Tag Archives: sleepless nights

Yoga and coconuts in Samui

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Our week in Samui is zooming, blue skies, sunshine, and swims in the sea. Lots of yoga and coconuts.

Maher drives us to Yoga Thailand every morning. I practice while he plays with the children in the “Kids club.” Sean and Dylan’s out-grown toys and mini playground are more than enough to keep L and R occupied for the two hours I get to breathe and move at my pace.

It’s been two and half years since I did six days in a row of mysore (self -practice). Half-way there now. It’s wonderful that I have this opportunity and I am grateful to Maher for it.  I’m beginning to trust my body and its ability again. The softness is slowly seeping in from the energy in the shala (room), the sincere practitioners, and experienced teachers around us. The practice is becoming natural. I’ve almost regained my all of it, posture-wise. I am still doing half the jump-back, jump-through vinyasa’s and not planning to add them back in yet. Even the drop-backs are back. Assisted of course.
Slowly, slowly… The practice reminds me of this if I slip.

This morning I was running out of steam. Three days in a row after a month of every other day at best, is quite a jump. No matter how hard I tried today, all the jumps back and through were steps, Chataranga (Plank pose) vinyasa’s to Up-dog were with knees down, and the focus was wavering. It’s really no use pushing too hard.
Again, pole pole as Nanu would say.

Since we got to Samui, the children have woken up at least four times each, every night. Tonight they are sleeping well and I am up surfing the web, Facebook, YouTube, blogging. Not exactly prudent. Back to the sleep story though. We were down to one or two wakings a night. Recently they’ve gone through some crazy separation anxiety for both “mama” and “papa”. It can hit around eighteen months I read. They are twenty months now. Close enough. Travel, new beds, a different routine and probably dehydration from playing in the sun all day add up. They wake up to drink, and then to pee!

I wake up to a cold coconut every morning. Maher bought three bags from the Tesco in Lamai the other day. He drinks one in the morning, one at YT, and one after his run or practice. Me? Don’t ask. I claim sustenance on them. I have no case studies to back this up. Well, a Canadian friend Steve, also of some Indian heritage was doing just that when we met in Mysore. I’m not sure how long he went, but he was on a self-imposed satvic (balanced and pure) diet. Yogi’s are meant to eat healthily, neither too much nor too little, not only one kind of food either. So I’m not sure where he got it from. I wonder if it works as a detox though, if done for a short period?

Coconuts are certainly perfect thirst quenchers, and the one’s in Koh Samui are particularly good. Coconut juice is abundant in minerals. It is Maher’s natural sports drink. A lot of the food here is also coconut based. The research as to the health benefits of eating and drinking coconuts is on.

If you’ve got any thoughts and ideas on this please share!

Related articles: Health benefits of coconut oil, water, and more

On jet-lag and time zones

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We’ve been back three days from our trip to Paris and London.
The trip back was relatively easier because we had the short flight to Amsterdam first, then the long one when the children normally sleep. They woke up as we landed at two pm.

Probably due to fatigue L fell right into her Chinese time schedule. R stayed at GMT. He slept around three am.
Yesterday L’s excitement kept her going when she woke up at six am, what would be the middle of the night. R also woke up around that time, had some milk and slept again until noon. Last night L went to bed at eight pm, and R at two am.

Intriguing yet not surprising that it happened. Two very separate schedules. Not ideal twin parenting technique. Lots of one-on-one time though. Necessary after such travel – a packed schedule and many new people to hang out with everyday.
Maher and I slept in shifts, neither here nor there.

Today R,L, and M are on a similar schedule – in between the two time-zones. I am back in Europe.

The Old Macdonald story has a part two

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A few minutes after I published the last post R woke up from the night’s sleep. He had high fever. 39C. He took some medication and drank 200ml of oral rehydration salts, bit by bit. That should help for a while.

The sequence went like this: a week ago R got a cold. L caught it from him. Maher had some intestinal illness. A few days ago L started vomiting and had high fever. It seems to be gastroenteritis. She is almost done with the crazy diarrhea part of it. Today R started vomiting.

Anyway back to the point of this story, a little while ago, not really delirious from such high fever, R asked for his papa. I explained that he was asleep. We went into our room to have a look. Then for “Lala.” She is asleep too I said. Just as he was falling asleep he asked for “ayi”. I told him that she was at her house and asleep. He broke into song, “Ayi Ayi O”!

As he drifted off to sleep, L woke up.

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The Old Macdonald Story part three
The Old Macdonald Storyc

My not so controlled, not so scientific experiment.

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Our sleeping arrangement is as consistent as everything else is with me lately. L and R share a room and have a crib each. For the beginning of every night they are in their room. Some parts of some nights we have one of them in our bed, and sometimes much more rarely both. Having them sleep in our bed is a recent phenomenon. When we went to Koh Samui in February, the two cribs and our big bed all in one room rendered much better sleep than in the past.

A few weeks ago I was trying to see what the nights would be like in the different cases mentioned above. In general the child who is between us sleeps better than when in his [I use his in this post to mean either child] own bed alone, at least for longer periods of time, and a hug or gentle tap on the belly usually gets him back to sleep in minimal time. When I was experimenting with this, I switched the child in our bed each night for about a week to ten days. That one was sleeping better than the other. The one who stayed in his own bed pulled the other one’s hair many times the next morning.

When I had them both in our bed, if either woke up before morning he would cry, fuss, push and even roll over the other one to make sure I took care of him. This happened only when he noticed his sibling was also in the bed. So both ended up awake. That meant that Maher and I were up too. This segment of the experiment lasted two days. I was ready to have them back in their own beds unless necessary, and Maher had a talk with me about this too!

