Maternity 33

week 32: a business trip to New Orleans

Mon, 25 Oct 2010 15:56:06 -0700

Last week I went to New Orleans on a 3 days business trip. Just when I was about to depart Michael Stipe (the lead singer of R.E.M) posted his personal guide to New Orleans on Gwyneth Paltrow’s blog. I checked out a few of his digs, but overall it did not correspond to me at all. So here is my “guide for a business trip to New Orleans”.

Primo: two night business trips are like holidays when you are a working parent. You fly alone, you stay in a hotel and someone else cooks all your meals. You even get to stay at work late and finish your tasks for the day, rather than rush out with the nagging feeling of not having crossed everything off your list - ok, I know, I should keep my lists short, or forget about them, or include the big things like “feed, love and bathe my kids”, but I come from a long line of list makers, so I can’t help myself. This is my third business trip to New Orleans - I go once a year - and I look forward to it every time.

Secundo: I work for a non profit and we can’t afford to have me stay in a rockstar’s hotel. I managed to get them down to $250 per night, which is pretty good, given the service and clientele, but my little French Quarter dive only costs $89 a night. I would recommend it anytime; though it’s a few paces from Bourbon, it’s quiet, clean and quaint and the house is over 200 years old.

Tertio: REM and other cool people apparently like going to bars where people smoke. SMOKE??? When I first walked into the bar I was a little confused, having possibly forgotten the smell of second hand smoke. But there they were: happy patrons puffing away. I grew up in Paris, I used to know how to hang my clothes from my window when I came home from a club and immediately wash my hair. Smoke never bothered me. But now I guess I’m as puritanical as it gets. So instead of eating in a smokey dive, I suggest you go to Snug Harbor - a restaurant and jazz club on Frenchmen street.

Finally: New Orleans is the best city in the United States… because:
1) It has a vibrant urban environment that is not sustained by technology, banking or some other high paying activity. There doesn’t seem to be any shackling protestant or catholic work ethic.
2) It’s the music. You hear it everywhere. And so many people are professional or amateur musicians. If you are curious about what amateur music can do to your soul and happiness — you should read this. I aspire to become an amateur pianist.
3) It’s the food: I’ve eaten in fancy restaurants and in total dives and the food has been perfect.
4) It’s the french thing: only city in the states where you routinely see a French flag (can you see it in this picture?).

My 34th birthday came and went… The remaining two posts...

Mon, 25 Oct 2010 12:04:17 -0700

My 34th birthday came and went… The remaining two posts were written (in draft form) before my birthday, so it’s all good…

Interlude: a biographical list of favorite novels

Fri, 15 Oct 2010 05:01:00 -0700

Novels are delicious. I have relishing them since I was a little girl. Here is a brief biographical essay in novels.

A wrinkle in time (I can’t recall the story, only that I loved it and read it when I was very young)

Jane Eyre (read in High school)

Le Premier Siecle apres Beatrice (read in High School)

Spring Snow (read in High school – images of cherry blossoms stuck with me for years until I was finally able to travel to Japan after my PhD)

Le Conte de Monte Cristo (read late at night while I was studying like mad in Paris, right after my Baccalaureat and miserable in my classroom)

A prayer for Owen Meany (read during a summer holiday during college years)

Leon l’Africain (read on a bus while traveling in Mexico when I was a college student) – this novel put me on a path that eventually gave rise to this.

Posession (read during a summer holiday because my mom’s friend left the book in my room)

Cryptonomicon (read during my PhD studies because a dear friend recommended it, just as I was discovering Sci-Fi)

Foundation (I read all Isaac Asimov while I was writing my PhD)

The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay (read while I was a student in London because my sister left it at home after one of her trips from New York City)

Le Hussard sur le toit (read while living in Morocco)

The Blind Assassin (read in a 4 poster bed in an old cottage on the Dupont de Nemours estate in Delaware – I was spending one week there for archival research)

Les Bienveillantes (read while I was pregnant with my first child, never finished it – too twisted and dark)

Harry Potter (read in the first months of my son’s life – it’s the book that motivated me to figure out how to nurse and read at the same time, an art I perfected with my second child!)

Wolf Hall (read in the first months of my daughter’s life – in small installments before I napped or slept)

Love in the Time of Cholera: I think this is the only book I have read twice.

As I write this I’m salivating for the new novel I’m about to start: Freedom.

If you read this, you have to send me the name of your favorite novel. If you can’t tell: I love novels with plot

Week 31: an unusual mother figure

Thu, 14 Oct 2010 20:54:25 -0700

When I was pregnant with my first child I went through a brief attempt to watch all movies that had won the Best Picture Oscar. I made it through a few, and Antonia’s Line was among them. In this Dutch movie there is an amazing mothering scene, where a young girl realizes soon after giving birth that she would rather spend her time solving mathematical puzzles than raising her baby. So her mother and grandmother take over. Everyone is happy, including the child. And the mother spends lots of time with her child, just not parenting time.

