Life begins at conception

A few months ago, I wrote a rather controversial post called "When is a fetus a person" detailing the mortifying experience I had at the hospital having lost a pregnancy mid-way.  I argued that the government's demand that I treat a twenty-week fetus as a dead child was inappropriate, cruel and offensive.

Today I would like to talk about the other side of the coin: private, intimate and self-reflective, away from forms, social workers and other strangers whose rights are supposed to stop at the end of my nose, but alas, rarely do.

I am now just over five weeks pregnant.  This means, about three weeks ago, a sperm and an egg came together to form a whole, which has complete information about the development of a person for the next eight months and much of what happens over many years that follow. Had the event taken place in a petri dish of the future reproductive laboratories, it would have little significance.  It didn't: it happened inside my body and its occurrence has predetermined much of what will happen in the rest of my life.

I am not carrying an individual in any sense. The organism, which is growing millions of new cells each day, has no individual rights, cannot be protected by any government, does not get a say in what happens to it or its environment. It does not think, reason or feel. 

Yet, it already possesses an identify.  It doesn't have hair yet, but we could look and find out with certainty whether it will be brown or blonde, its eyes blue or green, whether it will grow to be tall enough to play basketball or smart enough to pilot space shuttles.  I imagine that there is a friend I have never seen waiting for me in another room. I won't get to meet him for many months and when I do, I won't get to really know him for some years after that. But what I do know is that he looks a little like me and a bit like the man I love, that when I first meet him, I will be the most important thing in his life and that we will love each other always. I don't know whether he will be unusually funny or uniquely soft-spoken, but he already is one or the other; may be both! 

Of course, he is the grammatically correct, though awkward pronoun to describe someone I know this little about. I don't ask myself, "will it be a girl?" Instead, I think, "is it a girl" because if true, she already is. I had a dream that, indeed, it's a girl, with brown hair and narrow brown eyes. This is what she looks like in my mind's eye now.  In a few more weeks, she will begin to move.  Each time, I will stop to have an internal thought exchange.  "What are you doing in there? We will meet soon. Hang in there just a while longer.  We'll have so much fun together so soon!"

I don't have this baby yet, but I am not completely alone when no one is around. It will be a long time before I own my body, my time and my psyche. For months yet, we share my body and many of its functions.  For months after that, you will be attached to me for most hours of the day.  My mind always connected to what you are doing and feeling.  Then one day, you will take a step. For the rest of our lives from that day forward, we will primarily share our love and connection of two minds working independently and coming together to share our experiences, thoughts and feelings.

You are alive today, growing into what you already are, allowing the rest of the world to see the wonder that was formed those few weeks ago, with an egg and a sperm, each of which represented millions of combinations, in a moment of fate settling one just one: you.

Today I am devastated.  I need support. More than anything, I need courage.

Here is how it started. I am exploring a path to healthier eating and living for me and my kids. We are eliminating sugar, focusing on healthy foods and beating the vending machines. I am happy, the children are happy, and we feel like we are doing something special together.

Granny, the contrarian, asks, "So what are you going to do for Easter?"  Innocuous question, right? Perhaps a good one as I hadn't thought of it myself.  Light bulbs go on.

"What if I make special home-made treats: old-fashioned carmel apples, chocolate-dipped strawberries & more? Wouldn't that create memories of a life time?"

After a day of thought, I start my experiments, running a batch of Stevia-based meringues.  (Stevia tastes horrible, I decided! I think I'll stick to sugar the next time.)  I share some ideas with Granny.

"Well, as long as your kids don't interact with others."

"Hmmm... Actually they do, daily. What's your point? That their treats are not as special?"

"They are not APPROPRIATE for Easter."

In my mind, I am imagining a naked easter bunny with a hanging wiener... Inappropriate???

I patiently explain the uniqueness and appeal of my idea, the lesson it teaches the children, the memories it creates.

"I am just used to things that can spend a whole day in the easter basket in the hot sun - your ideas wouldn't work."

Good point - everything I thought of was perishable and should not go outside. Clearly, I need to do more thinking. But I know, that's just an excuse - I haven't heard the true objection yet.

And here it comes: "I am sad that I won't be able to do anything for these kids for Easter."

"Oh, is that the problem?  Well, it's easy!  Easter is such a versatile holiday! There are the eggs, the hunt, the gifts, the items placed in the eggs, the special family moments!"

You can probably guess what happened next.  Turns out, Easter is not about any of those things - it's about the baskets full of sugar - and I just 

        CANCELLED EASTER

The sad thing is, my mother-in-law is not alone. Is Thanksgiving about family or turkey? Is 4th of July about hot dogs or camaraderie? Is Easter about sugar or celebration of spring?

