Screenagers

 I had a conversation with my fourteen year old son tonight after holding a parenting workshop on screens and media.  He told me that he was embarrassed because he had to ask a peer how to use a controller on a video game console when offered one at his home.  He cried while telling me this.  He was really embarrassed.  My son does not cry easily.  Then he told me he never wants to invite his friends to our home because there is "nothing" to do here.  By nothing he means they cannot watch TV, play on phones next to each other, or play video games.  By nothing he means no screens.  His demeanor was gravely serious and I truly felt like he was reaching out to me for help.  The problem is the only help he wants is for me to buy him a smartphone and video game console.  He doesnt want to talk about why I do not want those in our home.  He doesnt want to hear about the effects of screens anymore even though every now and then we do cover something he didnt know.  His response to this is that I have done my job for the past 14 years and now he is fine and all ready for the world of screens, social media, extreme video games.  I should just buy him the smartphone and the gaming console.  We talked about how he really wants to play games like Madden and The Show.  These are both exttermemly realistic sports games.  Of all the games out there, I am less concerned about this content.  That being said, these games connect to outher players on the internet, they have product placement and try to get you to pay to up your fun factor.

I decided to use his daily screen time to download this game and play it with him on his computer.  We played the game and I pointed out the product placement.  I pointed out how fast the game went and how if you play for long enough, they are going to want money for the best opportunities to continue playing.  His dad and I decided that he could play this game, but only on a PC, only against the computer, and he could not pay for anything.  So now for his daily computer time this is what he does.

I am trying to enter his world, give him something to talk to his friends about, but I also am completely saddened and maddened at what teenagers have become.  Why is this the only thing they do?  I know my son is better off being bored around our house than playing hours of video games all weekend with friends through the internet.  That being said, this is the way they "socialize".  Sometimes a friend will meet him at the park and play real sports, but freqently they 'hang out" on snapchat or video games and because of that my son is not a part of it.  I know his love of reading comes from being bored.  I know his excellence in sports comes from practicing all the time at home.  And he is alone or with us all the time which builds relationships but also builds a bit of resentment in us for not letting him do the other things.  I do not want this to be the forbidden fruit.  I also am passioantely against screens, internet, and social media with a develping brain of this age.  I feel constantly alone trying to navigate this.  I want a strong relationship with my son more than anything and he resents this in me.  I want him to have peer relationships, but they do not exist much because of how virtual they are and how none of his peers wants real face to face connection.  Face to face connection and communication will be a crucial skill set in this digital world he is growing up in. How do I give him that when he is constantly pissed at me for our values as a family.  How do I maintain my values and listen to my son's struggles.   How do you raise the next generation to be human in a digital world?  

Parenting is so hard.  I tell the parents I work with that their job is not to fix the problems, but to be there to support their child through the struggle.  I really hope that I am right.  I hope that I dont destroy any future I have with my kid over this issue.

Covid Questions....

We are about to hit the mark of a year here in California of Covid policies.  A year of processing and I still am left with so many questions.  Questions that if I ask them out in the world, are squahsed almost immediately with some vague response that usually includes the phrase, "safety first".

As I began to process about a year ago, the mask had become the symbol to me of what this pandemic could do to our mental health.  As I engage in conversation with those who mean a lot to me and even strangers, I realize it has very little to do with the actual mask, but what it has come to represent.

I understand the reasoning behind the mask for those who believe this is a health crisis.  I believe in the idea that the droplets are blocked when the person wearing it speaks and that this alone can help stop the spread.  I understand that wearing one makes others who are nervous about getting ill for any reason feel more secure.  I get that it is a simple thing to do and refusing seems futile and selfish.  I see this and I care!

Still, for how long does protect and respect outweigh all other parts of our lives, of our personhood?

The first question I have is: How long?

How much longer are we willing to not see the smile of a friend out in public?  Wearing them in a grocery store for eternity may not be that big of a deal, but classrooms, workplaces, eight hour workshifts???  All without smiles or fresh air?  For years on end?

I worry about what this is doing to the children.  They are resilient, but still the idea that we cannot share air with other people or much less a snack, really scares me.  It is becoming part of their being, one I personally am not willing to teach.