She’s an unusual mother figure and I have spent a lot of time thinking about this story since becoming a parent. Truth is, I’m not shocked by the young lady’s choice. Parenting is just one piece of me, and the other pieces are just as primal. There’s the cerebral piece of me – the one that likes to solve hard conceptual problems. There’s the explorer piece of me – the one that likes to wander in new places and find something new or unnoticed previously. There’s the quiet piece of me – the one that loves being alone. And there’s the partner piece of me – the one that thrives on companionship with my college sweetheart. These facets coexist, and parenting has enhanced many of them. But I’ve also needed to protect them from my parenting duties and emotions. Here are a few things I do to give wings to all pieces of me:

1)Sacred Monday mornings: funny how the emotional quality of time changes depending on your life circumstances. I used to resent Monday mornings – the shock from having to adopt weekly rituals after the week-end’s amorphous flow. Now I love them. Both kids are out of the house by 9:00 and I work from home – to relish my quiet adult space. Before I sit at my computer, I do a few stretches, tidy my room and office, and brew a slow cup of tea. I then jump into the most challenging quantitative or conceptual work I have for the week, leveraging my appetite for serious stuff after two days of laughter and funny business with kids.

2) Piles of novels: to wind down, my husband likes to watch T.V. at night. This does not work for me. I read books, novels preferably. My bedside table is a mountain of books , as my son curls up in bed with me for his bedtime story, and I slip back under the covers a few hours later when it’s time for my dance with words. My love of novels and short stories dates back to my earliest memories, and I’m amazed at this consistency. I have favorite bookstores in every city I’ve lived in.: I always find the store where the owner writes little hand written notes about recent novels she has enjoyed. Doesn’t have to be a big bookstore, or even particularly intellectual. Just has to be small and personal. Here they are:

Paris – Dom Tom, 81 rue St Dominique, 75007, Paris
London – (this is my all time favorite) Daunt Books on Marelybone High Street
San Francisco – Phoenix Books on Valencia and on 24th street

3) Walk to work: when I moved to the United States to honor my husband’s desire to live in the Silicon Valley, I lay down two rules. We visit France twice a year and I will never drive to work. I’m a terrible driver and I hate being in a car. Conversely, I love public transit and walking. San Francisco is a lovely city for this – it’s usually crisp and sunny, and the streets are animated and quite green. It’s not as beautiful as Paris, nor as perfectly landscaped as London (my favorite walking cities) but it’s great for regular day dreaming – which is what I do when I walk (don’t listen to music, don’t talk on phone, don’t rush).

4) Saturday night date night: I have written about this already here.

week 30: food tips for you and your family

Mon, 11 Oct 2010 21:55:00 -0700

I have a dear friend who started a nutrition consulting business several years ago to help busy bodies find a healthy diet. I signed up for her class when my first child was nine months old: I wanted to rebuild my body and energy, recover from childbearing, breastfeeding, sleep deprivation and pretty radical changes in my lifestyle. She customized a “rebuilding” diet for me and I have stuck to most it for three years. I changed my breakfast menus to include much heartier meals with lots of protein (I eat eggs, beans, cheese, and occasionally rice, sausage and veggies); I eat seasonally (fruits and veggies are delivered to our door from a local farm, once a week) and I take vitamins daily (or as often as I can recall, mostly vitamin C+D).

Recently, my friend wrote a humorous account of the various types of food personalities she encounters in her clients. I read along, looking for my “type” : instead I found that she should expand her list to include the working parent. I described this person (myself) as “on her feet all day long; doesn’t eat much junk food because she has banned it from the house and from her handbag; can’t recall the last time she had a two course sit-down meal in peace because she is regularly interrupted by children, colleagues, teachers, baby-sitters, laundry, delivery men, the urge to get to yoga class etc… As a result, the busy parent doesn’t prioritize chewing!!!” You can see the blog post here and my comment here.

This got me thinking: what are the things I do to bring good food to my mouth and my family’s belly every week? Read on for three habits that work really well for me.

1) Make a roasted chicken every week: I have a really simple receipe which I make every Sunday and it kills three birds in one stone. We have a delicious Sunday meal, I get fresh chicken broth for the week to come (as you may recall from an earlier post, i drink chicken broth to rebuild my body from childbirth, or to give me warm and stamina on a difficult day), and I have lots of leftovers for my son’s Monday pic-nic lunch and my daughter’s purees.

2) Hire a cook to make dinner for your family as often as you can afford. We do it weekly. This started two years ago when I had a “talk” with my husband about division of labor in the kitchen. I wanted him to do two meals a week. He could get take out, order in, cook, whatever he wanted. He did not try any of the above; on the first week after our agreement, he hired a friend of his to cook in his stead! He then hired her for 6 months (the duration of her stint in cooking school) and she has now been with us for more than two years. She comes on Wednesdays, in the thick of the week when we all need a break. She cooks a hearty meal for that night, we set a nice table and she stays for dinner, so that we can catch up with her. She also makes a soup or stew for the following days.

