Thursday 27 January 2011

Mrs. Fix-it

I like to fix things. No wait - I LOVE to fix things. I am addicted to improvement. I find it ultimately satisfying to see something that isn't working well, and to find a solution for it to work better. This is great when running a business; it creates breakthrough moments in which the clouds part and everything fits, and then onward ho to the next stage.
So um, this fixing obsession I have is not the greatest approach with a baby, or on myself. As I mentioned in an earlier post, I have been experiencing insomnia (for three months now!) and have been trying just about everything to fix it (except the exercise regularly component. Ugh. So tired). Baby has also been waking every 1.5-2hrs each night. Needless to say - no one is getting much sleep around these parts. Can I just say, to all you people who are thinking of having kids in the near future - SLEEP NOW. Sleep for the sleepless!
As I lie awake in bed, I think about these problems, and how to fix them. Fixing is an action that requires doing. Ah, how I love to do. But when it comes to the self, and definitely when it comes to another human being - it's not the best approach. Fixing can be scientific, and methodical, and human nature is not that. Maybe my body needs to experience insomnia right now in order to get my hormones leveled out. Maybe baby is waking every hour because he likes to party all night long. I really don't know. But I do know that I am making myself crazy in trying to FIX.
Outside of just wanting to get some sleep (naturally!), the impetus behind my fixing is to get a grasp of how life is going to work with a baby in tow. How will I go back to work? How will I get my needs met? How will Cedar get his needs met in the midst of all of it? I wish I could draw up a blueprint and follow a plan and know that everything will be smooth and perfect. But it's not so simple. Life is not smooth and perfect. I do know that everything will work out, one way or another - just not by means of planning and fixing and pushing. When I imagine the logistics of it all, I feel completely overwhelmed and hopeless. Here I am trying to plan out something I have never done before - something that revolves around the most precious thing in my world: Cedar.
Someone once told me that the heart - its feelings, workings, openings, and breakings - are like the eating of a pomegranate. It is messy. Let it be messy. Resign yourself to the juice on your chin. How many of us don't eat pomegranates because they just seem like too much work?
Life is a messy, juicy mystery these days. Almost heartbreakingly so. It doesn't need to be fixed - it just needs to be opened up into its many little seeds and lived - even if it's uncomfortable and messy.
There seems to be only one way to go these days: stop trying. Just stop. Dare I say trust? Have faith? Put intention into the sunshine of the spring and all the new little buds that are lying dormant right now. Nature doesn't worry, or plan, or fix. Nature just keeps on keeping on. Sleepless or not.
xo

1 comment:

angie said...

Hey Eden,
I just remembered something about sleep. Try askmoxie.com she has a ton of really nice posts to read where readers share their stories and successes and frustrations.
Also check out the book The Wonder Weeks. Cedar will have major leaps in development that correspond with really crap sleep every few weeks. This book maps it out for you so you aren't so shocked.
Please know that I was where you are exactly - crazy for sleep. I was totally crazy!
I did the cry it out for what it's worth and it did seem to help. Still there were many, many sleepless nights but I did make it out of the tunnel somehow - you will too I PROMISE!!
xo
Angie.