Dodging Bullets

I've started posts and then deleted them. I've written them in my head sooooo many times I've lost count. I think there is a part of me that hasn't wanted to write it down for fear of... judgement maybe? But really, at the end of the day, the truth is that last month brought forth every fear I have about a very complicated topic:

Another baby.

I don't want one. End of story.

Well, not quite.

I have a lot of reasons for being perfectly happy with the one child we have. Health issues from my fibromyalgia for one. A couple nights poor sleep and my body rebels. I just can't do the being awake every 2-3 hours for days on end with a newborn. I can't. I will go crazy... again. And that fear of Postpartum Depression is not a small matter. I don't have the luxury of not being okay. My husband travels a lot and it's often just me and Miss K. Add a baby to the mix and I'd lose what little sanity I have left and I'm not sure about my ability to bounce back so well, even with the right medication.

We're a long way from home. 7000 kilometres from our families. I have friends here but no one who could drop things if I really needed help. They, after all, have 2 or more kids themselves. Support networks are really, really important and mine just isn't as good as it would need to be.

Then there is the whole thought of trying to conceive and carry a pregnancy that makes me feel ill. I cannot do another miscarriage. I just can't. The second was seriously devastating to our marriage and I don't want to go through that again. I realize that that is just plain fear. I accept that. I can own that emotion.

We're broke. Like barely scrapping by. We can't keep out of overdraft because we need to buy food. When choosing between maintaining good credit and eating, it's not a hard choice. We scrimp and rarely splurge on anything and it sucks because we have so many goals, so many things we want to do and experience while we're living in the UK. And we just can't. Basic needs first. Which is a drudgery that is hard to explain and rather demoralizing for a couple who feels like they should be "settled". Add a baby to this mix? And knowing that it is unlikely I could breastfeed would need formula? Are you kidding?

Then there is Miss K, whom is possibly autistic and whom I have to give 110% of my energy to just to make it through each day. Some days are good, some days are awful. She needs so much from us and I want her to have what she needs so that she can find her way in this crazy world.

But there is the one fundamental and most poignant reason to not have another baby. I don't want one. I hold newborns and older babies of friends and I smile and coo and love them to bits. But there is never a moment when I get the pang to have another one. And having had that so strongly in the first place that we tried to conceive those years ago, I know when my heart is telling me to go for it and when I should not. This is my head and heart uttering a resounding 'NO!'

For me, our family is complete. But it's been hard to tell people this, to get them to understand. I hear 'oh, you'll change your mind in a few years'. Even if that was true, my health is an overweighing concern and I have to take care of myself. My family needs me to be healthy (body and mind), and frankly, so do I.

I can answer the question 'so, is that your only one?' with a frank and happy smile and say 'yep'. She's the light of our life and makes me laugh, even when I sometimes want to cry. So is so utterly lovely and amazing to me, even on the days when motherhood feels so disheartening.

Things could be better (by a lot), but I like our family as it is. This makes sense for us, both now and in the future. We wish we could give her more somedays (especially in the way of activities to help develop some of her skills), but we're doing the best we can and we give her all the love she could possibly want.

Which is why last month brought reality crashing down around us in a very big way.

We had a pregnancy scare. Do you know how bizarre it is to say that after having such difficulty having a baby in the first place?

It's a complicated story, but suffice to say, after being so damn careful all the time, there was an oops right at my fertile part of my cycle. I was devastated at even the possibility that I could be pregnant. Angry and emotionally numb in turns. I had to stop and think for the first time in my life, could I do this? Did I have a right to go through with it if I was? How could we possibly manage? Some people would say, 'oh you just do'. But at what cost? If it would put us into true poverty, destroy my health and well being and impact my family negatively, isn't that too much? I wrestled these questions against the fact that having a viable pregnancy is a miracle for me, so if that was the case, how would I feel? For me, if I was pregnant, there was no situation that had a positive outcome. None.

10 days later (I've got short but clockwork cycles), right on time, I got my period and a negative test. I tested again about 4 days later to be sure. Negative.

For someone who had wanted positives so badly before, there was nothing less than ecstatic relief.

Deep breath.

There are things to think about, decisions that need to be made that require both my husband on I to be on the same wavelength. For now though, I can know that we dodged that bullet. And yet, it feels like it still grazed me because I think about it lots, pondering in turns what I would have chosen. I still don't know and that is the part that is difficult. It is a narrow miss that has impacted me just as much as any of my pregnancies (miscarried and successful alike) and I can't help but think it will mark me just as much.

