A Peek at London

One reason I opted to travel with Darren to Paris was that we would take the train to London, through the Chunnel. I've always thought that sounded so cool, and I get the shivers thinking about a tunnel under something as deep and wide as the English Channel. So I was a bit disappointed by how underwhelming it was from the train. Just half an hour of nothing to see out the windows. Bummer. Maybe I'll get another chance sometime to see more of it.

London is huge! Huge, busy, fast. Yikes. My family did a big road trip when I was 16, and I think we spent one day in New York. I know I barely saw it, but London seemed even bigger. Biggest city in Europe, I think. With my travel-weary baby, I had no illusions of seeing much, so I was actually really please with all we did, squeezed in between naps.

Telephone booth, because it's bright red, and really good hot chocolate, not very sweet

It helped that our hotel was right next to Buckingham Palace! Pretty amazing. That put Hyde Park, Westminster Abbey, Big Ben, and the Parliament Building all within a 5 minute walk or so.

Just around the corner from our hotel, you can see Westminster, Big Ben, the London Eye, and a double decker bus!

Our first day we walked around Buckingham Palace. I think we got to the front gates right after the changing of the guard, because tourists were swarming like flies on roadkill. Crowds of people kind of give me the heebie-jeebies, so we didn't stay too long. We walked past St. James Park, and then through Hyde Park. It's startling to have so much green space in the middle of such a crowded city. Very refreshing.

Speaker's Corner, at Hyde Park

The Serpentine, at Hyde Park

Herrod's was adjacent to Hyde Park, and I thought we'd stop in for a peek. It was terrifying! The ground floor has a grim army of men and women in black, prepared to attack with perfume and cosmetics. The women's fashion floor looked like it was prepared for a really expensive Halloween, and the children's floor was the worst. Big screens showing child models on the runway, dressed up like adult models. You know, dramatic make-up and hair, clothes from the Capitol in the Hunger Games, pouty, icy expressions. So, maybe haute couture isn't really my thing. I was also a little tired by this point, so we took one of those double decker red buses back to the hotel.

Our second day, I toured Westminster Abbey in the morning. What an amazing structure! So much history! It was really beautiful. Grant was napping in his stroller, which made it difficult for me to get into many of the little chapels along the side. But everything I could see was so beautiful. And they had a really nice audio tour included with admission. I thought they did a really nice, friendly, yet tactful job of sharing their faith as well as the beautiful building. That was probably the highlight of our visit to me.

After Westminster, I attempted to take a bus to St. Paul's Cathedral. I did manage to get on the bus, however, I quickly discovered that mine was not the only stroller. There were 3 other strollers, not collapsed, and at least a dozen large suitcases. Apparently that bus was heading for an airport. We really didn't fit, I was getting car sick, and Grant was fussing. So we got off, and resorted to our feet.

Steps of St. Paul's

St. Paul's is the cathedral from Mary Poppins! That was cool. We sat on the steps with a bunch of other people, ate our lunch, and attempted to feed the birds. There actually were pigeons there when we sat down, but Grant made a bunch of noise and scared them away. Oh well. Hopefully the "saints and apostles" weren't terribly disappointed as they looked down.

St. Paul's, looking up from the Millennium Bridge

From St. Paul's, we crossed the London Millennium Footbridge to see Shakespeare's Globe Theatre.

Then London Bridge,

Chasing a pigeon, with London Bridge, and a funky modern building, in the background

And the Tower of London, at which point we got caught in a thunderstorm. We found a nice covered courtyard outside an office building, and I tried to play catch with Grant by rolling a mandarin orange to him. He had other ideas.

I was ready to try a bus again, but Grant fell asleep, and I ended up walking along the Thames all the way back to our hotel. It was a really nice walk, pretty path and all that, but I ended up walking nearly ten miles that day!




22 Hours in Paris

One of the biggest challenges for me about this trip is the limitations on planning ahead. We're following Darren around, so we're really dependent on his schedule. I might have chosen to travel separately from him if I had known the visit to Paris would be so short. Because, let's face it, the one-year-old contingent is kind of attached to his routines and nap schedule. But we had a really good time, and I ended up being glad that we came.

Baby Grant tearing up newspaper with a 3-year-old Japanese boy on the train to Paris.