3) Get a house account at your local grocery store. I can’t keep up with shopping for my family. There are times when there is nothing fresh in our fridge and the last thing I feel like doing is running out to shop while my nanny stays at home with the kids. And I certainly don’t want to bring them shopping as being in a store with my three year old is funny at best and mostly nerve racking (son: “can I buy this?”, me: “no”, me: “what’s in your mouth?”, son: “Mmmm”, me: “that’s theft, you can’t just eat things in the store”, son: ” then we should buy it”). By having a house account, I’ve made it possible for my nanny to shop when she is walking the baby so we have opportunity to replenish the fridge in the middle of the week. If you live in San Francisco, we have a house account at Bi-Rite.

Week 29: enjoy some adult time with your infant. Now that my...

Tue, 05 Oct 2010 21:01:00 -0700

Week 29: enjoy some adult time with your infant. Now that my daughter is eight months, we go on expeditions together a couple times a month when I take some time off work (I have been taking one day off every other week for several years now). Museums are our favorite outing: together we have been to the Asian Art Museum, the Museum of Modern Art and in two days, we go to the Jewish Museum.

week 28: three problems my children solved

Sun, 19 Sep 2010 21:30:15 -0700

Several months ago, a friend asked me what I missed most from my life before children. I was able to answer that question really fast: sleeping in, not being interrupted and travel to off-the-beaten path locations. She didn’t ask what I had gained from having children, maybe because she expected mention of love, fun and cuddles. Yet, had she asked that’s not what I would have said. My answer would have been considerably more pragmatic. My children have greatly increased my quality of life.

1. I’m no longer an insomniac. I probably only had a mild case of insomnia, as nights totally without sleep were very rare. But I had definite fear of that time of day when lights go off and you’re supposed to drift into sweet slumber. It would routinely take me an hour, and often more, to fall asleep, and this was a real pain point in my relationship with my husband. Today, thanks to sleep deprivation and an amazingly active life I can count on my hands the nights when I struggled to fall asleep since 2006. This is a real blessing.

2. My back hurts occasionally, but gets better almost as fast. When I was in my early 20s, I hurt my back on a tennis court, and it has bothered me since then. Much of my diet, exercise, and lifestyle are built around minimizing chance of back pain. Having children made me more active, and this suits my back. I’m seldom sitting for too long, I walk a lot, and I’m so desperate for moments of calm and zen that I have adopted a regular yoga and swim practice that also keeps my back happy. During both my pregnancies, the hormone changes seemed to suit my lower back and I’ve started exercising my abdominal muscles- something I systematically shied away from before I had children.

3. I don’t fight with anyone (especially my husband) about pointless issues. Two small children have pretty much drained the argumentative mojo from my spirit. And I don’t miss this!

week 27: baby gear, tried and tested

Sat, 18 Sep 2010 16:07:00 -0700

Pregnant friends ask me what I find most useful to have on hand for babies. As I am a minimalist I think this list may be of service to those who’d like to keep it simple… though, even then it’s a handful (see my earlier post on keeping things tidy).

I have made it through two children with no automatic swing or rocker, no big clunky plastic toys, no wipes or bottle warmers, no sterilizers…. In my experience in the first year, children want to interact with adults and play outdoors - everything else, is just a prop!

Full disclosure: my husband maintains this list, he’s totally on top of what we need, and what we don’t!

Baby medicine kit:
Infant Tylenol (regular)
Get the ear reading thermometers - much faster and less invasive
Baby wash / shampoo (I like this brand: California Baby)
Rubbing alcohol
Hydrogen peroxide
First aid kit
Homeopathic teething remedy (Camilia from Boiron)

Hygiene:
Diapers (newborn and size 1- 7th Generation or Earth-Baby.com for compostable) Don’t get a lot of newborn—they only fit for about a week.
Sensitive skin baby wipes (7th Generation or Earth-Baby.com)
Diaper Champ/Genie/Dekor (We use the Diaper Champ and it’s great)
Fragrance/dye-free baby detergent (7th Generation)
Cotton balls, Q-tips with safety tips
Nasal aspirator (you’ll also get a good one from the hospital).
Nail clippers with safety handle.
Long, thin, super maxi pads (you will need at least a box or two for post-partem)