And lastly, does blocking all these germs really serve us in the long run?  Don't our immune system need the bacteria, the viruses?  All that stuff that exists in dirt, our gut and the exchange between the two.  Clearly I am no doctor nor immunologist, but that doesn't mean I don't understand a bit about my own body.  There is research pointing to those who garden, have a pet, etc... being healthier.  Does that no longer matter?  How long can our bodies take this?  How long can our hearts and minds?

What has terrified me even more than the mask though, so much that I can barely write these words without shaking, is social distancing.  From the very beginning, I was in shock that we would ever even consider stop visiting loved ones, stop hugging loved ones, see people through glass only.  That our society went from publishing stories about the 20 second or longer hug benefitting our brain chemicals to hug people only for a few seconds and hold your breath if you dare to get that close at all.  I hugged a friend in line at a store recently and could feel the glare of those around me.  It is unacceptable to show physical affection.  That all the benefits of touch for our mental health could have been abandoned and so quickly and for so long leaves me in a state of complete shock.  We are letting our loved ones die alone!  We are allowing that.  I feel like everything in me is screaming, "NO!"  I could feel the lack of touch through every inch of my body those first few months until my life resumed some relative normalcy.  I still have not seen friends since this began and I certainly have not hugged them.  This by their choice alone.  I feel like I have been deserted by them and while intellectually I know they are doing what they feel is right and good, it is so difficult for me to understand how anyone could stop touching people for over a year.  

Therefore, the second question is: What about our mental health?  

This seems to have been so blantantly abandoned and not discussed as if it is even remotely a factor by politicians and policy makers and therefore by institutions trying to follow the rules.  I live at a boarding school where students are required to quaratine for 14 days on end in their rooms with no interaction and 15-60 minutes of outside time a day every time someone tests positive or when returning to campus.  Even prisoners get more than that, right?  My family and friends cannot visit me without having quaratines forced on them when they return by workplaces and daycares to which they cannot afford the vacation and then another two weeks unpaid and without childcare. 

And I hope it goes without saying that replacing connection, work, and school with something on a screen is a huge mistake!  Just because we can does not mean we should.

The third question I have is: What about the environment?  We certainly saw air quality improve those first few months and saw first hand how destructive humans can be on the planet, but what did we learn from that?  Did we replace our cars with bikes?  Did anyone actually make any lifestye changes they were not forced to make? Did we go right back to life as mormal with all the free time we have from no longer having concerts, sports, etc...  And as far as single use goes, we have turned the clock back decades.  We went from banning plastic bags in our state and straws in our county to no longer allowing resuable grocery bags in our stores and having medical masks litter the grounds at our national parks.   I won't even mention the take out food containers.  All the steps I had taken in my life to reduce my consumption from bringing my own cups to places like smoothie and coffee shops and my own to go containers from take out and leftovers, are no longer allowed.  How long will it take before we can make eco-friendly choices in our own lives again?

My final question is: What about the next virus?  Covid 19 is a strain of coronavirus, coronavirus itself is nothing new.  Several viruses over the past decade have been strong and concerning to public health, but this one topped them all.  So what about the next strain of coronavirus?  The flu vaccine strain is guessed upon each year and its efficacy varies between 15%-40%.  How can we not expect the same from the covid vaccine?  In addtion, why are viruses getting stronger?  Is that a question we can address on a national level please?  Antibacterial soaps, over prescribed antibiotics, do these not make virsus and bacterias stronger?  In addition, there still seems to be questions remaining about whether this virus was man made or came from a bat.  Do we really know with certainty?  Maybe this one was not, but does that mean we can make deadly viruses in labs?  Is that an actual possibility?  Seems to me we should be making policies banning that kind of research, not policies that force emergency approved vaccines on the masses.

Speaking of vaccines, why has herd immunity become a conspiracy theory.  The WHO changed their definition of herd immunity during this crisus to say it can only be achieved through vaccination.  Why?  Stuff like this makes it hard to trust leading health organizations and certainly the politicians that rely on them.

I have so many more questions and issues with the handling of our world over the past year, but these remain the big ones.  These are the questions noone really has the answers too and yet we are not allowed to decide for ourselves how to live because safety (and by that I mean physical safety) is not the top priority, it is the only prioirty.  Our mental and economic health cannot take a back seat to our physical health without dire consequences.

