The Book

Here's the book I wrote for Zora:

Night Night Bubba (Part 1)

Daytime nursing--which we continue

Extended breastfeeding (beyond one year) is not very common in western culture. I'm sure plenty of folks think I'm nutso because I'm still breastfeeding our 26-month-old. Trust me, there are plenty of way better reasons to think I'm nutso, and breastfeeding a two-, three- or four-year-old (and beyond) is actually quite normal in much of the rest of the world. Zora and my breastfeeding relationship has had highs and lows, but overall, I'm very happy with it. In the active, often crazy life spent with a toddler, there is nothing I find sweeter than settling down in a comfy chair and having her big eyes gaze up at me as she nurses. If possible, I will be doing baby (or rather toddler)-led weaning. For now, she's still going strong, so we continue.

Night time is another issue. I haven't really had much good sleep since Zora was born. The first year was pretty terrible, though I somehow managed to function. Zora was (and still is) sleeping in our bed, and would nurse very often at night. Though I wished for more sleep, I was ok with the nighttime nursing, since I knew that not nursing at night would not necessarily guarantee that we would have any fewer wakings--not to mention that other methods of getting her back to sleep took far more energy than rolling over and whipping out a boob!

During her second year, I considered night-weaning from time-to-time, though it was almost like Zora was stringing me along. Every time sleep got so bad that I felt that night-weaning was the only solution left, sleep would get better for a period, and I would put it off. Some may wonder why in the world would I put something off that could possibly lead to better sleep. Well, when you're getting really crappy sleep, it's difficult to motivate yourself to do something that will make your sleep crappier before it possibly makes it better. When sleep would improve, I didn't want to upset anything, since I was enjoying the additional sleep. Every time I wondered if perhaps Zora's sleep patterns would settle on their own, and night-weaning would become unnecessary. And around and around I would go.

Somewhere around 2 years, I decided that I wanted to try night-weaning to see if it could improve our sleep. It was again put on hold due to changes going on in Zora's life to which I didn't want to add: a new bedtime routine, a family vacation, a cold, and relentless and seemingly endless teething. I did, however write a little book for Zora (Night Night Bubba) so that we could read it together and talk about what I was planning. She ended up loving the book, and we read it over and over for a few weeks. Finally, when things settled down a bit, I picked a night and just went for it. I had originally planned on using this night-weaning plan, but in the end decided that it required too much brain power--of which I have so little (due to lack of sleep). Instead, I would just talk with Zora about it during the day, and then offer her other kinds of comfort when she would wake at night (rubbing her back, singing, telling stories, sips of water, etc.). The first night brought lots of tears (she was never left alone during these tears--I was always there with her) and Zora clawing at my shirt the first two times she woke up. There were fewer tears the following couple of nights, and by night #4, she would pretty consistently go back to sleep after taking a little sip of water and snuggling with me. She has continued to wake frequently though.

We have done 9 nights of this, and here's what our nights have looked like so far...
 **For all of these nights, Zora fell asleep (with Papa) sometime between 7:45 and 8pm**
Night #1: Woke at 9pm, 12am, 2:30am, 4:30am (nursed) and 6:30am (for the day)
Night #2: Woke at 12:30am, 2:30am, 4:30am (nursed) and 6:30am
Night #3: Woke frequently between 12am and 2:30am, when I finally nursed her. Woke again at 4am (nursed), 6am (nursed) and 7am
Night #4: Woke at 12:30am, 2:30am, 4am (nursed), 6am
Night #5: Woke at 12am, 2am, 4am, 5am (nursed), 6am
Night #6: Woke at 12am, 2:30am, restless between 4:30 & 6am, 7am
Night #7: Woke at 10pm (needed to pee), 4:30am (nursed), restless between 4:30 and 5:30am, 7:30am
Night #8: Woke at 11pm (needed to pee), 2:30am, 5am (nursed), 7am
Night #9: Woke at 9:30 (arrrgh!), 2:30am, 5am (nursed), 6:30am

I am nursing her in the early morning, since I can tell she's on the brink of waking up for the day, and if I nurse her then, I buy myself a couple more hours of sleep. I would be more than ok with one feeding a night (or early in the morning), but perhaps I'll have to experiment with taking this nursing session out as well. I labeled this post a "Part 1", because I'm hopeful that there will be a "Part 2" sometime in the future, where I will be writing about all the long stretches of sleep we're getting. A girl can dream...

Our Pottying Journey

Before Zora was born, Alex and I had many discussions regarding how we wanted to diaper our baby. We wanted to use cloth diapers, but knew we wouldn't have been able to do them on our own, due to the washing machine in our rental house (didn't do hot loads and only had one load size setting). That left us with using a diaper service. I figured we'd contact them once the baby was born, though that didn't work out as smoothly as intended (I left a message, they forgot about it, I thought they were just busy, and yada yada yada,  Z was 2 months old before we got the cloth diapers). As a side story, we were actually about to head out to buy a pack of disposable diapers (for the first few days) the afternoon when my water broke--we never made it to the store.