Bath
Hooded towels
Baby bathtub
Baby washcloths

Nursing and Feeding Items
Bottles (we like the born free). You might have to try a few different kids before finding one that your baby likes, so I wouldn’t get a “starter kit” until you know.
Burp cloths (a dozen to start)
Bibs (4-6)
My Breast Friend
Reusable breast pads (if breastfeeding)
A breast pump, if you plan to nurse. I was happy with the Medela Pump in Style.
Breat pump bra (this allows you to read, work, while doing the daily pump)
Nursing bras. Only get one or two before baby is born because you’ll get bigger again.
High chair. (Don’t need until 5 or 6 months)
Babycook (make your own baby food - don’t need until 5 or 6 months) http://www.beabausa.com/product-babycook.cfm

Clothing
Hats
Gowns (2-4)
Onesies (5-10)
Sleepers (2-4)
Socks (6)
Stepping-out outfits (4-6)
Receiving blankets (5-7)

Take whatever you can get your hands on at the hospital. Take extra disposable mesh underwear, baby diapers, nasal bulb. If you can get your hands on some hospital swaddlers, take as many as you can. You will never find a store bought swaddler that is as good as those or the hats.

Car & Travel Items
Infant car seat / stroller
Convertible Stroller for car seat
Car seat body support if you make small babies
Ergo carrier - my favorite baby and toddler carrier;
KidCo tent (for sleeping outside house and for fun!) - this is a million times lighter and better than the clunky pack n play or other folding bed.
You don’t really need a diaper bag - I discovered this with my second child — a little cloth bag with a change of clothes and a few diapers and wipes is just as good, and much lighter.

Comforting Baby:
Pacifiers
Bouncy seat: a must (best one I found is this)

Sleep:
Sound Machine
Cosleeper
Sleep Sacks (Awesome for keeping them warm without blankets after 3 months)
When you buy a crib get your mattress from here - - remember your kids sleep 14 hours a day, the one place to spend money is their mattress.
Humidifier
breathable crib bumper

Play:
Floor activity gym: Colorful mat with fun things to play with
A few musical and shiny/textury toys
At one point you will need a baby gate - but that is a whole new topic - baby proofing the house… for another post maybe.

keep me motivated: vote!

Fri, 27 Aug 2010 08:00:00 -0700

I have got less than 10 posts left to write in fewer than 10 weeks. I have been back at work for nearly two months, and am steadily gearing up to full time.

I need encouragement and your feedback on posts you have preferred. Which category has been most entertaining, enjoying, interesting?

Minding the Mind: ways to keep your brain ticking while you tend to little ones;

Body Builders: ways to strengthen your body and steady your energy while you balance family and career;

Family Life Savers: things I do to offset chaos;

Matters of the heart: how I make parenting fun, ~~sometimes~~ often!;

week 26: toy tidying tips

Thu, 26 Aug 2010 10:00:00 -0700

Now that baby is starting to roll around and will soon crawl, we have set up a play area in our living room for her to be busy and active while we do our big people stuff (cook, eat, read books, talk, play piano). The key to letting colorful, sometimes awful plastic stuff into your social space is to have a rapid clean up routine. I’m a big fan of nice baskets, woven or fabric, which I scatter across the house to make sure that there is always a place to put toys away.

If you live in San Francisco, you can buy my favorite cloth baskets (left picture) at Lotus Bleu in Hayes Valley. The woven baskets come from West Africa: I bought mine in Oakland.

week 25: chocolate

Wed, 25 Aug 2010 22:03:00 -0700

I’m having trouble keeping up with my blog routine: I suppose this is symptomatic of being back at work, and having less time for musings and writings. However, I will complete my 33 post challenge, and I will do so before my 34th birthday (October).

When you don’t seem to have enough time in the day and you need a “pick-me-up” to get from a busy morning to an active afternoon, I have one emergency remedy: very, very dark chocolate. In the depths of sleep deprivation, when baby was a few months old, I ate 100% cocoa chocolate after lunch, to fend off the inevitable coma, on days when I had no time for a nap. I always have 75% cocoa dark chocolate in my cubboards, for days when I come home from work and fear I may not have the requisite energy for evening play and bedtime routine.

Chocolate has experienced a revival in the United States, and San Francisco is home to many small manufacturers who delight at experimenting with new flavors and spices. So I have fun shopping for my emergency remedy. I also have fun hiding it from my son: I’ve resorted to burrying wrappers deep into the trash, placing chocolate on the highest possible shelf, sneak eating it while he plays or watches TV, etc.. I suppose life comes full circle: I recall spending inordinate amounts of time searching through my parents’ kitchen cabinets, on the look-out for hidden sweets!

Do yourself a favor: eat chocolate after reading this…

more books on my bedside table…

Mon, 09 Aug 2010 21:52:22 -0700

more books on my bedside table…

Apologies for the lack of regular posts in the past two weeks:...