Trump=Evil?

It is taken me a long time to realize this one thing: 

There are kind, compassionate, wonderful people who vote for Trump (and NO, I am not voting for him).

If this sounds radical to you, I understand.  If it feels like an oxymoron, I understand.  I was there.
As someone who has identified as far left as one can get most of her life (or so I thought), it was a hard realization.  I disregarded many of the issues on the right side of the political spectrum as fueled by selfishness.  I reduce those that voted that way to lesser humans (that is the same principle used in racism by the way).  Four years ago, I felt betrayed by anyone who voted for Trump and I know a lot of my friends and family still feel that way.  I get it.  I also likely would have stayed in that place if it wasn't for the party I most identified with politically taking an opposite stance on an issue I feel strongly about... medical freedom.  Freedom to choose what we put into and do with our bodies.

For me, if you believe woman should be able to choose on issues of abortion, how can you also tell woman they have to inject chemicals into their children's bodies for them to have the consitutional right of a free and public education?  I believe in publically financed elections and a basic minimum wage.  I feel strongly about child abuse laws and laws that protect the environment.  I believe plastic water bottles should be banned and plastic of most kind in general.  These take away freedom of choice.  I also think we have to be very careful about eliminating freedoms and civil liberties?  What is child abuse?  Is it homeschooling?  Is it allowing your nine year old to take the New York subway alone?  Is it not vaccinating?  Some believe those things qualify.  I do not.  Sometimes those types of decisions made by parents allow the government to get too involved.  I do not have all the answers, I am often confused these days, and overwhelmed when faced with a ballot.  I also know that I am growing.  Growth is painful.  In conversations with friends and family, I am often left with no answers to the questions, but feelings instead that are so strong I have to look inside for the answers. 

About eight years ago, I got involved in a movement trying to protect medical freedom here in California.  I left my family for every weekend and evenings for close to six months to fight against a bill in our legislature.  Even though I had minored in political science, worked as an intern in DC for the children's defense fund and for congressmen, I had never been so involved and seen up close as much as I did in that time period.  It changed me.  It opened the door to seeing what I thought was a far left hippy issue as one tea party members also felt strongly about.  It opened the door to so much more too.  For the first time in my life, I had people who felt differently than me about a wide range of issues also agreeing with me on medical freedom.  I had so many hard and difficult conversations and I grew from those.  I understood gun rights in a new way.  I was forced to consider the other side of many issues.  I was forced by respect and compassion to consider others with ideas radically different than those I aligned with.  I was forced to see that there are about a million different kinds of people and not just democrats and republicans.  We just do not fit into a box that easily.

I dare to say that this is happening on a much larger scale as a society with the policies surrounding Covid, that is... if we are open enough to listen, consider, and acknowledge.  It blows my mind that an actual tenent of viruolgy like herd immunity has become a poltical term and if you believe in that basic tenet of a virus at all, somehow you are a republican.  What?!

There is a quote in the movie, The American President.

"America is advanced citizenship.  You have got to want it bad.  You want free speech? Lets see you acknowledge a man whose words make your blood boil, who is standing center stage and advocating at the top of his lungs that which you would spend a lifetime opposing at the top of yours."

I do not believe that America is the best country in the world because that to me says all other countries and their citizens are lesser than Americans.  I would change the quote to Citzenship in general or perhaps democracy.  None the less, this quote comes up for me a lot.

What I see happening in our country scares me.  I see the division between the right and left getting larger.  I see the hole left by that division being filled with anger, rage, and hate.  And not just from those who identify with Trump.  I see it quite strongly from democrats as well.  Terms like anti-vaxxer and anti-masker are belittling.  I was in a situation where I was mistaken for someone who was hispanic (long story), and I was treated the worst I have ever been treated by a stranger until they found out I was white and there was a sudden shift to kindness.  This is the first time I was able to actually feel what may=ny would refer to as white priveldge.  My ideas about the state of the world as illustrated above are all over the place.

If we really want to unite as country or as a species, it needs to begin with listening and with consideration.... consideration that all of us are human, we are all one and what we do to one, we do to ourselves.  And for me this means acknowledging that Trump is human, that he cares about things and has feelings, the way we all do. I cannot dismiss him as evil and all who vote for him as evil and inconsiderate even if their words make my blood boil.  Consideration is the first step to unity.  This is the only thing I know for sure.

