The Greatest Show on Earth

To My Sleeping Baby

As you lie here next to me in your little cot, dreaming of untold things, I watch and wonder. A smile runs over your face, lighting up your cheeks like the sun breaking through a cloud. It is 3am and you have just had your mid-night feed, and now you are back in your little dreamworld. 

As I watch you breathe I wonder who you will grow up to be. What will you like? Will you like reading? Swimming? What will you see once you stand on your own little feet? Where will they take you once you can walk? Will I be with you along the way, when you first take your pitter-patter steps, when you first go to school, when you first get a bra, when you first fall in love?

Your little fist clenches and you wipe your eye, not once surfacing from your dream, and your tiny hand falls back next to you, like a drunk little starfish. As I watch your chest rise with every breath, you stir in your dreams, kicking a foot, turning your head. What do you see in your little dreamworld, I wonder? Which of the things you saw today, heard today, felt today will feature? If they feature at all?

A little sigh escapes your lungs, and your lips move as if you were drinking. You have only been here for such a  short time, and already you have grown so much. Your face, instead of the squashed, pouting newborn face, has taken on your own little features, which run through the range of expressions in your sleep, one after the other.

You stir again and throw your arms around you in a sleepy semaphore, until you have spelled out what was to be said. So here you are now, my little baby girl, deep in your dreams with so much still to come for you. And as I do now, all I can do is sit and watch as you make sense of it all, as you create your own little world, step by step, dream by dream. And I wonder what part of it you will let me share with you. All I know is that every moment will be another act in the wonderful play that is your life.

I am calling it: Pregnancy sucks!

I am more than 7 months into the pregnancy now, and have come to a conclusion: Pregnancy sucks.

I had hoped the problems I have would fade away after the first 3 months, as the literature, doctors, and everyone else seems to promise, but they didn't. True, I don't faint as much anymore, but I still choke for air after a few steps or a few minutes of standing, sometimes so badly that I have to lie down to get my breathing under control again. They've done tests upon tests, but couldn't find any reason and assume that's just a pregnancy symptom gone worse in my case. So even getting home up the stairs to the second floor is nearly impossible to accomplish and I need to take breaks every few steps.

They tell you a lot of things about pregnancy: What a miracle it is to create new life, how happy you must be to be expecting, that you will glow and get energy boosts, and just simply how excited you must be now. What they don't tell you is how hard it is. How terrible you feel at first, and not just for 3 months, when the baby sucks everything out of you. How "morning sickness" is the misnomer of the millennium, as it has nothing to do with mornings, you feel sick ALL THE TIME. The glow and energy boost is still keeping me waiting, instead my skin is drier than ever and psoriasis is sprouting all over. And instead of extra energy I dose off every few hours from exhaustion. 

 

The worst I experience, though, is this expectation by society that now you have to be happy and excited. I am too exhausted to be either. On the contrary, I struggle very much with not just losing control over my body, feeling exhausted and unwell almost the entire time, and no matter which way I turn I cannot get comfortable, but also as a consequence losing control over my life, social and professional. Having to be somewhere on time, already a struggle in London with transport here being what it is, is even more of an uphill struggle when I can walk only at half the normal speed and need to sit down for a breath every couple of minutes. Going places where I can't have a seat are out, as after a few minutes of standing I will be out of breath and feel faint. Staying out with friends is a very limited experience, as exhaustion will set in after an hour or two, which means I can't continue a conversation and really just want to lie down, or else feel increasingly unwell. Plus, I can manage an evening out maybe once or twice a week, after which I will be too exhausted again for a few days to manage much of anything. The life I used to have is gone, and the simplest things I took for granted are not possible anymore and turn everything upside down. 

 

Some people might be able to deal with this easily, but many, like myself, are not. Having no control over my life anymore as my body won't let me do even simple things like walking up stairs, is such a radical limitation to how I used to live that it depresses me. Which is another thing that nobody talks about, but thousands of pregnant women experience: antenatal depression. If we would talk about it more maybe more women would be prepared for the reality of what pregnancy can bring to your life, the sacrifices you have to make in your life and to the way you live it, the drastic changes it brings long before you have even given birth, or put simply: That being pregnant means giving up control. Some lucky ones will do well and not experience as many limitations as others. But for many it is a huge struggle, both physically and psychologically. And meeting constant expectations from society that you have to be over-the-moon happy and excited only makes it worse, takes even more control, the control over your own feelings, away from you. 

So in essence, I know that there are women out there who have wanted a baby, have been planning for it for a long time and who are excited when it finally happens. Good for you! There are also many who desperately want a child but cannot have one, and who will gladly put up with feeling miserable as long as it means they are pregnant. And all of their feelings are valid. All I am saying is that mine are just as valid, as is the struggle of many many other women who have trouble coping with pregnancy. Not talking about it and instead spreading this stereotype of the glowing, energetic woman stroking lovingly her growing bump with an angelic smile on her face, does not help. On the contrary, it worsens the situation for many who do not feel this way and instead wonder what is wrong with them, since everyone tells you this is how you have to be, so obviously being different means something must be wrong with them. 