Mon, 09 Aug 2010 21:47:00 -0700

Apologies for the lack of regular posts in the past two weeks: i’ve been engrossed in various books that eat up the little free time I have!

week 24: childcare for a sane life

Mon, 09 Aug 2010 21:38:00 -0700

Recently a pregnant friend asked me what I would recommend she does when she returns to work. Considering the endless days and nights I have spent musing over my childcare budget and needs, I thought I should write a blog post on this puzzle: how do you find childcare for your professional and personal needs?

First let me reiterate the question: professional and personal needs. Very quickly I realized that having someone watch my child(ren) only when I work was a receipe for disaster: even if I didn’t have a job, I’d need a break once in a while, and so do you. For me, this means 50 to 55 hours of childcare per week. Approximately 35 hours for work, another 6 for three evenings per week (we are at home too, we just don’t have to do it all on our own on the days where we return exhausted from a big office day), our weekly date night (5 hours), and anywhere from 5 to 10 hours of time to myself, to exercise, read, walk, or focus on one child only.

Obviously, 55 hours is a lot of time (and money). So here are ways I’ve found to make it work for us, and our caregivers:

1 - hire someone who does not need to be paid on weeks when you are absent or when your mom is visiting. Given that we are the only ones with children in both our immediate families, our relatives are lining up to have our kids visit them, or come and visit us. At these times, we need our babysitters less, or not at all.

2- hire someone who can do light housework while watching children (in particular when they sleep). Our “date night” is every Saturday, and our babysitter does laundry and ironing when the children sleep. So we come home to clean sheets, ironed clothes for the next week and even a tidy kitchen. It’s fabulous.

To find people who meet your needs and qualifications, check out this website: this is where I found my most recent nanny.

3 - hire multiple people. In my early parenting years, I only had one nanny, and she was often sick. This would happen (obviously) unexpectedly and create quite a bit of chaos in my work life. Indeed, I was now vulnerable to three health hazards: my own, my child’s and my nanny’s. You absolutely need a beta plan. If your parents don’t live next door, your beta could be a family friend with extra time on his/her hands, a friend with a nanny who does not mind the extra child for the day, or an emergency babysitter. I have all of the above (except a parent who lives next door); and I pull my emergency triggers at least once a quarter. If you are curious, here is our current chain of back-up plans:

If our son is sick and can’t go to school, he stays at home with our nanny and daughter; if we don’t have the nanny on that day, he still stays at home with a family friend or our cleaning lady who can come for a few hours (so that I can get some work done, likely from home or a nearby cafe);
If our nanny is sick, our son goes to school and our daughter goes to my best friend’s house;
If our daughter is sick on days we don’t have the nanny my husband stays home (she’s still a little baby), or we can call on the cleaning lady, or our family friend.

4- mix it up: you don’t need to hire a nanny 5 days per week. Once my son turned two I enrolled him in a day care program 2 days per week, and I plan on doing this for my daughter much earlier (she’s currently in a nanny share twice a week, and will start day care at least once a week when she turns one, or shortly thereafter). In my experience, this is great for children’s development: it’s more fun for them to be around children their age, and it’s a lot more economical than a full time nanny. I would not opt for the full day care option as this tends to mean more infant illnesses; I also think its important for a child to spend a lot of time in her home.

5- pay well: in San Francisco, average childcare ranges from $13 to $25 per hour, depending on the number of children and the babysitter’s experience. I personally think it’s much wiser to pay on the higher end of the scale, but request more from your babysitter. Here is the most recent list of duties I included in my last nanny search:

Active and loving childcare
Helping parents with evening routine (bathing, dinner, cleaning up, bedtime stories, preparing bags for next day)
laundry
Tidying children’s play areas and kitchen

6- if you have the extra space in your home (or own a studio next door!), hire an au pair. Au pairs are young girls in their early 20s who are looking to live with a family for 9 to 12 months and help out with childcare. If you want your children to speak a different language this is a great option. It is also super affordable if you have the extra bedroom and space to host them. For the bay area an au pair can provide up to 45 hours of childcare at half the price of a nanny. Here is an au pair service you might want to check out.

All this will be expensive. Yet, you can’t think about it as a trade off between your job and your childcare expenses: this is something you have to do to keep a profession and your earnings will increase with time. As a wise friend of mine said a few months ago, when all my money was going to day babysitters, night babysitters, cleaning ladies, cooks… YOU ARE WORTH IT. It’s not some silly l’Oreal cliche. It’s true. Think about it.

Oh, and one last thing: if you have more than one child, bring a sitter with you when you go on holiday. I know, this sounds like the life of the rich and famous. Just try it once. You’ll see what I mean….

week 23: babysitters...

Fri, 23 Jul 2010 09:39:45 -0700

I am currently looking for someone to help with our children during the day. I’m not new to this, as I have been working with babysitters and nannies for over three years, and I feel that I have learned some essential lessons that may benefit first time parents.