Cloud Boy

Up in the clouds live the cloud children.  They play all day with the wind and the rain.  They go swimming when it rains and paint pictures with the rainbow colors afterwards.  Father Sun and Mother Moon take care of them.  One day, all the cloud children were playing ball, when the ball rolled right through a hole in the clouds and fell down below.  There was one little boy named Noah who ran off to c+hase it.  When he saw it fall through the clouds, he knealt down besides the hole it fell through and looked.  He saw something he had never seen before.

What Noah saw was a beautiful land with mountains, trees, rivers, and oceans.  He saw animals of all kinds and he saw people.  He thought it was the most beautiful place he had ever seen.
Everyday he returned to that hole in the clouds to watch what was happening on this beautiful land for he wanted to go there.

One day as he was watching he saw four people.  He saw a mother with brown hair that everyone called Tracy or sometimes they called her Teacher Tracy for she had lots of little children around her.
He saw a father named Josh, and two little boys, one older one named Elijah and one littler one named Jonah.  He saw them hiking, playing in the river, and mostly he saw them playing with balls too just like Noah loved to do.  Noah wanted to go and play with them so badly.

So that very evening, Noah went to Father Sun and Mother Moon and told him that he wanted to go down to the beautiful land and be with this family.  The Sun and Moon were not surprised for there had been many cloud children who had wished that before and had indeed left the clouds to live on this land that the Sun and Moon called Earth.

Mother Moon explained to Noah that to travel to the land called Earth, he would get there through a dark wet place inside his new mother Tracy where he would grow a new body.  After that he would travel through a rainbow bridge to the bright land of Earth where his family would welcome him with lots of love.

Noah was very excited and he immediately said yes and began his journey.   When he got inside of Tracy he grew slowly and as his new body was growing he noticed that some parts were not growing as his old body had been.  His lips felt funny and he could not move them very well.  He began to grow slower and slower and his hands were bent instead of straight and also hard to use.  His ears were not in the right place and he could not hear very well.

Noah really wanted to travel to Earth and be part of this family.  He really wanted to play with Elijah and Jonah and all those little children in the river, so he keep working really hard to grow his body and keep his heart beating strongly.

When his body was done growing and it was almost time for him to travel over the rainbow bridge, his body became too weak and he just was not strong enough to come out and play, so he said goodbye to this new body and went back to the clouds to live with Mother Moon and Father Sun again.  He was very sad and his family was very sad too.  Tracy, Josh, Elijah, and Jonah missed Noah so much and wished that he was able to play with them.

Noah told Mother Moon and Father Sun that one day he might want to come back in a different body that wasn't so hard to grow in, but for now he would stay playing ball in the clouds and watch his Earth family from above.  And indeed, every day, he looks through that hole and watches them and whenever his family misses him, they can wave to him from below.

Loving someone you never knew

Some days I am blown away by the amount of love I have for someone I only met after his death.
I certainly was not prepapred for how hard it would be to lose him.  It felt like a bomb had hit, one I had no idea was coming even with months of preparing for all possible outcomes.

Many people know me well, they know the mother I am: the organic, protective crazy woman armed with research on screen viewing and young brains and who slept with her oldest until he was seven and nursed him until he was five.  So one can imagine what it might have been like for me to leave my baby in the hospital with strangers to never see him again.

I was blown to bits, I didnt recognize myself at all.  I don't cry easy, and I cried for five days straight.
Everything I thought I would feel was not present at all, but instead replaced with utter grief.  I didn't want to see anyone I loved except those that were present at his birth.  It was as if they were there with me when the bomb exploded and because of that, I felt drawn closer to them and wanted them around all the time.
I have been broken-hearted, sad, and depressed before, but loss is different.
I spend a lot of my days attempting to hold normal conversations with people about everyday things like the car breaking down or about their recent vacation, or even my recent vacation,  but most of the time I want to scream, "do you know what just happened, my baby died!"

