. Hurrah!)
• been discharged by my midwife and had two visits from the local Plunket nurses (of which more in another post)
• felt really upset as I listened to the cries of baby number two as she had her six-week vaccinations. On the plus side, she seemed fine afterwards. 
• heard people say some really odd things about second children in general and girls in particular (or which more in another post)
• not had nearly as much as sleep as I’d like and trying not to get my hopes up about her sleeping through the night
• breastfed the baby, then fed her again, and again, and again ...
• read both hopeful (a test case for gender pay equity in New Zealand and calls for a shorter working week) and depressing  (the repellent Roast Busters being top of the list) things in the papers about mothers, and girls and women in general. There is still a long way to go to achieve genuine gender equality.
• felt, so the ending to a million primary school stories goes, ‘tired but happy’.

That’s all I got for now. 

I think I hear the baby calling....