First, I find that you have to train your nanny, no matter how much experience she has. This may be obvious to some of you, but you may also wonder what “training” really means? To me, it mostly means having your nanny shadow you for a week or so, and making sure she picks up on the routines and on the basics. I had a funny little “operations manual” which I used for both babysitters and friends/parents who wanted to watch our son. I found that it reassured them – though I also found that the best babysitters are those who can deal with the events that aren’t laid out in the manual!

Second, you must find someone who can care for your children and look out for you. This means they have to empty the dishwasher when it is full, take out the trash on their way out, wash clothes when they are soiled, empty strollers, re-stock diaper bags, keep baby rooms and closets tidy etc.. This happens to be the stuff you do while you are caring for your children, and you should expect this from anyone who watches your child in your home. If they don’t do it, you will become exhausted and resentful.

Third, you don’t need to hire someone for life and actually it may be better to work with people who only have a year or two to give to your family. There’s better energy when you work with someone who is nannying temporarily, while they study, intern, or work on becoming an actor. They have passion and vision for their life and bring this to your home.

I was a little clueless when my son was born, yet, you don’t have to be as lost as I was.

A dear friend of mine, a philosopher by training, spent considerably more time thinking about whom she wanted to hire to watch her daughter as she finished her dissertation. Aloisia’s daughter was born in June 2008, when she had not quite finished her Ph.D. thesis. She started to go back to the library to revise chapters when baby was about three months old. In the beginning she left for three hours every day, which eventually increased to six hours by the time baby was six months old. Hiring a babysitter to do this was a tough decision for Aloisia and her husband to make since she did not have any income to pay for the babysitter. And, since nannies prefer to be hired full time or at least for full days she had to come up with her own nanny-search and training.

Maternity 33: what does “nanny training” mean to you?

Aloisia: Within weeks of my daughter’s birth, I realized that being a mother was something I knew how to do. The reason I was so self-confident was that – other than with pregnancy help books, which I found awful – I had picked up the idea of the “good enough mother” from the pediatrician and child psychologist Winnicot. The idea is that every mother is good enough for her child. Also a highschool friend from Austria had told me early on about Magda Gerber and Emmi Pickler’s approach. Magda Gerber was a child psychologist from Hungary who started what is today called the RIE Method: see their website, they publish a manual and a newsletter, and offer videotapes and training for parents and professionals.. Her approach to infant and child rearing is simple: you do not need to provide stimulation or engage your child, but let them develop on their own, while your job is to watch for enjoyment and to make sure the child does not hurt themselves. Equipped with these two approaches I had no problem “training” my own babysitters. The main idea that I tried to communicate to them was that infants (and children) should not be treated like objects, in the sense of being merely handled, but they be should spoken to as if they could understand, even if one does not think it likely or possible. For instance, instead of just diapering her, I asked them to tell her what they are about to do: lifting her up - taking off her onesie and so on… Furthermore, any activity that she could do herself, the caretaker should not do for them, e.g. propping up to sit, or walking by holding both hands. Anything she could not do yet, she should not do yet.

Maternity 33 peanut gallery comment: I read Gerber’s work when I was pregnant with my second child and I wish an RIE daycare center existed in San Francisco. I would send her there in a heart beat. Look it up to see if it exists in your neighborhood.

Maternity 33: how did that work out?

Aloisia: Interestingly each babysitter I trained showed different responses to this and I soon realized that as much as I may be in charge of the training, each person would bring their own background with them to it. The first babysitter we hired was a Japanese woman in her thirties who was writing a children’s book in the morning and took care of our daughter in the afternoon. She had not ”worked” with newborns before. The Japanese woman sang to our daughter in Japanese but I do not think she could bring herself to talk to her in anything else but baby language.

The next caretaker we hired after the Japanese woman, had been working as an au pair for a French family in Paris. She was very good with Francine – but very unhappy with her life and so she soon left. Unfortunately this is not uncommon when hiring care takers part time. We were lucky when we found a college student, K., who stayed with us almost a year. K. had a real problem with being late, and so in her case I talked to her a lot about why she was making herself late.

When K. left to pick up her post college career we hired a woman, C., who had been babysitting Francine in the evenings. During my training with her she said to me one day “you are so good at making things easier for Francine with words - I really try to learn to do that but it is hard for me.” She told me that as a kid she spent most of her time with her grandmother, who only spoke Spanish. Her grandmother therefore never spoke to her – and so she never learned Spanish. This suffering from an excessively non-verbal upbringing made me realize how much impact a person’s history has on the way they can give care. I really liked C., because she was aware of what was going on and effectively overcame her own upbringing and learned to speak in her role as a caregiver.

Maternity 33 peanut gallery comment: I have actually never talked to our baby sitters about how they speak to our children. I was so impressed when Aloisia told me what she did and I will include this in our next nanny training. However, Aloisia is right in pointing out that there is only so much one can “change” one’s way of interacting with babies. And perhaps this is for the best: I hope that children who interact with many adults with different “styles” become more adaptable adults.