Therefore, I am saying today that pregnancy is not what society stereotypes make it out to be. Not for everyone, that is. It can be an exhausting experience, it can even be a bad experience, depending on how it goes for you. Expectations are so often wrong. In my case it certainly is a major struggle, and not a very happy one. I simply think being pregnant sucks. And you know what? Despite what they tell you, this is okay.

The Joys of Pregnancy

 

...And the pregnancy goes on. The fainting at least has subsided, so there's a plus, but the promised energy boost after 12 weeks seems to have missed the bus... and it must be one of those old horse-drawn buses, since I am 19 weeks now and still can't bring up enough energy to walk more than 5 minutes. Which is exacerbated by the fact that I get breathless after walking only a few steps. And going up the stairs means usually that I choke at the end of it, despite several breaks in between the two flights up to my flat, and have to force a bit of water down my throat through the choking and the exhaustion tears, which so far seems to be the best way to get my breath back under control, well, after a while. Good thing is, my hubby is now on constant duty to carry my bag and coat up ahead of me, which makes it slightly easier to manage the stairs. I can only say that I'm glad that this part, where my bump is just a bit bigger, is now in winter where I have to wear all these thick clothes. Once the bump weighs a few more kilos I think we would need a crane to get me up those two floors, walking will be impossible!

Oh, and another joy I have discovered, excuse me for mentioning this, I know some people will frown upon such an indelicate subject, is the impressively varied farting, from painfully explosive to sly and unpleasantly odoured. It seems pretty everything I eat gives me wind, which has a knack of appearing at the most inappropriate moments. Seriously, my level of shame has been so much reduced by now due to helplessly having to endure unstoppable farts in public, I wonder if I will ever be allowed back into normal society... The alternative, keeping them in, is unthinkable. Tried it, and the pain makes me double over, sometimes even without me trying to keep it in but simply having wind trapped... Another thing nobody has ever mentioned to me before about the joys of pregnancy. 

The silver lining I keep reminding me of: all of this will go on the list, and when she is a teenager and annoyed like hell by her mum I will present her with all the things I had to endure to get her that far, see who wins the annoy-the-other contest!

So much for those pregnancy stereotypes...

 

Let me start by saying that this is my own experience, and that I am aware that other women have other experiences, some better, some worse. I am saying that because lately I have come to realise that when it comes to pregnancy suddenly everyone has an opinion, no, not just an opinion but KNOWS what it is that has to be done, and nothing else. And everyone seems to be so very adamant about it, there is no space for other opinions, no, when it comes to pregnancy their way is the only way, and if you don’t do it then you are at best toying with a life, at worst on your way to become a baby-killer. Trouble with that: Everyone tells you something different. So no matter what, as soon as you’re pregnant, you’re screwed. Pardon the pun…

Anyway, here I am, recently found out that I am pregnant after months of worsening nausea and fainting spells, which, when I finally collapsed at the station on the way to work made me go to a walk-in clinic and they did the test. I vaguely suspected it, after the last period was unusually short, but not being sure if I even COULD get pregnant (for various reasons) meant I tried to ignore it as long as I could. Add to that the fact that I am a) on the old side with 40, b) not exactly the ideal weight with my overweight and far from fit, c) not at all the baby person, never having wanted children apart from a spell around 30 and by now rigorously set in my ways which do not exactly leave room for a little thing in there that will keep me awake day and night and do nothing but eat, sleep and poo, and require constant care, and you may see that this is not exactly the Hollywood swoon-in-happiness epiphany. Nonetheless, despite the heightened risk of miscarriage I decided to give it a try. I did consider getting rid of it, but I know this is the last chance I get, and knowing there was a time where I wanted a child, well, I just couldn’t run the risk of regretting it. Although who knows, I might regret it anyway… I do believe in nature’s ways though, and that whatever happens happens, and if I had so radically NOT wanted a child we would’ve been more careful. No matter which way this goes, it is where my life is leading me, and it will be another step in my development.