The Truths About Being an Ex-Pat

Living abroad is not the glamourous life people think it is. At least this is true when you have children. I was having this discussion with an American friend who is moving back home in a couple weeks and we both agreed that life is the same no matter where you live. Now grant you, that statement changes if the quality of life is vastly different than what you're used to you. I mean if we suddenly picked up and moved to a country in Africa, I'm pretty sure this conversation would be different. But comparing life in  the UK to life back home in Canada, it's pretty much the same with a couple extra complications that being so far away from family induces.

We still have pretty much the same routines and do the same things, and try to get out and explore as much as we can. But at the end of the day, our lives haven't changed all that much. That was unexpected.

I think there was this expectation that somehow we would be living this whirlwind life where we got to travel and try lots of new things. But the reality isn't at all like that and you know what? That's okay with me.

I hate travelling with a young child. It stresses me out to no end. I know it will get better when she's older and I can't wait for those days and hope they coincide with our financial situation being better.

At the end of the day, home is exactly where you are and all you can do is make the most of your circumstances (whatever they are) and take comfort in the fact that wherever you go, some facets of life never change. There is something nice about that, despite the other challenges that may come your way.

When Words Aren't Enough

I've been processing our intake appointment with Speech & Language (S&L) and I'm glad I waited a bit to write anything since it was clear that I needed the perspective.

It was better and worse than I expected, though to be honest, I truly didn't have a clue what to expect when I walked into the building. The therapist who met with K and I was friendly enough but she got quickly down to business while K played with some toys. She veered for them right away and really didn't need much prompting.

The therapist (I'll call her S), and I chatted, getting down to the nitty gritty questions. What are her issues? How does this impact her daily life? What have you been doing so far? How would things be different if her issues weren't there?

On the surface, they are fairly simple questions, and I had even answered them in my head. But sitting there, my nerves got the better of me and I felt like I was stumbling over my own words. Ironic at a S&L meeting, no?

The gist of the meeting is that they are going to go ahead and admit K to the program and she is being put on a waitlist for an appointment that will take probably till around January to occur.

Essentially what we've been doing is wrong. Not all of it, but her frustration (and consequent acting out) is because of the gap in communication that she's realizing is her problem. Also, she comprehends significantly less language than hubby and I thought. It was made very evident when we tested it in a non-familiar environment. At home, she knows where things are and how things work, so we get by just fine for the most part with what little she does say, because her nonverbal communication is great. I was told encourage it because it was helping to a degree.

Her current comprehension is one or two words out of everything we say to her. That's it.

I walked away with a list of things to do and not to do:

1. Reduce our language to one to two words. No more sentences, no more talking to her like we normally do. (ie. 'coat on', ' blue bus'

2. Don't ask questions (ie. what are you doing?). This is one part that frustrates her apparently because she doesn't understand and/or can't reply. So she says nothing. We can continue to offer her choices between two things, but that's about it. Already I can say that this is a super hard habit to break.

3. Comment on her play. (ie. A sheep, red lego etc). Keep in mind #1.

4. Take the blame for not understanding her. (ie. 'I'm sorry, mama didn't hear you', 'Silly mummy' etc). the idea is that she's feeling pressure to communicate, but since she can't this makes it our problem rather than hers and takes that pressure off of her.

If we still can't understand what she wants, change the subject so she doesn't get frustrated. Honestly, I'm not sure about this one because if she wanted something and is trying to communicate that, and I change the subject, wouldn't she feel ignored then? Not sure.

5. Wait. Give her lots of time to respond, or not respond if she chooses not to.

It seems all simple, but in practice it's very difficult. Mind you we've only been doing this a day and it'll take a few weeks before any of it becomes natural.

Walking out of the office I felt rather small. S didn't say 'you've been doing bad things' or 'you're a bad parent', but I also didn't feel very reassured or comforted. She did seem convinced that if changed K's environment, we would see a change in her frustration level by the time we got an appointment and she had a formal assessment.

What's been helpful in my processing is to think of this like being in a foreign country and only knowing a little of the language. It would be like someone saying things to you and you can only pick out one or two words here and there. Given that I experienced this in Geneva, I very much understand the frustration of not being able to understand what people are saying.

What comes next I don't know beyond waiting for the appointment. It's clear we have a lot of ground to make up, but we also have time before she starts school. There's no way we can afford to put her into nursery (a whole other topic), so for now it's just us making these changes for her. It won't be easy, but if it will help her gain some confidence with her language, it will be worth it.