3 months old

Long before Zora's zeroth birthday, Alex read the Diaper Free book by Ingrid Bauer--and was sold. He was totally gung-ho about doing Elimination Communication (EC), but I was rather skeptical. I kept telling him that we would be too busy or tired to do it. The idea of having a baby out of a diaper sounded messy and hectic to me. Keeping a baby's waste strapped to her body was all I had ever known. I agreed to give it a try, but I figured that once the baby arrived, Alex would quickly realize how impracticable this venture would be. Enter the newborn, who pees every 20 minutes, and poops almost as often. Suddenly, it seemed more practical to leave the diaper off and try to catch what we could. We still went through diapers, but spent a lot less time wiping the baby down, and her diaper rash went away quickly. 

6 months, and mobile!

By the time Zora was 4 months old, the ECing was going swimmingly. She liked sitting on the potty, I was able to read her cues quite easily (Alex never really got that down, but it quickly became an obsolete skill to have), and I was getting lots of inspiration and encouragement from the local EC community. Being a part of this community, I was prepared for Zora's pottying to be affected by her increasing mobility--though I had no idea how fast mobility would come. Rolling over before 4 months, sitting up by 5 months, crawling by 6 months, pulling up to standing by 6.5 months, and walking at 9.5 months--whew! All this development not only wreaked havoc on sleep, but ECing pretty much flew out the window once she was walking. In the EC world, this is called a "potty pause". Zora no longer had patience to sit, and she was so all-over-the-place that I couldn't read any cues anymore--if they were even present. 

8 months old and still tolerating the potty

We had another brief period of success after Zora turned 1--when she started using the sign for potty. The sign we used was the sign for the letter "T" and then you shake your hand. Zora did the sign with her hand open, which made it look like she was waving. There were many instances when she would do the sign out in public and people would say "Well, hello to you too!" and wave back to her. Sometimes I would explain that she needed to make a trip to the loo, and other times I would say nothing. It was pretty funny. So for a while she would sign when she needed to go, or when she was going or had just gone. In the EC world, this is all good, since she had down the critical "communication" part. The definition of this sign eventually branched out to also mean "hey look--a potty!" or "I want to read a book [on the potty]".

17 months, sitting on her "reading seat"

After our brief upturn, Zora started resisting the potty more and more. We never pushed her or made a big deal out of it, but when we offered the potty, she would systematically decline. This started to become frustrating for me (the primary EC-er), so for a couple months, we continued to EC (offered her the potty, talked to her about it when she went, etc.), but still had her in diapers almost full time. This did not work very well though,  so I decided to take the plunge and have her out of diapers full time at home, and just stay on top of the misses. This was tiring (and somewhat frustrating) for a while, but suddenly she started to take charge of her pottying, and sit herself down when she needed to go! This was the first time she was taking such an initiative, and it was very exciting for us. The poops were squared away quite quickly (she has always been a good potty-pooper). The pees took a while longer, but at one point she was peeing more in the potty than on the floor, and then eventually, almost exclusively on the potty--when she was with me (not Alex) and she was a nekkie-butt. 


And our journey continues. Our current situation is that Zora is 26 months old, goes almost exclusively on her little potty (doesn't want anything to do with the big potty), whether she has underwear or is nekkie-butt, wakes up 95% of the time dry, and hasn't peed in her diaper out of the house for several weeks. Our newest endeavor is to take outings with her little potty and Zora in underwear. So far so good, though I know there will be misses along the way. If you had asked me when Zora was 4 months old, at what age she would be out of diapers, I would have said around 12 months. It really seemed that this was where we were headed. Was I disappointed that this was not the case? Well, sometimes--especially when I was washing a load of diapers or hanging them to dry. I do in no way regret having ECed though, since we were able to get to this point with no potty drama, no potty hang-ups, no bribing or cajoling, and we were able to stay connected to Zora throughout the process.

I'm always happy to talk to people about ECing, and if you are considering it, I highly recommend setting up a support network of other parents who are doing the same (I belong to an ECing yahoo listserve). It is easy to want to throw in the towel when you encounter your first "potty pause", so it's really wonderful being able to hear others' experiences and ideas for challenges such as dealing with discouragement from family or friends, part-time ECing, ECing twins, potty pauses, pottying accessories (yes, they exist!), and so on.  Like all things parenting, there is no one way to EC, and just as every baby is different, every EC journey is too. 

My Dad

Baby me, toddler Brian and Dad

My dad would have been sixty-eight today. Sixty-eight. How is that possible? The last birthday he was alive, he turned fifty-eight. He still seemed like such a young man to me. A lifelong "jock", he was in excellent physical condition. His doctor even lamented to him that he could not warn him to stop smoking because he was ruining his lungs--they too were in great condition. His parents both lived into their nineties, and I, despite his smoking, assumed he would live a long time as well. And I think he would have.