Maternity 33: What’s your advice for parents who are about to hire their first caretaker?

Aloisia: As I am writing this, I find myself training yet another caretaker. (Due to our need to reduce our childcare to 20 hours a week because I am not teaching in the summer, we did not have enough hours for C. to make a living.) Our new caregiver is a college student again. We like H., though we know that this is an evolving relationship. What we have learned is to accept that certain memories and traumas exist in each of us, parents and caregivers alike – but to not feel responsible for them and to know that we can’t change them. What we can do is listen and give feedback. To learn to say exactly what we expect and to accept that there may be misunderstandings. A good relationship between caretaker and parent is one in which the issues are known and understood and thus do not stand in the way. Sometimes the relationship is not good and there is nothing that can be done about it. This is also an important lesson.

week 22: yoga

Sun, 11 Jul 2010 22:32:00 -0700

My first yoga class was in 1999 - that’s a long time ago. I’m no acrobat and I don’t do things that will make your jaw drop, but yoga has been a fixture in my life for longer than I can recall. I moved to San Francisco in part to live in a city that was a mecca for yoga and healing arts. I live within walking distance of 10 yoga studios!

I have what is called a “home practice” — i.e. I know how to make the time and space to practice yoga on my own, in a quiet room, on a lawn, or in a little corner of a hotel room. All I need is a mat (which travels with me, everywhere I go).

In my experience, yoga is essential to parenting. If anything, it’s a stress reducing technique, but it’s also a focus enhancing technique. And with all the multi-tasking you must do as a parent, I find that quiet moments spent concentrating on one activity are life savers.

Here are some tips on how to bring yoga to your life, or to the next level…

1) Just do it. Start with 10 minutes a day, or just doing child’s pose straight out of bed, when you stretch in the morning. Commit to one class per month. Do a 45mn routine once in a while, when you have a break from parenting, or life. If you do a little yoga every year, every month, every week, every day, it will, slowly become part of you. And then, there is really no turning back. It’s like swimming, skiing, walking — once learned, never forgotten.

2) Get a book, or read a magazine. Here are my favorites
Ashtanga Yoga For Women - Ashtanga is an intense form of yoga that takes you through a scripted routine 6 days a week, approximately 90mn a day. It’s not suited for parents, because I don’t know anyone who has that kind of time, BUT it’s great for getting a sense of how yoga can bring emotional stability and enhance your focus. Ashtanga was developed by men, for men, and some poses are just hard for girls. So this book bridges the gap between Ashtanga and women. And even if you are a parent, read it, to learn the basic standing poses - a 20mn sequence that is a great warm up for any work-out.

The Woman’s Yoga Book - this is a much more versatile book which you can use at all stages of your life. It shows a few gentle sequences to deal with everything from mood swings to cramps. If you have 20mn of quiet time in a day, use it as a source of inspiration for the few stretches you will do.

Yoga Journal - I buy this occasionally, to fantasize about the yoga vacation I’ll take 10 years from now! On a more practical side, they have articles on anatomy and yoga sequences that provide immediate use!

3) Teach someone: it is well known that the best way to learn something is to teach it. Teaching takes many forms. It includes introducing someone to yoga. Ten years ago, I introduced my sister to yoga and she’s now a pro - her practice sustains mine because we can talk about it and share our discoveries. I’ve organized yoga classes for my parents, when we are on a family vacation. My husband and I have a new year’s tradition: we take a restorative yoga class on Jan 1st - it’s his only yoga class in the year, and it involves some snoring! Most recently I taught a 35 minute class to a set of executives at our annual board retreat - it was great to prepare the class and walk novices through basic stretches and breathing exercises. It felt as if I had a concrete life skill to share.

week 21: evening routine - amends

Fri, 09 Jul 2010 08:58:17 -0700

I’ve been told that when people disagree with you, they are more likely to comment on our your blog. This is proving to be true!

1) we are experimenting this summer by having a live-in “nanny” for one month, who happens to be our cousin and is helping me go back to work. I deliberately did this to put a little “give” into our life and have some breathing room. We can’t do this long term, because our flat does not have an extra bedroom, but if it did, i would consider hiring an au pair. In the USA, an au pair costs $320 per week (you also pay her room and board), and can work up to 45 hours. This is considerably cheaper than any other childcare alternative for working parents.

2) Though we won’t have an au-pair this fall, I have learned something from the past few weeks. So, when our cousin leaves and our babysitter/nanny starts work, I am planning to ask him/her to stay till 7:30 three nights a week - on the nights when I have the longest days at work.

3) My husband and i try to be home at 6:00 every night; this means we usually pick up our work again at 9:00, after kids are asleep and we have had dinner.

4) When in France, everything is shifted out by 1 hour at least, cause that is how everyone else does it.