Valuing Dreams

I talked before on my old blog about dreams and being realistic, while still giving yourself something to aim for. I think this whole thing is taking a rather interesting turn for us now that we're reapplying for our work visas again. In fact, our documents should be at the office any minute now! While the website claims they're only processing applications from July 17th, they've been saying that for almost a week, so I'm of a mind to think they don't update the wait time very often. Besides, our visas expire Sept. 21st, so they better be on top of it!

No sooner than we were gathering everything together to apply for this next stint here in the UK (3 years, 5 months), than we were starting to think beyond that. Scary, right? I mean, to date, we've tried to not think about after any given scenario until we're in the year it shows up. Now, that being said, I've always been a planner. I like to look at scenarios and see how they could work out so that I can get an idea about what appeals to me and see how would be required to make that happen.

We've been talking about what we want after this job posting is over. Hubby's career (who is notable shocked to discover he in fact does have a career), is going really well and he's been working on several projects on top of the one he's paid to do. Ahh, yes, free labour. But then again, these are just proposals and likely won't come to anything.

Except for one.

That one project has great potential and is getting people in his field excited! If it gets funding (always the big if in science), it likely will be just getting going when he's done his current posting. This means, drumroll... we very probably will end up back in North America. We're determined to go home though, and are looking at the options of being back in Canada. So far, the possibilities are quite open depending on where hubby wants to work. He'd likely take a teaching position at a university or college and commute to the project site when he needed to.

In looking at housing prices to remember how crazy they were, we casted a wider net and looked at a location we knew had a great chance of a job for him. For the same price as a small 2 bedroom apartment in Vancouver, we can get in this other place, get this... an entire 3 bedroom house with a large yard! And people there think their housing prices are crazy, lol. I will grant that equivalent salaries do always play a part in cost of living, but Vancouver is still crazy expensive in comparison, hands down.

And yet, despite that fact, I look at the areas I love in that city, including ones we've already lived in, and sigh longingly. There's just something special about it that I can't quite shrug off, no matter that I'm looking at $600 more in rent a month for one less bedroom.

It's something to keep in mind as we continue to look at adding a second child to our family. Finances have been tight for us, and until I'm bringing in significant income, it wont change.

So it begs the question, what price are you willing to pay for lifestyle? If you choose a place for lifestyle, especially when raising a family, what are you willing to do or give up? Do you work more? Live in a smaller place? Give up on buying a home and accept that you'll be renters most of your life?

More importantly becomes the consideration of money and how much is enough. If you can make ends meet, pay off your debts (better yet, be debt free) and put some savings away, but don't own a home or car, and don't go on lots of vacations, but are content in your daily life, is that enough?

I think it comes down to priorities and doing what makes you happy. It's so easy to get caught up in accumulating things. But when you live with a lot less, you realize that you can in fact live on less and that those other things you'd probably like to have, you can do without.

We have our dream life in the back of minds and I think we'll always be striving for that, but, in the meantime we're learning to be content with where we are at. It can be stressful and difficult at times, but at the end of the day, I know that we have it pretty good in life and there is much to be grateful for.

Meanwhile I'll be eyeing housing prices both back in Canada and for our pending move south into England next year with a slightly wistful, if realistic eye.

The Magic of Bread, Part 1

I grew up on brown bread. We might have had white sandwich bread at some point, but all that sticks out in my memory is brown bread. When we were pretty young it was 60% whole wheat and I remember we'd get multiple loafs from the bakery section of the supermarket and that smell of fresh bread is always in my head.

So I grew up loving brown bread. As I got older we ate multigrain and I still do to this day. Don't get me wrong, I love a really good Italian loaf or French baguette, but when it comes to sandwiches or toast, nothing beats a really nice, slightly dense multigrain loaf with a crust that is slightly dark. I know it's a thing in my family, but anyone else absolutely love the crust and ends of baked goods? Are we just weird? I'd quite happily eat the top of the muffin and pass the bottom to someone else.

I had to zip out to pick a few things from the shop (listen to me, the lingo has taken a hold!) and I was cruising past the bread in one aisle. There was a moment when I stopped and eyed the loafs of brown and white bread wondering if I should just grab one considering we were down to only a few slices back at the flat.

"Don't do it!" the motivational side of my consciousness screamed out.

"What?"

"You don't need bread. Go make it."

"But that takes time and I couldn't find any proper yeast and I don't even know if that other yeast I bought will work properly."

"You haven't tried it."

"But if it doesn't work I'll still need to buy a loaf of bread..."

More pondering ensued and I left the shop without any bread.