So here are some things I want you to know about the person I am now, who somedays is not anyone I recognize:

• My love for Elijah and Jonah had nothing to do with Noah                                                       "It's a happy life, but someone is missing.  It's a happy life AND someone is missing."       -Elizabeth McCracken
• I count every day of what would have been his life, I always know exactly how old he would have been and so does the rest of my family.  I think we always will                                    "Your friends may say 'time heals all wounds'.  No it doesn't, but eventually you will feel better.  You'll be yourself again.  Your child will still be dead."  -Elizabeth McCracken
• When people don't mention him or what just happened to us, it makes me feel isolated and alone in this reality.  You cannot remind me that he died, I feel it all the time                        "Our child dies a second time when noone speaks his name."  -Mitch Carmody
• How I approach life with my children has differed, at least internally.  I no longer think, "that won't happen to me" or "everything will be fine".  In fact, there is an intense video in my head anytime there is any danger anywhere close.  I visualize it happening and feel for a moment that it just has.  I have to remind myself before I react that it hasn't happened yet and approach my children in that way.  The other day Elijah was acting as bat boy for his dad's team and I almost stopped him because I was so sure he was going to get hit by the bat of the player on deck.  I have visualizations of my boys dying from such injuries.  I know some of this is normal for all mothers, but the panic that accompanies it now is different.                         "Once you have been on the losing side of great odds, you never find statistics comforting again." -Elizabeth McCracken
• I have read a lot and remarkably all of what I have read has been raw, and comforting, and has allowed me to know that I am not alone and I will survive this.  Mostly though, the authors have taught me so much about being present for someone as they grieve.  Before Noah, I never would have known what to do, now, I think I understand.                                                        "On good days I can look ahead and understand that I will always be becoming who I am.  On good days, grief is part of me that I can learn to carry.  But I am wise enough to know that I will need you to restore me to myself on the bad days, when the most I can do is so much less"  -Elyria Rose

While it is true that people have to go back to their lives and cannot be there in a way that I always want, it is also true that I am so fortunate for what I have experienced since his diagnosis and his death.  I was not told, like many woman that I had to get over it when leaving the hospital or to move on because of my other children.  Instead I have countless cards, phone calls, dinners, flowers, and love. Instead I have the love and understanding of an enormous tribe.

• I have friends who have left their families for days to be with me
• I have family who dropped everything to fly hundreds of miles to meet their nephew/cousin not knowing if they would ever get to see him again or if they would even get to see the color of his eyes
• I have midwives who climbed into bed to hold me while I cried
• I have women who have faced the same fate and whom have become a family I never would have wanted and who came over and shared there stories so we could cry together
• I have a therapist who came to the hospital and to my house to hold my hand while my body healed and milk dropped from my breasts and gave us a beautiful piece of art to hold our memories of Noah inside
• I have mothers from my school holding their own babies who hugged me simultaneously despite the fact that facing baby death must have ripped them apart from the inside out 

I know I will survive not despite Noah, but because of him.  Because of what he gave others who in return gave to me.

Noah is now:  a urn, a quilt hanging above my bed, a dream catcher, a memory keeper.  He is a picture of a pregnant belly, a friend's watercolor picture painted of cloud boy.  He is river rocks I collect.  He is the blanket he was wrapped in.  He is a garden and a treehouse.  He is irreversible lessons about life, love, connection, longing, and loss.  What a legacy for someone who never took a breathe outside my womb.

Noah's birth

Noah... that name has had so many different meanings to me throughout my life with special people, but right now it is most precious.

I had much more leeway with this pregnancy because of Noah's diagnosis so while I have always gone to 42 week or a bit longer, my midwives had no problem with going 43 or 44 weeks or more this time.  I really wanted to see what my body would do on its own since the last two times I had to break my water to get labor started if I wanted to stay with my midwives.  I decided at 42 weeks though that the anticipation of the unknowns with this baby was getting to be too much for my family.  So I decided to only wait until 43 weeks and the day after that to go in and have my water broken.  I had made the decision, but was still unsure going into it if it was the right one.  When we got to the birth center, they broke my water and there was light meconium which got a bit darker throughout the day.  It made me feel better in a way because I knew that meant it was time for him to come out.  I was so sure that labor would start, it worked like a charm both times before.  We stayed in SB, walked on the beach, had lunch with a friend, etc...  nothing happened.  Went home, had dinner with my sisters who arrived that day, nothing happened.  Went to bed, nothing happened.

