It takes a village

Imagine if you will a nursery with pink walls, toys already safely put away, one toddler and an utterly exhausted mother. It is 8:30pm. Five stories have been read. The potty has been used one last time. The milk bottle is drained. The frog pajamas have been securely zippered. Now, it’s just time to sleep.

The mother gives one last hug to her two and half year old toddler, lays her down in the crib and says goodnight. She sits on the floor one foot away from the bed. There is no physical contact, no eye contact, no further conversation beyond a whisper. At first, it seems like the night will end peacefully.

Then the toddler opens the night’s battle, “Mommy, hug me.”

“Goodnight,” says the mother.

“Mommy, hold me.”

“Goodnight.”

“Mommy, hold my hand.”

“Goodnight.”

“Mommy, more bottle.”

“Goodnight.”

“Mommy, more pee pee.”

“You have a diaper on.”

“Mommy…” The toddler crawls out of bed. The mother puts her back.

“Mommy,” the toddler cries louder.

“Goodnight.”

“Mommy!”

The escaping, screaming and protests continue in the same manner for another twenty minutes until, in a final effort to get her mother’s attention, the toddler sticks her finger in her mouth and makes herself throw up. The mother is horrified. She turns on the light, cleans the vomit off, changes the sheets, and is tempted to give in. What’s one more night of rocking to sleep, and surely her daughter couldn’t have intentionally caused herself to throw up?

But then the toddler giggles, loudly. The mother narrows her eyes in disbelief. Her resolve returns. She repeats the goodnight routine and says “Goodnight.” She steels herself against the ensuing protests.

Ninety minutes later, the toddler has fallen asleep by herself for the first time in six months. The mother crawls out of the nursery, blurry eyed, guilt-ridden, her ears ringing with her daughter’s desperate cries for her. She can already hear her daughter’s conversations with her therapist. “My mother abandoned me when I needed her. I grew up feeling so unloved.”

Then the mother turns on HBO and takes a deep breath. The house is silent. She has not fallen asleep with her pregnant stomach wedged against the sharp edges of her daughter’s toddler bed, her hand instinctually patting a child’s stomach. No, for the first night in ages, she and her daughter’s bedtimes have been separated. She smiles wearily and thinks to call her husband and tell him of her victory. But she’s too tired. She just falls asleep with the remote in her hand, very very relieved.

The above describes my past ten days. Every three nights, I moved one more foot away from the bed in an effort to teach my daughter to fall asleep by herself. There were a few variations on the battle but the overall struggle persisted until Friday (the night my husband came home from the US) when my daughter finally slept through the night uninterrupted. She’s done it three nights in a row now. Last night, she didn’t even fight me at bedtime. She was snoring within seconds of her head hitting the pillow.

I’d like to take full credit for this turnaround in my daughter (and with my husband, I will J) but in reality, this was a joint global effort, a true example of why women need each other. The beautiful and open responses I got from so many other mothers helped me feel so much less alone in that dark nursery night after night, with no husband or family member on the same continent with me. The prayers everyone said gave me the strength to not totally cave in, and the encouragement I received about my writing has motivated me to use my newly rebounding energy to actually change some things about my life in Shanghai rather than just bake more muffins. Thank you to everyone.

Manika also taught me something without knowing it. Somewhere around the second or third night, as she slowly drifted into quieter breathing and deeper sleep without me close to her bed, I felt a strong pang of sadness. I suddenly wanted to go closer, put my hand on her stomach, and kiss her cheek. I realized that it was just one of many moments going forward when she would no longer need me, and I began to wonder how much of her dependency on me I’ve actually been encouraging to give meaning to my life here in Shanghai. Her challenges coupled with my pregnancy have been my excuses not to go out more into my world, to not commit too much to anything, to live as if I’m a transient just here to raise my children.

So after that night, I made a conscious decision to get out of the house, to risk getting tired and guilty about not spending enough time with my daughter, and to just try things whether they seemed feasible or not. I called a friend of mine who was looking for a writing teacher to teach a small class of aspiring writers, another friend who runs an online organic grocery company (mentioned in previous blogs), a real estate agent to explore the possibility of opening a space dedicated to freelance writers (many similar spaces exist in New York where writers can quietly work, meet together, network, encourage one another and get away from their children), and a lawyer to help me understand the fertility, genetics and stem cell industries in China (my previous area of expertise in the US). In short, I started throwing stuff at the wall.

In New York, any one of these things would take something like one to four months to stick. But this is China. The country has an abundance of workers, but not so many thinkers, creators, problem-solvers, or entrepreneurs. I have now been given a creative writing class to teach, I am building a marketing plan and fundraising budget for the online company, I’m still taking the interest temperature for the writing space but have already found lots of people to survey, a friend of mine is doing the first draft illustrations for a children’s book I’ve written, and I’m meeting with a lawyer about the IVF industry very shortly. I think I may have thrown too much.

But that’s okay. I’m much happier. I finally feel engaged in the Shanghai machinery. I have new projects to inspire and occupy me. I feel like I’m learning about China again and how it operates instead of just living in it. And I’m well-rested. Hopefully, in the weeks to come, my blog will be more about that then sleep deprivation. Hopefully, I can share a deeper understanding of China. And if kid trouble comes again? Well, I now know where to go for help and inspiration, and I also know that I can take it on. I just need a strong will and a tough arm to row through the occasional torrent of tears to the other side. I guess that’s why God uses childbirth (appropriately known as labor) to prep us poor mothers from the start.

I knew He has a purpose for everything.