Visiting Paris with an 11-month-old in September is quite different from visiting Paris with a 8-week-old embryo in February. No surprises there! Our hotel was once again close to the Gare du Nord, but I opted not to experience the Metro with a stroller. Instead I chose the Marais neighborhood as our destination, and we walked. Long walks allowed Grant to nap a little, and I got to see more of the city.

Grant eating the best falafel I've ever had, on the Rue de Rosiers (Jewish quarter)

 

The absolute best thing about traveling with a baby is the opportunity to mingle with people just living their lives. If I sat down in a park like this without the baby, it would be kind of creepy. Instead, I really wished that I knew more than hello, good-bye, and thank you in French. The lucky kids had no problem with a language barrier, and it wasn't too hard to understand when another mom pointed out to me that my kid was eating sand.

My chosen Parisian moments were enjoying dinner in a brasserie (while our last trip included several brasserie's, I can't say I enjoyed them, which was so sad!) and buying scarves. I hardly ever wear scarves, but it seemed the thing to do!

Grant's first baguette

Utrecht

While Nijmegen is a nice town, and the countryside where our hotel is located is pretty, Darren thought I should get a chance to see an older Dutch city, or at least a city with old Dutch architecture. Nijmegen is actually the oldest city in the Netherlands, but it was almost completely destroyed in WWII. We picked Utrecht for the canals and the architecture. It was also en route to Rotterdam, where we would be taking a train to Paris the next day.

We stayed in a hobbit hole! Well, a hobbit hole made of stone on the bank of the Old Canal. I didn't take pictures, so these are from the hotel's website.

 

Isn't it fun?! It used to be storage when the canals were used for transporting goods. Now it is relatively cheap housing. Although Tolkien may protest, I'm pretty sure hobbit tunnels are similarly damp and smell slightly of mildew. Some rather bohemian college students lived next door, which added to the atmosphere.

We enjoyed walking through town, but Baby Grant's brains may be slightly scrambled after bumping along the cobblestones in his "buggy". Even the shock-absorbing powers of B.O.B. weren't quite enough to combat these old roads!

Arrived in Nijmegen

When Darren's company decided that they needed him in Europe for a month, Baby Grant and I decided that we needed to tag along! We couldn't leave while my sister Katie and her kids were visiting. That time was already too short and too precious. So we let Darren go on his own, but a week later, we have caught up with him!

We are in Nijmegen, in the Netherlands, where Darren's company is headquartered. Grant and I arrived on Thursday evening. There are no pictures of this. You don't actually want pictures of this. My most determined attempts at packing light were completely foiled by the absolute necessity of a stroller and a car seat. The baby, the suitcase and the carry-on, no problem. But add the stroller and the car seat, and the narrow stairs up the train, and we were providing people with an opportunity for, um,  service! People really were quite nice, and it wasn't too bad getting on the train. I thought something similar would happen when we got off, but at the stop before ours, almost everyone left our train car. Everyone except a wizened, little old man who looked like he weighed about as much as my suitcase. Yep. Fortunately, it was the last stop, and I had time to make several trips onto the train to get everything off. It wasn't just because I had missed Darren's company that I was so very, very glad to see him at the train station! His co-worker, Volmar, picked us up and took us to our hotel.

The goal for Friday was to get enough sleep, so all we did was walk to Darren's office and meet more of his coworkers. They were very nice, but busy, so we kept our visit short, and went back to the hotel to sleep more.

Jet lag wasn't nearly as bad as I had imagined it might be! I had packed a bag with toys and snacks in case we had to go out in the hall so that Darren could sleep, but Grant slept as well as he has been at home. Granted, that isn't saying much, but he went back to sleep quickly each time he woke up. I had hoped that I would sleep on the flight, since it was a night flight, but Grant needed a lot of help to stay asleep, in spite of having two seats all to himself!!! I doubt I was the only one on the plane green with jealousy! But Grant took the short night, and short day without skipping a beat. The first evening was the only really uncomfortable part for me too. So I may try a night flight again, should the opportunity present itself.

Darren had Saturday off, so we decided to check out the neighboring city of Arnhem and the Open Air Museum. It seems that there are several of these here, and we really enjoyed it. They have moved historic buildings, like farmhouses and windmills to a large plot of land. A section is even arranged like a small old-fashioned town. There were blacksmiths, wagon-makers, dairies, millers, and anything you could think of. There was also an amazing area for kids to play with a zip line and a fantastic climbing structure. We wished we had more time, but we all slept late, and it closed fairly early. We had a delightful dinner in Arnhem in a square with lots of restaurants, flowers, trees, and a man playing an accordion. I couldn't take a picture that captured the atmosphere.