That being said, this thing is horrible. I can’t help but think of it as a parasite. I am constantly exhausted to the point where I can only roll up crying on the sofa, the constant nausea is not helping (whoever came up with the term Morning Sickness should be shot for maliciously misleading half the population on Earth!!), and I am convinced this thing is out to kill me by making me faint all over the place! Not exactly the smart thing to do to advertise your case, is it? Well, in its excuse I will say that the brain so far is a lump of cells, mixed in with cells for all sorts of other purposes, but still! The worst though is that I can’t walk more than 5 minutes without losing my breath, which makes life exceedingly difficult. Getting to and from work is hell, and I mean pure hell. Standing with a few million people squashed into oxygen-depleted train carriages while concentrating with every fibre on NOT collapsing just yet, while sweat pours and the cold outside will then instantly make you shiver freezing as soon as you step out of the station, not exactly healthy. Every morning when I get to work I need to lock myself in the loo, to cry with the exhaustion and change into dry clothes. Social life is non-existent, I can hardly get myself to work and back, there is no energy left to meet with friends. I tried to force myself. I had to cut it short when I couldn't keep the tears back from exhaustion. 

Crying is another thing altogether. For no reason at all that I can distinguish I just gush into tears. Let’s just say, the pretty picture they feed you all over the media with a glowingly smiling woman tenderly patting her belly, it’s crap. For me. It’s friggin’ exhausting, mentally and physically. And I am not sure anymore why I chose to continue… 

For now, with all these problems, my midwife and GP make me go to various hospital appointments about twice a week. For someone who hates going to the doctor in the first place, this is quite a bit upsetting, although I do feel that at least they are working on making it better with all these tests and monitoring. 

They say it does get better. That the nausea will tone down, the body gets used to the extra demand and stop making me collapse, and even the hormones tone down and the gushing tears will settle into a bit more control. That's what they say. But they also say it is the happiest time of one's life, and that is just crap in my case. I for one can't wait for this to be over. Although, essentially I guess this rather means it is just the start, doesn't it...

The Death of Proper Writing

Today I need to admit something publicly, come out at last, declare that, it seems, it has finally happened: I am old. 

Or old-fashioned at least. 

Probably not in all aspects of my life, but there is one particular area that I just can't get used to: Writing. 
 

To clarify this further, with writing I don't mean writing myself, that's not the issue. But other people's writing, and especially writing in newspapers. 

It used to be such a pleasure to read articles in newspapers. You would only become a journalist in the first place if you could write convincingly, powerfully, coherently at the least. 

What do we have today? Snippets of text strung together haphazardly, repeating the same thing over and over in the same article, without a thread that holds it together. And don't even get me started on the spelling! I just say quite quiet and they're their, and you (hopefully) know what I mean and understand my plight. And I am the non-native speaker!!! If I can learn it, a native can as well, especially one who chooses writing as their profession. Shouldn't there be a standard to uphold? Where is your professional honour, darlings?

Anyway, I blame technology. All this twittering and facebooking and texting has reduced us to blabbering idiots. No wonder people these days can't string together anything more than two sentences, we should be glad they even get one single sentence together that makes vague grammatical sense. Hoping for a structured article in an online newspaper, where the article is published as soon as someone has wrung it out of their fingers, no edit, no spell-check, just publish publish publish, and possibly amend later, well, hoping for structure in that is probably a lost cause. 

So here I am, realising that it is probably futile to look for structure, or even coherence, in my newspaper, where people a decade younger than myself present me with information. The twitter generation feeding information to the essay generation. 

Maybe I should just resign myself to the fact that the essay is dead, and all I was taught to do, such as introduction/body/conclusion, or just simple grammar and spelling, was all in vain. All those tests I had to pass in school, all those essays I had to submit at university, all of it was useless, and my teachers should've much rather pointed out that IGNORING all of this would be the only way to achieve peace of mind while catching up with the news. As they say, ignorance is bliss. 

But here I am, waiting for them to invent the pill to unlearn things. Until then, you will find me on the sofa with a proper (hard copy!) book!

The Only Way to Sustainability Is by Changing Human Behaviour

After just having written about learning to learn again, I thought I might just post something about what I have learned, and what better than the conclusion, in summary, of the course? I have now spent 8 weeks looking at various aspects of sustainability, population, climate change, our use of the commons, policy etc. And as in the beginning of the course, the one big question is still: Is the world on an unsustainable path?

How has the course changed my view? Not much, I must say. I started out thinking that the main problem with managing our planet sustainably is human behaviour. We have the technology to solve most problems, we know a lot about the science behind natural processes and how to utilise them sustainably, but where we struggle is human behaviour, how we treat our world. Policy is a powerful tool that could help on the way to change our behaviour, and to some extent it does, we have seen several examples of Pigovian taxes or incentive-based policies that have helped bring about an improvement in for example air quality and water pollution remediation in most developed countries, compared to say 60 years ago. Nonetheless, it still isn't enough.

We know that we have to stop being dependent on fossil fuels. Our current carbon dioxide emissions are unsustainable, and the IPCC agrees that only immediate action will avoid the worst, no matter which prediction model you look at among the peer reviewed and accepted scenarios. We are too late to avoid an impact already, so we will have to mitigate and adapt, but to avoid the worst we have to act now.