I was quite upset in the middle of the night thinking that something was wrong, I couldn't understand why this wasn't working with such an advanced pregnancy.  Josh couldn't sleep either.

The next morning (Sat, April 29th), we went back to the birth center to talk further.  They mentioned a medicine called cytotec which works well in these situations, but I had regained my faith and wanted to wait 24 more hours to see if I could still start labor on my own.  I told them that is what I wanted to do, but that I thought we should check his heartbeat one more time, I had only felt slight movements in the last two days.  So she did a belly check, she thought he was lower, even though my cervix had not changed in many weeks.  Then she did a check for his heartbeat.  Every time we had checked his heartbeat regardless of how much movement I felt that week, it was always very strong. My midwives always found it quite easily.  But this time, it wasn't there.  Even though my midwife did a very thourough check twice, I knew when she checked the first place that he was gone.  Maybe that is why I asked for the heartbeat check that morning.

That news changed everything because for a body to start labor when the baby is not alive can take much longer to happen and eventually there is risk of infection to me.  So we began a course of labor inducing medication.  We waited at the birth center for hours and I did enter early labor.  I labored there all day, but Josh and I were already dealing with the grief of losing our baby.  I mentioned something about just wanting to go to the hospital to handle this with medication because the emotional strain was enough.  One of my midwives encouraged this and after talking to some people I trusted, I decided that I didn't want to face the possibility of much more difficult induced contractions.  So a few hours later, we went to the hospital.  When we got to the hospital things started to change.  I started to shiver uncontrollably even though I felt warm outside.  Nausea started and things just seemed out of control.  I think it was a side effect of the medication, but I had also begun to spike a fever and get an infection.  If I had stayed at the birth center, I would have been transfered at that point.
The contractions coming were manageable for a long time and I told them to wait until I asked for the epidural.  Everyone at the hospital was wonderful and my midwives Laurel, Alice, and Alissa were all there as well as was my wonderful friend and doula Genevieve.  They gave me a second medication that meant I had to stay in bed lying down and then the contractions went from manageble to feeling constant with really tough spikes which felt like those were coming fast too.  At one point I asked for the epidural, but of course the anestheoligist was at home and could not make it there for about 45 minutes.  By the time I got the epidural and a catheter was placed, they checked me and I was fully dialted.  When they placed the second medication, I was still at one centimeter, which meant I went from 1 to 10 in a little over 2 hours. Maybe that is why I was shaking.  I pushed him out in 20 minutes.  He was born at 10:48 pm. I think Josh may remember some things differently than my timing on all of this, but regardless, it felt very fast.  I was in shock when they told me I could push.

Things I remember are that he was very tiny, his placenta was tiny, and that he looked like he had been gone for a while.  It was an overwhelming stream of emotions from that moment on.  After holding him for a while, Josh and our team of angels (the only word close enough to explain my midwives and doula) washed and dressed him.  He stayed with Josh and I overnight and his brothers and many family and friends met him in the morning.

I don't want to share everything about our time with him or our goodbyes, but I will say that Noah has changed me for the rest of my life.

He has changed everything.

Living without him is much harder than I could have ever imagined.  I miss him so much and am so thankful he chose me to be his mama.  He will always be my little bird.

Baby Blessing

About a month ago the mamas in my school, all women I would be honored to call my friends, hosted a baby blessing for me and Noah.  Three of my friends from LA also came to celebrate with me and to give me a beautiful gift of pregnancy photos.
There really are no words to describe what that day was like.  Usually having all that attention on me would make me quite uncomfortable, but we entered into a circle of words, candle lighting, and offerings for Noah that continue to leave me without words to this day.  I can say two things about this day though:
1.  It really felt as though all 25 of us had entered into the same space for almost three hours.  There were no distractions from what was happening and I felt at peace and truly held with love for so long. I really did not want it to end.
2.  It was quite an honor to hear how Noah was affecting all of them, what he brought to them, and how he had changed them.  What a special person who can do that before he is even born,

I am almost 36 weeks, full term on Thursday and I am nervous about what is to come so this will likely be my final writing until after he is born.  Thank you again for sharing with us in his journey.
Here are some pictures from the blessing and the photo shoot.  (Thanks Melissa for capturing such a wonderful day!)