And today we enjoyed going to church in Nijmegen. It's a fairly small branch, with mostly older people, but they were so welcoming. Darren met a very friendly couple, Nancy and Marcel, who offered to give us a ride. They helped us find a quiet, dark room where Grant took a nice long nap, and invited us to stay for the potluck. It is such a treat to sample traditional foods made by families instead of restaurant food, although that has been very good. We had a delicious leek soup, casseroles made with sausage, sauerkraut, potatoes, and cheese, and several little sausage roll things. We also talked to a lovely little Polish lady, who said my last name sounded like it might be Tyminski (with a little mark over the n). It would be nice to have a lead on my dad's family history in Poland.

Grant really likes Dutch pancakes. So do I! They are mostly savory, with leeks, mushrooms, ham, cheese, and all sorts of tasty things mixed into the batter. And the pancake shops are open for lunch and dinner, but not breakfast.

Memories

I had a realization about two months ago. I was struggling with frequently replaying in my mind those horrible minutes of holding Brooke while she couldn't breathe, and nothing I could do was helping. Those were awful, traumatizing minutes that I will never be able to forget.

I thought in those first months after she died that replaying those minutes in my mind was part of processing, and that after thinking about it enough, it would finally fade. But it actually seemed to be getting worse. I would sit on the couch for hours, feeling nauseous because I was pregnant, and just replaying those horrible memories in my mind, over and over. Eventually I realized that I wasn't processing, I was wallowing. And I tried to stop. But the memory of her choking, and how her body felt in my arms, trying so hard to cough and breathe, would catch me in all sorts of random times and places, and I would be pulled back into that nightmare.

What finally broke that pattern was praying, and God leading me to the realization that by choosing to replay the memory of her choking, I was losing my other sweet memories of Brooke. I was losing the memory of her sitting in my lap in the rocking chair while we read stories. The way her little body felt when I lifted her, warm and slippery, out of the bathtub. The sweet, sweaty baby smell of her after playing in the sunshine. The sound she would make when she wanted to go down to the garden to pick more berries. We couldn't capture all those memories on a camera, especially the smells. It took a long time to throw her almost empty shampoo bottle away, because I would open it in the shower, close my eyes, and remember what her soft little head smelled like. Eventually I did toss that empty bottle, but I don't want to lose that memory.

Memories are funny things. I'm really not sure which of my memories, especially of childhood, are real memories, and which are memories I have created from the stories I've heard. The more a story is told, or the more I reflect on a memory, the more real, vivid, detailed and powerful it becomes. And I was choosing to let the memory of her choking become even bigger than it was, while all my other precious memories were fading.

No one gets through life without experiencing pain and trauma. Those experiences, and how we respond to them, shape who we become. I've been learning to recognize the results of these refining fires in the eyes of people I know. I can see some of the purity and strength of the soul who has held the hand of God while walking this type of road. But I also have more compassion for those I have met who haven't been able to let go of the hurts they have experienced. It is hard to do. Those dark memories can overwhelm everything else. But I believe that God is there with outstretched arms, to guide and strengthen anyone who reaches out to Him. Because He is doing that for me. He's helping me to remember the many moments of sweetness, joy and love, and teaching me that those moments of choking were just Brooke dying. They weren't how she lived, and they aren't part of what she is experiencing now, and they aren't part of what we'll have together in eternity. Dying is a necessary part of life, and this earth life is just a part of the great plan our Heavenly Father has for us.

The pain of losing Brooke is now part of who I am. And that particular refining fire is a long way from burning out. I still have nights when its hard to fall asleep, and I pull up the memory of her choking, and then move into thinking about all the ways I expected this summer to be different, if Brooke was with me. How much she would have enjoyed the splash park, how we would have enjoyed having her at Darren's big family reunion. How she might have reacted to my sister's new baby. I'm still mourning.

But I'm also remembering. And when that dark memory of Brooke choking starts to play in my mind, I pull up a memory of her big, bright, trusting blue eyes as she runs to me to show me her doll, or the sound of her giggles coming from the bedroom as Darren flips her around, or the smell of soft baby skin as I would kiss her neck, or the feel of her body sitting on my hip. There is too much that is sweet and beautiful that I never want to forget.

