On returning

Hello friends.

I'm not quite sure what to say. It's been so long since I've shared my adventures (such as they are) with you. One moment I was busy blogging and sharing my goals and projects, and the next moment I was closing my computer and stepping back. It just didn't feel right anymore, and I'll tell you why. 

Things sucked.

Now before you kindly reassure me that I'm so lucky to have had the time off from the stress and chaos of full-time school or that I am blessed to have the experience of staying home with my daughters, please know that I know all this. And in between all the times my year off from school has sucked, I've loved the time I've spent with my children, and the quiet hours at home while they're at school. But this doesn't change how I've felt this past year, and I don't want to brush these feelings aside anymore.  

I had taken a break from my midwifery program for a few different reasons, but mostly it was about taking a year or so to become my healthiest self. Midwifery is demanding, parenting is demanding, and I wasn't getting any younger. I was out of shape, in pain, struggling with my moods, and in need of a reset of sorts. I believed that I owed it to myself to spend some time getting healthier in order to both meet the demands of life and to enjoy the hell out of it.

But then life got hard and I wasn't ready for it. There I was, with all this time in front of me, and yet I couldn't seem to find a single moment with which to devote to the changes I knew I needed to make to my life. Yes I was working and spending a lot of time with my girlies, but I also had a lot of freedom that just brimmed with possibilities. I would go to bed at night with big goals and plans for the next day, but then the next day would come and nothing. All I felt was unmotivated, grumpy, and still out of shape, in pain, and struggling with my moods. Nothing seemed to change. So I'd just take a nap and see if tomorrow was better. And it wasn't.

Looking back, there were many reasons why I felt so low this year. It was a shock to my system to go from a hectic midwifery placement to life at home and I needed more for an adjustment period than I realized. I was struggling with Alyce and all of her new eight-year-old needs. I'm not the greatest at self-motivation. And also--the biggest reason--change is fucking hard.  

But here are a few things that I've learned about myself this year:

• It's dangerous to spend too much time on my own. I am one of those tricky extroverted introverts and if I'm not careful I'll stay home in a quiet house for too many days in a row. Do you know what I do while I'm home by myself (besides obsessively clean)? I dwell. I sit on the couch and dwell. And that's not good for anyone. I have the kind of job where I work by myself, but even leaving the house to go work in a coffee shop or library forces me out a good rut. And friends--I need more time with my friends. They soothe my soul.
• I need get more exercise. I've surprised myself lately with regular walks and I'm always in a better and more productive place after these excursions. Fresh air + moving my body cures so many ills. 
• I need structure. Like I REALLY need structure. Cue my husband rolling his eyes because all he ever does is tell me this.
• I'm a good parent. While Alyce might find it terribly annoying that I'm around all the time, I know deep down that she's needed me this year. Shira has been overjoyed by my omnipresence and it's nothing short of magic to be loved that hard. 
• I need to be okay with doing hard things. I started the year with so many big goals and then I crumbled under the pressure because it was difficult. It isn't easy to quit smoking or to change how you eat. But I'm starting to see that life won't fall apart just because things get hard. I have to believe that I'm stronger than I realize. 
• I really just want to be a midwife. How wonderful that I've taken this year off school and realized just how badly I want to be a midwife!  
• It's okay to take a year off and hate it.

So why am I back? Because I think I'm feeling better. I have four months left before I return to school and I'm ready--really ready--to move forward. Spring is in the air, there's sunshine on my face, and I'm ready to go. I've decided to show up here and again and share my days and efforts and challenges with you all over again. Maybe you are too, and we can do this together.

Get ready for goals you guys. 

Be well!

xo

I survived the semester

So I'm mostly here to tell you that I survived the grand catastrophe known as clinical skills, reproductive physiology, and pharmacology. I did it. Passed. Done. Over. Survived. It was truly the most work my brain has ever done, and I say this as someone who has been in school since the dawn of time. I learned so much about fetal heart beats, placentas, and the use of medication to control postpartum bleeding (in addition to about a billion other things) that my brain is ready to explode. And explode it shall when I begin my first clinical placement in two weeks!

That's right. In two short weeks I will begin a little less book-learning and a lot more hands-on baby catching! Can you even believe it? I know I can't. I have my stethoscope at the ready, my pager is warming up, and I'm (sort of) ready to go. Do you want to know all the feelings I have about starting placement? Here's a sampling: giddiness, panic, trepidation, delight, anxiety, and exhaustion (that's a carryover from this past semester of superwork).  I think more than anything I'm excited that I'll be able to use my hands. I remember my own midwives' hands on my body, on my baby, and I want my own hands to learn that skill and attention. My hands are always warm, so that's a start.

Life is about to get real in an entirely new way. I will be on-call 24 hours a day, with only a handful of days off each month. I will be called away for births and appointments at moment's notice. Did I mention I have a family, with two young children? How will this work? Will they miss me? Will they feel left out of my new life? Will the girls be cared for in all those times I'm working? (Of course they will be, is an answer to that last question.) To this point I've been busy and chaotic and overwhelmed, but all of that has taken place within a framework of regular schedules and flexibility. But last I heard, birth with a midwife is unscheduled. I've known about this part of my student midwifery life for years, but now, now it is here. I'm talking to my children and to Matt, explaining how I think life will be for the next 18 weeks, but who are we kidding? I have no idea. Mama will sometimes leave in the middle of the night and only time will tell how that impacts the girlies.