5) So i did not mean to come off as “know-it-all”, “bottomless pocket”, “oh so organized”. I am just being very candid about one thing that seems to be working.

6) Also, I think I’m getting the sense from sharing all this candidly that I am just a more anxious parent than many of you must be. I don’t like doing bedtime routine all by myself, it stresses me out. But if I liked it, I wouldn’t be looking for ways to change the dynamic.

In any case, thanks for your comments

week 20: evening routine

Thu, 08 Jul 2010 20:41:00 -0700

It’s 5:30 pm and all hell breaks loose - parents are coming home from work (yes, in California we do make it home by then!), kids are tired, nanny wants to get out of there, dinner is not ready and everyone feels the pressure to catch up and “spend time” with everyone else. THIS IS NOT A LIFE! And this post is about how you can avoid most of the witching hour and truly enjoy these hours with your children.

If you work, chances are that 5 to 7 pm are your most reliable hours with your family. Colleagues aren’t sending out emails or asking for schedule changes, bags don’t have to be packed, phones aren’t ringing. Unfortunately, these hours can be very stressful if you don’t have a modicum of flow: i.e. if you are running from task to task without harmony, or time to breathe.

In our house, there’s always been set activities we try to perform each night (bath, dinner, books, bedtime for kids; dinner and conversation and relaxing for adults), but only recently have they started flowing together nicely. I attribute this entirely to a specific schedule we developed together and the acknowledgment that we need a third adult to help out. So our nanny now works till 7:30 pm.

The schedule idea came from observing parents of three children who still manage to have a social life! I noticed that they had super scripted rituals at night and that their children were in bed relatively early. When we had only one child, we would let him stay up till 8:30 pm. I think this is pretty common for new parents, who tend to fit their child’s rhythm to their pre-child life. Unfortunately, this just lengthened the witching hour as our son would be moody from 6 to bedtime.

The third adult idea came from living with relatives for the past two months, and recalling the utter exhaustion I feel upon returning from an intense day at the office. The third adult means you can focus on one task at a time. Here is how we do it:

Each adult takes on three tasks every night, in a succession of “shifts”. So we joke and call them shift 1, 2 and 3 (well, the others joke, I’m the task master). Shift 1, for instance, is bath time. One of us bathes the 3 yr old, one of us bathes the infant and one of us prepares dinner for both children. Upon completion of this round of tasks, we move on to the second shift. One of us feeds the 3yr old, one of us feeds the infant, and one of us tidies bathrooms and empties bags/strollers to prepare for the next day. By shift 3, we have entered wind-down time: one of us reads to the toddler, one of us puts the infant to bed and one of us cleans up the children’s dinner.

I have found that putting my infant to bed 15mn before my toddler works really well. I don’t know why, but she likes to fall asleep alone, and he likes coming into the room and being very quiet, so as not to wake her up.

I’d say that a set evening routine is a non-negotiable element of happy parenting. Even the most laid-back and unconventional parents end up adopting a bedtime schedule. As one of my friends remarked after being reminded that her schedule is at odds with her otherwise free-form parenting: “all I have is the schedule!’

Awesome machine for making home-made baby food

Thu, 08 Jul 2010 20:40:00 -0700

Awesome machine for making home-made baby food:

I bought this machine a few days ago and I am totally sold: it first steams then blends your veggies and fruit so that you can make fresh food in less than 10 minutes.

week 19: have fun!

Wed, 30 Jun 2010 11:17:00 -0700

One of my 2010 resolutions is to have more fun with my children. I can lose sight of the “F” word when I am too focused on schedules and tasks and it is a shame because little ones provide so much opportunity for silliness, giggles and mischief.

Last week I brought my son to his first TaiKwonDo class. There is a studio in our neighborhood that takes children as young as three and we had been counting the days till his third birthday as this seemed like an activity he really wanted to try.

He is still in “trial” week and I’m not sure we will make the final cut-off (meaning we will have to come back when he is a little older), but it’s been so much fun regardless. Trying on the outfit, the headgear, bouncing on the mats, talking about it at night before going to bed.

On our first day, my son inadvertantly made the whole class laugh when he fell to the ground dramatically after mildly bumping into another child. He lay motionless on the floor while 15 pupils and instructors gathered around and asked if he was OK. Off in a corner, I was rolling with laughter. Upon discovering the influence he had, he could not resist and did it again. I thought this was great because he was interacting with the class, in his own way. So I giggled. Until a mother sitting besides me interjected: “don’t you think he is disturbing the class”. Shocked, i answered, ” but he is only three”. To which she responded: “Oh, I understand; sometimes they are just not ready”. I kept my cool and said: ” we will let the instructors decide”.

This mother killed my fun moment. She wasn’t wrong: my child was disturbing the class. But I enjoin you to never kill another parent’s fun time with children - these don’t happen so often, as parents are usually bogged down in logistics and responsibility.