My Denial

Yesterday I went with a friend to try out a yoga class at her gym. I was having a rough day, and feeling weepy and unstable. The class was fine, but at the end, like in most yoga classes I have done, they give you a few minutes to lay on your back. You're supposed to breathe into your body, relax, and focus your mind on your breath and being in the present. I guess it caught me off guard. Normally I really like that part. It's the dessert. But normally I like "being in the present". Not right now. I'm really uncomfortable with the present. In the present I am empty, lost and broken. The huge, ugly, awful sobs were coming, and while I need to let those out sometimes, it wasn't in that room packed with strangers. So my mind dropped "the present" like a hot potato, and ran to hide back in it's happy place, the past.

Yep, the past is my comfort right now, and I'm spending a lot of time there. Maybe it is because babies grow so fast, that you're always saying goodbye to a phase almost as soon as it appears, but it isn't painful to look at pictures and videos, even from just a few months ago. I can reflect on those memories and just feel the pure joy of holding her, or watching her. In the past, I am full of purpose and happiness. I have worries, things I'm working on, and things I don't have figured out, but I know that I'm doing the most important things, especially being Brooke's mom.

So it occurred to me that that is my form of denial. The social worker at the hospital gave us some information about grieving, and I read through most of it. But in the hospital, we were in a very protected, sacred cocoon of grace. Heavenly Father knew we needed it then, but He also knows that He needed to set us back on our own legs to grieve. I still don't feel that He has left me alone. It's more like He is giving me some space to work on this so that I can grow the way I need to. But it is also comforting to know that denial is normal. I didn't understand how someone could really be in denial. I know that Brooke is dead. Believe me, I've thought through all that quite a lot. But I'm kind of enjoying this stage of denial. I could stay here a long time with my memories of Brooke.

Choking Hazards

I have noticed that many of the views of my blog are coming from a forum thread where someone shared our story as part of their fears about their children choking. Since it is something I have also been thinking about a lot, I thought I would write it down. It is a bit distressing to write, and probably distressing to read also. Don't read it if you think it will just make you overly anxious. But maybe it will help someone be better prepared.

I have taken CPR and First Aid classes that included infants and children three times that I can remember. The most recent was when I was pregnant with Brooke. I knew choking was a very real risk, and I paid attention. Nonetheless, I'm sure I did several things wrong when Brooke inhaled that bean. I'm sharing because it helps me process, and I hope that it can help others be prepared. But please don't rely on this. Take a Red Cross class, and make sure you really get to practice on the baby manikins  I don't remember doing that, at least in the most recent class.

I got my information from babycenter.com. Note that this is for kids over 12 months, infants are different.

1) Apparently I should have let Brooke keep coughing at the beginning. She might have been more effective at clearing the bean without my interference. I maybe watched her cough for 10 seconds, but it was very distressing because she obviously was having a very difficult time getting air.

2) When I hit her back, I don't think I had her head angled slightly upside down like you are supposed to do for infants. That was my intention, but I was too upset. However, I did have her leaning forward, like it says to do for a child. Brooke sort of seemed in between, and she was definitely small enough for me to hold like a baby.

3) I didn't hit her back hard enough, and I only hit her twice, not five times.

4) I totally didn't know what I was doing with the Heimlich, or chest thrusts. I don't think my hands were in the right place and I don't think I did it hard enough. However, she was completely not getting any air when I started, and she was getting a little air afterwards.

I can dwell on the things I did wrong, and the terror of those short minutes, and really torture myself. But I have been choosing to focus on messages of peace that the Lord has been providing me. My mom shared with me D&C 98:1 "Verily I say unto you my friends, fear not, let your hearts be comforted; yea, rejoice evermore, and in everything give thanks." Note that it is our choice to let our hearts be comforted. I don't believe that it is healing for me to think overly much on the things I can't change. But I do want to learn from my mistakes. I intend to take the Adult and Infant CPR and First Aid course soon.

I'm a bit concerned that I am going to become neurotic about choking hazards. It is really scary to think about all the things that a kid can choke on. I can see myself becoming completely unreasonable about it. Of course I'm going to be more careful, but I also hope that I don't let my fears get in the way of living life fully and joyfully. I want any future children that the Lord may bless us with to be able to play in gravel, pick blueberries, and eat apple slices, all without being traumatized by me scooping them up and constantly swiping their mouths for contraband.