I would like for all of these things to be about the special experiences, some common with others, some unique to our family. Many will capture the memories of meals, treats, special food. But I don't want my kids to think it's the food that can make them happy...

Truth is, having candy on Easter is not a big deal by itself. I simply wanted to try a different approach, see if I can make it unique and special while showing the children how wonderful that can be... That they don't have to associate happiness on this occasion with the same things everyone else does - that they can carve out their own path. I sure am having a hard time with that path today. 

Knowing, there are people who read my blog, who know how I feel and who undoubtedly deal with similar situations daily makes me feel their virtual presences on this lonely path... Thanks, guys, for being there! Finishing this entry, I feel like I can face my day again.  Soon school will be out and I'll have my kids by my side, delighting me and reminding what this is all about...

GTD, Parenting, planning and blogging

Like my subject?  I am keyword hunting!  :-)  Not really.  Here is what they all have in common.

During my GTD review today, I went through David Allen's exercise known as "Are they problems or projects?"  The idea is, you write down everything that is weighing on your mind that feels like a problem in your life.  Then you figure out how to make it into a project, capture it, determine the next action and have it happily leave your psyche.

I discovered that one of my biggest problems today is an insufficient focus on active parenting. Sure, I have committed a substantial part of my day to be engaged with the kids. We often have fun, sometimes we relax, sometimes learn.  It just isn't coming together in my mind as the path I would like to envision. I appear to have misplaced my cheerful competence at parenting, the sense that I was doing what was right, facing challenges, solving problems, making progress and knowing the best was yet to come. Instead, I have scattered ideas that rarely come to fruition; stolen moments absorbed in productive activities that often become interrupted and unfinished; scattered mommy projects, such as organizing kids books that stay in my GTD system for months. It is tough to feel productive in the midst of such mental chaos - and without that feeling, hard to feel self-confident.

Once I identified the parenting problem (really, it wasn't even something I was aware of till I focused), I decided that what I needed was some good and regular planning. Everyone talks about the baby temperaments and how parenting is impacted by them.  I like to focus on the mommy temperament. Seriously - I am actually the one in charge and there is no one here to help or to teach. So I better figure out how my own temperament works and figure out my parenting style with it in mind. Planning is not my thing.  I like doing - plain and simple. Right now, however, my time is so committed in so many different directions, I often feel like I am drowning. Solution: blogging. It's really a lot more like doing than it is like planning - and it's definitely the right self-reflective tool that will help me focus on the goals I would like to achieve.

Today's thoughts are about Lily as a younger sibling. I feel like she is constantly frustrated as so much attention is being paid to helping Alex get to the next step in whatever he is doing, leaving her completely behind. Bed time reading is a great example. It is so much fun to see Alex be able to make it through a book on his own that Lily falls victim as she does not get parental focus and a mommy-read bed time story. Instead, she gets one clumsily read by a four-year-old, with all the attention dedicated to him. To make things worse, we are finally getting into kids' novels as bed time reading - something that is clearly inaccessible to the poor two-year-old girl and she is clearly upset.

The truth is, getting Alex to read at bed time is cheating. It fulfills the goal of supporting him in learning to read without having to dedicate special time to it. Perhaps, that is the first step to solution: find a short interval, perhaps half an hour each day, to set up 1-on-1 work time. If you have multiple young children, you know it will be tricky. How do you convince the other one to give you the space you need? This will be my focus for the week: find private time for my two brilliant children, making them each feel accomplishments in their own rite. Stay tuned!

Healthy eating is healthy living

My dear husband,

For the first time in our parenting career, we have run into a real challenge: a tough question about one of the fundamentals of parenting. As I continue my journey into healthy eating, I am gathering strength and motivation to take my kids along. Over the course of the past year, we have been doing better and better.  I have learned to cook in a way that makes them happy, create a variety that make meal times enjoyable, learned to avoid unhealthy snacking by predicting hungry times and creating snacks the kids can't say no too.

The last question that remains is this: Is eating unhealthy wrong?  Note that there is a substantial difference between the claim that eating healthy is right and the question I pose. Should candy be looked upon as a source of problem and disease, or an acceptable indulgence? Should our old tradition of family doughnut days be buried for good? Can I insist that cookies never be present in a way that confuses the kids?

There are many reasons, this question is hard to answer. One is social: do you really want to raise kids that choose not to eat pizza with their soccer team? Do you refrain from participating in trick-or-treating because its soul purpose is to acquire a bag of illness? Do you spend your childhood looking envious upon your friends' lunch bag?