Can I tell you about how nervous I am about this transition? I think I'll make a good midwife one day, but am I ready for this? Will my hands learn? I am an anxious sort by nature and I'm having to work really hard to just keep breathing. Am I strong enough for this? I really do think so.

In these last two weeks before placement I plan to have the girls help me to prepare for all these big changes. We're going to make notes and drawings to carry with us, to peak at when we're missing each other. I'm going to ask them to make a sign for my bedroom door that says "Mama is sleeping!" for those days I'm catching up on sleep from the birth. I also feel the need to plan everything at home, which of course is pretty ambitious considering the next two weeks are filled with holiday dinners, marking, preparing for placement (translation: taking everyone's blood pressure). But I also want to wash my floors, sort my clothes, write up a meal plan for Matt and the girls, make food to keep in the freezer, and sleep. I'm nothing if not eager.

I also want to blog. What are the chances?

Be well!

Getting my shit together

I hope my mum doesn't read this post because she hates it when I swear. If only she knew that my first instinct in most situations to swear. I find it to be very effective. Mum, on the other hand, wisely taught me that we can always find a better word, a word less caustic and more becoming of her daughter. Unfortunately, once I left home and joined the big world of college roommates who shopped at the Gap (I had only ever heard of it in movies, but I've since made up for lost time), drank lemon drop martinis, and swore like sailors, I threw her advice to the side. I blame them, yes, but they gave me so many wonderful things, too, that I just can't hold it against them.

So today I'm not talking about organizing my day or my responsibilities as a parent who works at home. No. I'm talking about getting my shit together. My lack of energy over the past year has given way to some terrible habits. I feel like there are pieces of me all over the place. My shit is a mess.
Sorry, mum, but there just isn't any other way of saying it. Please forgive me.

Here are some of the symptoms: twice in the last week I have gone to the trouble of arranging to borrow my grandfather's car (Matt takes our only car to work) so that I could run important errands, like Shira's two-year check up, and twice I have forgotten to take the car seat out from our car to use in the borrowed one. The first time I had to cancel our plans, the second I was able to find one to borrow at the very last minute (thanks, Aunt Jo, again). This is an easy one to solve: prepare your day the night before. Easy, right? Not so much. When you feel overwhelmed by everything and you're moving at the pace of a slug, preparing the night before seems unimaginable. With long days spent at home, often working in circles (hence, needing to get my shit together), I resist planning for the next day with great determination. It doesn't make sense: the next day will be easier if I take some time to plan beforehand. I get it.

Matt will often try to encourage me to plan ahead. Around dinnertime he'll ask me, so what are your plans for tomorrow? Is there anything I can do to help? Yes, he's that supportive. But in an annoying way. He is so incredibly good at organizing his time and preparing in advance, and no matter how much I complain, I'm jealous. If you were to ask Matt what time he'll be leaving for work the next day he would tell you that since he has to stop for gas he'll be leaving at 5:19 am. I can honestly declare that I have never in my life planned my departure down to a minute. Now, I'm not beating myself up about not being just like Matt. We all have our strengths, and one of mine is spontaneity, and the ability to be really present in a given moment (because my mind isn't busy planning and keeping myself on schedule). I couldn't give this up about myself even if I wanted to, and I don't. But I would like to make my life a bit easier, and I know making a habit of planning my day the night before, getting paperwork and lunches and meeting times together, will do just that.

Here's another symptom: I spend my day wandering around the house. I'm not a lazy person, even with my low energy, but the disorder of my days, sometimes due to lack of planning, other times the result of feeling like so much of my life is in flux, makes me feel as though I have one hundred things to do and I can't seem to get started on even one of them. I'm not sure where to begin, so I wander from room to room, picking up toys, washing dishes, checking an email, responding to a student, reading one page of a cookbook. Rinse and repeat. Some of this disorder is simply a reality of working from home. There are schedules for the girls (school, naps, a million snack breaks), deadlines to meet, cleaning to do, and all of these things happen in little bits throughout the day. I  can't always decide to spend the next two hours doing a particular task because I will be interrupted roughly one thousand times by Alyce and Shira. Working at home means flexibility (which is wonderful), but it also means that I do much of my work at inopportune times. Lately this flexibility has felt oppressive, hence the need to get my shit together.

So what do I do? I have a pretty good idea. I need to sit back and consider all of the tasks I need to get done, think about my time, and separate my day as best as I can. I can't do everything, no matter how hard I try. And sometimes, just sometimes, I need to say no to making an impromptu batch of muffins because I know it will mess up the schedule I have set for myself, and no matter how good those rhubarb and strawberry muffins will taste (which will be made tomorrow, as per my schedule), I need to wait. One of my tasks this weekend is to outline all of my responsibilities and think, really think, what I need to do to incorporate these into my day. I'll get back to you with what I learn.

A lot of what I'm thinking about lately has to do with wanting to feel excited about my days. I can't always love everything I do, but I owe it to myself, and to my family, to live my life a bit lighter. Andrea Scher wrote a post last week asking, Do you know what it feels like to lose your sparkle? That's how I feel, like I've lost my sparkle. I'm usually sparkly, and I miss that. Getting my shit together is going to help me get it back.

The photos today are from my last 24 hours on Instagram. You can follow me there @mostdaysiwin.