Fast forward a few hours and I just mixed together a loaf and it's currently rising... presumably.

Score 1 point in the battle against tiredness and laziness. Admittedly, I made it after a nap, so I had a bit more energy than earlier. Something about my nice week of weather being gone and the rain coming back that made me feel lethargic this morning. Staying up for the closing ceremonies of the Olympics didn't help either.

I've gone a little nuts for flour here. See, it took me a bit to sort out the differences in lingo and actual processing. Here, you have plain flour, bread flour, pasta flour (often notated by 00 to show it've very fine) and sometimes you pastry flour. No cake flour. A really good quality all-purpose flour is the best you can hope for, but when I made cupcakes for Ryan's party, I found one that claimed it was fine, and having eaten said cupcakes, I would say they were right.

Bread flour here is also known as 'strong' flour, or extra strong. This means that it has a higher gluten content that when kneaded results in a nice rising bread. All purpose flour/plain flour just doesn't quite do the trick. On top of that is the shift in lingo from whole wheat/whole grain to brown/wholemeal. When you see 'brown' here, that is generally equivalent to whole wheat. The all important and more healthy 'whole grain' is called wholemeal here.

Got that all straight?

Now, so far, I haven't made wholemeal bread with 100% wholemeal flour. It usually is way too heavy so I've been playing with wholemeal/white flour mixtures to find which one I prefer. 50/50 works pretty well for bread, I prefer my pizza crust a little lighter so I use about 60/40 white to wholemeal.

Bread also requires yeast. All I've ever used before is dry active yeast. It comes in little containers that you measure out or in pre-measured sachets. I've been using it loose and just measuring out whatever my recipe calls for. Yes, some time was spent looking at conversions for yeast measurements and differences between countries because what is the equivalent in one country in a sachet is not the same in the other.

Oi people, you're giving me a headache!

The crux of my problem is that when I went to buy more yeast and after 4 shops I couldn't find the containers and I ended up with sachets. Fine, I could deal with that. However when I read the box carefully (notably after I got home), I realized that I had quick yeast, not regular dry yeast. None of my recipes called for it and I had no idea how to substitute and adjust the recipe to make it work.

Insert more internet research here. And then some procrastination.

So after successfully dodging the commercially made loaves (which I should note I have nothing against, but it's sooooo nice to have homemade bread), I set out to make bread this afternoon.

I used wholemeal extra strong bread flour and instead of plain white strong bread flour, I used one that had all kinds of grains and seeds in it. My thought is that it would still be light, but have that wonderful nuttiness that multigrain bread gets. In place of the wheat germ (which I didn't have), I used porridge oats, which is as close to rolled oats as you get over here.

I learned in my research that quick yeast basically is finer and doesn't require 'proofing' in water first. So I added it right to my flour. The salt and a bit of honey was dissolved into my water (which normally would have contained yeast, not the salt), and it was all mixed together.

Admittedly, I had my doubts. There was no confidence after kneading the bread for several minutes that it would actually rise properly and turn into moderately light multigrain bread. Thirty minutes into the first rise and I can say that I was wrong. It's rising beautifully.

Stay tuned for the results and the verdict...

Relief

I'm hardly the first person to have a spouse who's a jet-setter, and not the first to be home alone with a child while the other is away, but for me it was definitely an adjustment. When my husband and I first started seeing each other, I knew that he would do some travelling. He usually is attending conferences, and at the time it  was about two a year, mostly within Canada.

Anyone who travels knows it's expensive, and while his flight was usually arranged through work, the rest we had to pay up front and claim back later. It was never too much of an issue until we got to the UK.

His job has been super busy. He's a physicist and the list of projects he's now involved in has grown from when he first arrived in Scotland. This translates into more work meetings and conferences, which when your collaboration is an international group, means you're off to this place and that quite frequently. He probably travels once a month, 6 months out of the year for the last year and a half or so, which equates to about 9 or 10 trips he's taken.

That's a lot when the bulk of your travel expenses (excluding flight) are paid out of your bank account. Ahhh the wonders that are debit/credit cards. They allow you the flexibility of booking/ordering online, but you have the finite amount of money that comes with a normal bank account. Now, while these aren't exactly new, they are to me.

Except when we're using our (very) limited disposable income to pay for his travel expenses. It resulted in some really tight months and a grocery budgeting exercise that left me wondering how we ate as well as we did on so little (much creativity needed). Thankfully, we've got our banking all sorted out (that's another post), and he now has a credit card that is used solely for travelling. Yay!