Today, I have found my answer in another parent's blog.  Words of wisdom and inspiration:

To be successful we have to retrain our brains to disassociate food with pain and fun. We no longer go out to ice cream to cheer up, or to the bakery to start the day off right. We learn to find other reasons to laugh, other sources to comfort us in pain, and another focus for gatherings with friends. All our lives food has been the topic of discussion, our psychologist, and our door to new cultures. Not only must we seek alternatives but it is our added responsibility to offer these alternatives to our children.

Every word written in that post is a pearl to think about, come back to, read over and over again.  It draws attention to the fact that all the pain in the decision about eating unhealthy comes from the idea that we need food to bring joy into our lives.  And not only food: cigarettes, alcohol, sex, television... There is a long list of things we engage in just to smooth out the rough corners, make our life more tolerable, cheer up. (Most of them, of course, can be engaged in for the right reasons! How notable it is that pursuing them for the wrong reason devalues the thing itself!)

When I become stressed, the advice I often receive is: take a break, have a glass of wine, go watch a TV show...  Time and again I have found that engaging in something like this invariably turns me into a mess the next day. Having accomplished nothing productive during my break, I have allowed the problems that stressed me out to begin with turn into monsters that haunt me. The pain was momentarily gone - now it is back with a vengeance.

Is eating ice cream to cheer up as a child a precursor to evasion and inability to deal with real problems as an adult?  Well, not exactly. However, learning approaches to handling disappointment, pain and problems without the means of sugar to lift our spirits is definitely a precursor to handling such things well in the future.

Today, I ask you:  

    Can you stand by me as I make healthy eating a major value in our home?

    Can we do away with making kids happy with treats and seek other means, such as hugs and games?

    Can we send them a clear message that healthy eating is healthy living. One does not just do it most of the time.

Today is also the day we started the morning with a Pink Line!  YES!  It is a new beginning for us.  Another life in our hands, to help shape and direct into the future.  What better day to hold hands and go on a new path of partnership and camaraderie!  Let's make our kids proud.

Why do we blog?

Do you blog because you are the world renowned expert on parenting or whatever it is you blog about? Or because in your particular reality you are one?  No, probably not. Perhaps it's because you want to tell all of your closest friends (sorted by keyword, of course) about your achievements.  Nah, that seriously isn't worth the effort by itself. 

There are as many really good reasons to blog as there are good bloggers. I blog because I want to remind myself of those principles that are most important to me. I need the time away from the doing of parenting, away from the emotion, the impatience of the moment, to organize my thoughts, remember what it is that I would tell myself to do in a given situation if I were to ask.

When I first set out to write about parenting, some part of me thought that I wanted to share my ideas with the world because they were so good. (You guessed it, it was very early in my parenting career!) Now I know that I blog about things that are most challenging to me.  Stop yelling at kids, Stress, kids & spazz, explaining lying to kids... you get the idea.  These are the battles I live through, fight and grow from. 

My biggest challenge in parenting is getting on top of my emotions and thereby creating a peaceful and harmonious environment for my children to grow up in.  If my husband were the full time parent, his challenges would be different. A poker player, serial entrepreneur and philosopher, managing his emotions is  something that takes nothing more than some skull sweat, as he puts it.  The apple of his eye, our four-year-old son has a similar temperament.  "Mommy," he tells me when I am at the end of my rope and ready to burst into tears, "sometimes, I don't want other people to see me cry.  You should do the same.  It's not too hard.  You just smile."  You what?! Seriously?  How did I produce this child?? "Mommy, you just have to smile for a little while longer," he reassures me as our engagement draws to a close.

Our daughter on the other hand, is a ball of emotions.  She runs a gamut like no one I have never known, with the notable exception of myself.  So full of joy and wonder of the world, she breaks down into tears with each disappointment or frustration. When she gets mad she shrieks, little fists shaking. When playing monsters, she frequently becomes too scared to continue and dissolves into tears. She is the most wonderful child to be around when she is happy, her laughter contagious and her genuine manner opening the hearts of friends and strangers. At other times, she makes you wonder what possessed you to have children to begin with... 

Her an I are extremely close, often driving each other mad, but always maintaining a bond of deep understanding, quarreling and making up, crying and loving, always living in the moment, past and future seeming so far away.

It is a good thing that she goes to a Montessori school, her work calming her emotions, organizing her mind. And I have my blog, lending me perspective that I know I have, enabling me to pull out of the moment and regain my balance, so I could give her the inner calm that I know, she needs.