In order to maintain a few hours of sleep and some sanity for myself, especially in the case of simultaneous wakings our nights are a combination of the above situations. We spend a part of the night alone, part with one and sometimes the rest of the night with the other.

The last two nights R and L had a fever and runny noses. They both vomited. L on the first day, R the second. It seems to be a flu. Of course if one has it, the other one is likely to follow. Usually there is a lag of a day or two, but this time, it was simultaneous and intense. Neither accepted to be alone in their own bed. This meant when one woke up and saw the other in our bed, there was the crying, fussing, pushing, and rolling over. All four of us were up, and both children were burning with fever, crying and asking for “mama, mama.” One would climb onto me and push the other out of the way, then a minute later it was the other way around. Maher and I looked at each other, stuck. I laughed awkwardly as we tried to react to the situation.

The guilt that comes with having to choose one child over the other at the spur of a moment eased up a lot as my confidence developed, as our bond grew, since they became more independent (as in could walk and climb up and mainly down from places on their own, eat and drink on their own, etc), and now that their favorite word is “baba” and they tail him all day long. But it comes back, and I guess it always will. Now that they can express what and who they want, it is more painful.

Tonight is better. L is in her own bed and hasn’t had any fever all night. Rahul is getting there slowly,

Me…start a blog?

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Over the last two years my world has revolved around only a few things, mainly taking care of Leila and Rahul. So to start a blog now seems a bit strange. What could I possibly have to say? It might seem outrageous, but I don’t know which regimes are being toppled over, I haven’t seen photos of the effects of the recent earthquake in Japan, I don’t know what yoga workshops are on in the region, don’t  know if Federer is still kicking ass, or who presented at the Bookworm literary festival, or anything for that matter. That’s why when I told Maher I was starting this blog his reaction was to ask what I wanted to say?!

Only five years ago I had no idea what a blog was until a couple of  friends in Chengdu complained that they couldn’t access blogspot. A number of blogging sites can not be accessed here in China. When I was in Hong Kong for the birth, bed rest and fast wireless meant lots of time on the internet, so the interest started. But it was only when L and R were five months old and we returned to Chengdu that I started to get into it. It was also the time that my mum returned to Zambia. I came upon some blogs that mums of twins (MoT) wrote about their lives.  For the first time in a long time I felt like I could relate to some people. They wrote how exhausted they were, how they only bathed their babies a couple of times a week, rarely dressed them in anything other than pyjamas….I didn’t feel bad anymore that L and R didn’t go out everyday. They weren’t the only ones. To have them both ready to go out meant nappies changed, both well fed, not too tired, and a big diaper bag full of provisions, some exhaustion as well! I remember a father blogging about how his two-year old twin girls were finally sleeping through the night, most of the time anyways. So my two waking up a few times each every night meant I was still in the norm. We were not likely to get much sleep for a while though.  One mum wrote about her birth story, which was very similar to mine. It included flights, hospital stays for both mum and babies, lots of pumping, stress, fear, relief. Then there was one couple that blogged about their micro premature twins birth, Neonatal ICU stay including all the medical details, the obsession with weight gain, the monitors, breathing, digestion, good days, bad days, etc. They were born much earlier than L and R,  and both made it! It wasn’t the most fun blog I read, but I could relate to a lot of it and realised that I had to deal with this part of R and L’s life one day…soon. There were many funny posts as well like this  one MoT who wrote something called One baby envy! Others complaining about the silly questions they got when they took their twins out.  If I get started on the questions and comments I get in Chengdu I won’t stop. I’ll save that for another day. Other mums of multiples (MoM) were bitching about how J Lo could look perfect so soon after she had her twins. They were on the cover of PEOPLE magazine sometime in 2008.

I related to these parents and it helped with the isolation I sometimes felt being in China without my family and with no experience with babies whatsoever. Neither of my brothers or brothers in law have children. Friends? One has a son in Zambia who I have not yet met. Holding another friend’s tiny baby in Lebanon a couple of times was the extent of my experience. I had a few parenting books. But they only briefly covered twins if at all. But we were together, The four of us. That was our main source of strength. I had help from people in Chengdu of course. L and R ‘s ayis are superwomen who take care of everything for us. A friend as close as I imagine a sister can be was strong and present when I needed her most, now nursing her own baby. Another lent me lifesaving books at every stage along the way  And many others…. So I can’t really complain!

In addition to relating to other mums and dads, I found a lot of useful information and many tips on these blogs: storage of large quantities of diapers, wet wipes, food etc is a must. There was a list with the best double stroller options. There were short videos of calm mums simultaneously feeding their babies. I never figured out the tandem burping. R and L were not often on the same schedule anyway.

So even though I live in this tiny world of eating, playing, bathing, now crazy exploring and still sleepless nights, I feel like I am above water, some of time at least. My blog is an attempt at sharing some stories. Maybe a new mum or MoT will come across it and feel she can relate, find some useful information, or just have a laugh. I would be glad to contribute to that somehow.  These are stories for R and L to read one day if they want to. And if nothing else friends and family can keep up with our lives in China or wherever.

The other day I read a blog about the therapeutic effects of blogging. That did it for me, a few minutes later I signed up! Not really, but it made me realise that every time I put down my thoughts they rarely came out negative or depressive, but rather I managed to find the “funny” in things…now that I am not sinking all the time of course! It reminded me of a phrase from a song my dad often used to say to his not so smiley teenage daughter: “When you smile the whole world smiles with you….When you cry, you cry alone.”