The first week long trips were difficult for me because I was acutely aware that I was alone in a strange country by myself. I still didn't know many people and since I had no access to our bank account, I was eyeing the cash we allotted for the week with a slight panic when I wondered what I'd do if something happened and I needed more, or if in some strange nightmarish scenario something happened to him and I had to somehow, uh, survive? Yes, there were some crazy thoughts that went through my head in my homesick depressed months when he was away. Eventually, we got into a rhythm with the travelling and I adjusted to being alone with my toddler 24/7.

This trip was a bit more difficult for me than usual. I was low on food and my new PIN for my debit card hadn't arrived. In a true comedy of errors, my online banking stuff arrived on Saturday, so I could order groceries online. Hubby was due home on Sunday and I knew after flying from the US back to Glasgow, he'd be tired and we'd not want to do the whole challenge of buying food and chasing after a toddler (who really dislikes being in her stroller in shops).

So I went to order and then really needed a nap, so finished afterwards. Problem with doing that was that I forgot to book the delivery and when I went back, there were non available on Sunday (or at least none before dinner). Damn. So I took off a bunch of stuff and then set the delivery for Monday, thining we could pick up the fresh essentials on Sunday. I managed to scrap together a decent dinner but the fridge was looking more bare than I'd like.

That night, hubby texted me to tell me that due to engine problems, his flight was cancelled.

Shit.

He was delayed 24 hours.

Which was why I was so glad that the online banking stuff had come. I ordered dinner from one of the take out places, and all was fine.

Well, almost. I was tired and it had been a long week. I was really missing him and that anticipation was deflated so quickly after I got that text. I was pretty upset for awhile before I went to bed, but calmed myself down since I knew I had another day to tackle before he was home.

Come Monday morning, hubby had two very happy people throwing their arms around him. It's the last trip for awhile, and now our attention is on renewing our Visas so we don't get kicked out of the country come September.

I find all these complications slowly grating on me and my patience. I want things straight forward, even if in execution they end up far more complicated. In the end though, you just have to go along with things, because fighting it can be a waste of energy and much needed sanity.

Welcome

Ahhhh! Much better! I look around this new space and feel calm and relaxed. It's clean and new and ready for whatever I throw at it, which as we all know, could be about anything!

In deciding to start a new blog, I had to decide what I wanted that blog to be. I have to say that it was an incredibly refreshing and inspiring process! When I started my first blog, it was just this thing that everyone was doing. I liked writing, so it made sense to write in a space like that. But I had no idea what I was doing or what I wanted to say.

That that space became my outlet through a crazy journey to being a mother was really no accident. The way I see it, that was what that space was always meant to be.

But see, now I am a mother and all that pain and heartache (while it'll always still be there in the background reminding me of what I got through) is holding me back. I have a complicated life, or perhaps more to the point, I make things more complicated. Often though, it's not intentional, but if there's anything I've learned in the last year, it's that I really can do with less, and that yes, I can do very well on very little, provided I have a few key things.

This is what spurned the name of the new blog.

In May 2011, after 3 months apart and imposing on the generosity of our families while we had no where to live, my daughter and I finally joined my husband in the UK. Moving 7000 kilometres from Vancouver, Canada to Glasgow, Scotland was never something I ever actually believed could ever happen in my life. In the early days of our relationship, I knew that my husband (a particle physicist) would likely move around, and I, the person with a major travel bug, thought this was amazing. Several years later, after being diagnosed with a chronic pain condition, going through recurrent miscarriage and then a successful pregnancy, coping with depression (including post-partum depression) and anxiety, and raising a toddler, suddenly the thought of packing up our life and moving overseas seemed… well, insane.

Perhaps it was.

All I can say, is that over a year later, I have finally settled into life here in Scotland. I conquered my recently developed social anxiety (care of the PPD) and started to attend toddler groups. I now have friends here. Funny that.

There are lots of things I never got to share when I returned to blogging earlier this year, and I intend to get to those. For now, this space will also play host to my love of good food and my photography. It'll also focus on how to simplify life, or rather, how my life has been simplified and how living with less gives us more. It's a challenge, and the part of me that loves being in a beautiful space and having useful things wants to have it all now. But I'm also learning patience. It's not easy.

I also have a fun long-term project I'll be introducing to you very soon, so stay tuned. Meanwhile, spread the word and let people know that I've moved into new digs! I'm really excited about continuing this journey of mine here, with a little less baggage but a whole heck of a lot of lessons learned sitting in my back packet.

~Lindsay