I talked with my dad on his birthday, 10 years ago today. I sang to him, we talked about his students (some of whom I had tutored) and how school was going for him (he was a high school math teacher). We also talked about my classes--a topic in which he was always interested. At the time, I was in graduate school in the math department at UC Davis. I think my dad was proud of what I was studying, though most of it was now beyond what he had studied himself. A few years earlier he had given to me all of his math textbooks from college (I no longer have any of these--damn you Katrina). I displayed them proudly on my bookshelf, and would sometimes leaf through the pages with fascination over how much had changed and how much had stayed the same in college math textbooks over 35 years. I wanted to come to San Jose to see him and celebrate his birthday with him, but he told me that he and his wife weren't doing well and that he wanted to postpone any celebration. My dad wasn't much of a talker when it came to matters of the heart, but we did talk a little bit, and I let him know that I would always be there if he did need someone to talk to.

Dad & me

A little over a month later, I received a phone call that would change me in such a profound way, that, to this day, my heart still jumps every time the phone rings. This "phone call" was actually a series of phone messages from various family members, that I woke up to in the morning (our ringer was off at night). I called my brother back, and he told me that my dad had killed himself the night before. My entire world imploded. Part of me broke, and is still, 10 years later, broken. It will always be broken. That is what suicide does. It sucks. It really, really sucks! And it is such a small part of my dad's life--minutes maybe--but it will always be there, in my mind, breaking my heart every time I think about it.

When someone close to you chooses to leave in this way, it is pretty much impossible to not think that it's in some way your fault and that you could have done something to prevent it. I thought these thoughts for a very long time, and sometimes, I still do. But most of the time, I think about my dad's life. His hands. He had such big hands. I remember holding his hand when I was little, and all I could grasp was one finger. And his arms. Even as an adult, his hugs would completely engulf me, and I became a little girl again, safely protected by her daddy. He was loyal. Loyal, sometimes to a fault, but he loved his family above all else. He was also stubborn, and brilliant, and funny, and angry and thoughtful and so very complicated.

These are the things I will share with Zora. I understand he will not mean to her what he would have meant, had she known him. As a child, the family members who were gone before I was born seemed more like characters in a book than flesh and blood people. Zora will grow up hearing stories about her grandpa, and today we will light a candle and sing to him. One day, when she is older, I will talk to her about his death. I'm still not sure how I will do that, but, in wanting her to know him, she will need to know the good, along with the hard stuff.

In his final few years, my dad got really into opera. More specifically, Andrea Bocelli. We played this song at his memorial, and I will never again be able to hear it without thinking of him and without crying tears of pain and joy. Pain for the loss, joy for the love I will always have for him.

This is for you, Dad. Happy Birthday. I miss you.

Bus Body

Alex and I doing closing sequence at Kiran's in N.O.

When I lived in New Orleans, my body was the bendiest that it's ever been. Alex and I would leave home on our bikes at around 5:30am to get to the shala around 6 (this bike ride is another tale entirely--chased by feral dogs, scolded by police to steer clear of the 'hood, daily shout-outs and serenades by the residents...). This, in combination with the warm, humid climate, made me feel like rubber-woman during my practice. A nice feeling for someone who is not naturally flexible. I actually became hooked on this routine, and found it very difficult to practice without a bike ride first.

At some point during the fall after we started practicing Ashtanga (when it was still quite warm in New Orleans), Alex hurt his wrist and was unable to bike for a few weeks. What does biking have to do with a sore wrist? Well, biking amongst the potholes and general bumpiness of the streets in New Orleans is similar to being inside one of those paint shaking machines--I would imagine. You have to hold on for your dear life, and hope your bike has really good shocks! We lived too far away to walk, so we took the bus. The buses, like everything else in New Orleans, were air conditioned to the point of insanity (think Dr. Evil and Mr. Bigglesworth floating in outer space). Though I would wear layers on the bus, the air conditioning managed to permeate through my entire body--to the core. "Bus body" was a term coined by Kiran one morning when she was squishing me in paschimottanasana. As I've mentioned before, Kiran was amazingly tuned into energy and what was going on in our bodies (she even once noticed a change in my smell when I changed my diet). As soon as she started squishing me, she knew something was up. I told her we had taken the frigid bus to the shala, and my muscles were rock hard (as in stiff, not buff). This condition was henceforth known as "bus body". It was most noticeable early in the series, and would work itself out by the end of my practice--until I hopped on the bus again.

The reason I bring this up now, is that I'm currently in a perpetual state of "bus body". I no longer bike for 30 minutes before I practice, and I now live in a city that is cold more often than not. Because of this, every time I practice it starts off the same. First surya namaskara A: Inhale, arms up. Exhale, palms to the floor--but my palms don't come anywhere close to the floor! In some yoga traditions you would grab as far down on your legs as you can reach, but energetic connections are very important in Ashtanga, so we put our palms to the floor and bend our knees as deeply as needed. My knees are often bent in these forward bends through all of surya namaskara A and some of the surya namaskara B's. I had a nice break from "bus body" while on Maui, though my flexibility was nowhere near what it was in New Orleans. As much as I miss feeling like rubber-woman, I am thankful that my practice has been released from the shackles of a "pre-practice routine". I like being able to wake up, step on my mat, and begin the opening prayer. Well, it's not quite that simple. As the mother to a 2-year-old, I do have a few things to get in order before I can practice--none of which are "warm-ups", though. The surya namaskaras is my warm-up, as I think is intended.