The problem is, human behaviour is not so easily changed. We like our traditions, we look at our individual and immediate gain rather than for long-term benefits. In chapter 10.8 on Sustainability Ethics we have read that there are very few ethics, despite it being the obvious thing to do, that care for our offspring, our future generations. We tend to look at quick fixes, some of which simply make things worse, e.g. sending sulphate aerosols into the sky to deflect radiation, despite the side effects that may make things worse for us. Our decision making follows the same longing for immediate benefits. Our political systems elect government into office for a stretch of a few limited years, and in order to attract voters politicians promise whatever seems to be most popular at the moment, which usually includes a reduction in taxes or other monetary benefits for the wider population. We do want change, but we don't want to pay for it. We don't realise that we will pay for it if we continue like this, nobody else will pick up the tab for their own pollution as long as they aren't forced to do so, and the wider population will get stuck with the price to pay, disproportionally affecting the poorer population.

Money also plays a part in policy making and enforcement. The big money in energy business will continue to encourage use of fossil fuels or nuclear power, and influence policy and other governmental decisions with monetary incentives, either in direct bribery, or by contributing in some other, legal or semi-legal, way to a country's economy, leaving us with increasing carbon emissions and nuclear waste that has nowhere to go. Still, our dependency on energy and other consumption leading to pollution is something that is difficult to give up, and most people will continue to strive for this lifestyle, so what we really need is a change in behaviour to accept alternatives that may be slightly inferior at this stage. However, without more pressure from the majority of the population nothing will change anytime soon. Not until it is too late.

In conclusion, we do have the means available to avoid the worst catastrophes, but that will involve us humans learning to change our behaviour. We have to use less energy, consume less fossil-fuel-dependent goods, eat less meat, and in general, behave in a more environmentally-friendly way. It may not seem much, but every little helps. And only by starting with the little things will we convince decision-makers to enforce change in the big things. We all have to learn, we all have to change, it is too late to stay with business as usual. And I feel very tempted to end with an encouraging “let's start today”, but it will be yet another years or decades before enough of us have realised the need for change to make an impact big enough to really mitigate climate change. I am sure we will get there. We have no other choice.

Learning to Learn Again...

It has been a while since I wrote anything here... I just couldn't think of anything significant to say, I suppose. I felt my brain was on energy save, and wouldn't come up with many ideas. I decided it was due to too much routine, work, home, a series or two, bed, and then the same again the next day. Nine Inch Nails' Everyday is exactly the same comes to mind... 
So I decided I had to do something. What I really do want to do is find a university course and continue studying, learning more and new things, maybe giving my career a different outlook with additional skills... The problem is: What subject? The things I get excited about are literature, gender studies, history and philosophy, but how does that fit with working in the energy sector? So maybe something more related? But that is so scientific, how will I understand that enough to work with, with my background?
So I decided to test myself. Experiment to do: See how I would do with one of the courses I've been doing online, those MOOCs, offered online, for free, from many universities by now, and instead of just doing a bit here and there, this time I wanted to do it all, go for a certificate, do all the assignments, on time, put the pressure on by adhering to deadlines, and most of all, after such a long break: Learn how to learn again, get the brain back on receptive and processing mode. 
Today I submitted my final exam. I chose a course on sustainability, the German green heart (conditioned to some extend by German politics, granted, but the topic has always been of interest) and the fact it had an interesting-looking energy module determined the choice. It was from an American university (more of a minus, as my interests lie this side of the pond), so slightly too much US-centric (why do I need to know the percentage of hydropower in the annual US energy portfolio and not know what the UK, or the world, is doing?), but nonetheless, I feel I have learned valuable things throughout these past 8 weeks. 
I have learned that my opinion before the course was similar to what I made of the new information gained during the course, just that I have a few more facts to back it up. I have learned not to be too afraid of technical terms, although I am still frightened to death by mathematics, especially when it comes to finance and equations... I just don't get it, my brain is just not suited to the finer points of maths, I do get part of the logic, but for more details I need someone to explain it to me in a language I understand - what I have learned is that I need it very visual, abstract logic will only go so far. Anyway...
I have learned that I still think we are exploiting the planet to our own destruction.
I have learned that is takes a lot of effort, especially besides working, to get all things done. The deadlines in this course were especially tight, but still, it does take effort and discipline, and the sacrifice of many a night where I would've much rather gone with a friend for a drink, or something else, was noticeable.
I made it, and have passed, I have the points together already, even before I know the final score of the exam. So that all worked out well!! 
I have new things to think about, or rather, more arguments to back up my opinions, and have already started talking back when my man tries to convince me when I am not convinced. 
Most of all: I learned to be happy about learning again, using new information to build and rebuild my opinion, and use my brain to think again!! What will come of it I don't know yet. I will see. First, I am glad it is over, and I can have a break!! Next to learn... I will see!