ieh21

I don't go around discussing my sex life (I have none so it would be a short conversation! hahahah... so sad...) However, I am now replacing our mattress. This was the mattress which witnessed our entire relationship. It never dawned on me how intimate an item a mattress is. Witness to everything, really. The first time, the many many times of the "young people in love" phase, the lazy naps listening to RadioLab, two children created, a lot of cuddling ("adopting the sleeping position!" we used to warn each other), a lot of conspiratorial whispering late in the night, a lot of our first newborn sleeping between us, the lengthy discussions of our fears related to his diagnosis, the end of sharing it because his pain and cough and my pregnancy made it impossible for anyone to sleep. Now it'll be gone. The positive is that I will finally sleep comfortably again (this change is wayyy overdue). But I will be irrationally sad to see it go.

I am now chronically late. I was the most punctual person in the world, but when widowhood and dealing with two small children hit, I started letting that slip and I haven't been able to redress it yet. I developed a habit late in my DH's life (I think it still counts!), the last week of his life, I wasn't a widow, but it was very much right before (!) He was in the hospital and constantly texting and emailing me. I was, up until that week, the person you could never reach because I never checked my phone and half the time didn't know where it was. That week converted me to iPhone addict status, constantly checking and responding even when I am up at 2AM to go to the washroom. And I haven't been able to get rid of that habit.

I so totally understand what you're talking about. My business partner will discuss things at length with me and then the next day, come in with extra insight, usually helpful. And it's from hashing things out with her husband the night before. I feel like my creativity for strategy has slowed because a lot of it came from the back and forth I used to have. Plus sometimes, with the kids, with the house, as you say, I get stuck in my loop. I spent hours wondering if I should buy a Casper mattress. Hours. Eventually I had to reach out to an acquaintance who I thought could advise me in e-commerce, the only person I know who might be open to the idea of buying a mattress sight-unseen. I'm sure he thought it was a weird question, why on earth would I call him about a mattress, but it was so helpful to get out of my loop. We find ways, there are solutions, but it's no longer simple.

Very nice that despite whatever difficulties you face, with life as new parents and with coupledom, he understood your basic need for recognition of that small moment in your head.

I'm very late to answer and it seems like you've found your own answers. Still, here's my own experience for what it's worth! I've had a nanny for the past 7 years. The first one we found was through the website Greataupair.com This works best for searching for someone who will be live-in but also gave us some leads for people who lived in our city and could live-out. It's great because it's simple to use, you can do a search and do some initial sifting rapidly. A friend of mine used it twice to hire Brazilian nannies and liked his experience. Our experience was less positive but it had nothing to do with the website. We also used Craigslist, which didn't end up being very useful. Tons of people answered, most weren't close to meeting the qualifications we required (I'm not talking looking for someone with 3 PhDs and fluent in some obscure Japanese dialect, I'm talking "available to work 7AM-6PM" and having people answer that they would love the job and does it matter than they can't work until 10AM.) We also sifted the Craigslist adds but that wasn't super helpful either. However, overall, I'm glad we went down that road because it helped us figure out what we wanted and it helped us get a reality check on what kinds of candidates to expect. We did find one person who was amazing, except she quit for a better paying post three days after starting, leaving my DH to deal with the consequences without notice (I was out of town.) That experience is what convinced us to go through an agency. Their main downside in our mind was that they cost upfront cash. We worked with an agency that places Fillipinas to work as live-in or live-out nannies. It was amazing. We gave specific criteria, they returned with 6 people to interview. We picked one, liked her a lot and when she left after a few weeks to go visit her sister (!), we called them back and they sent another 6 candidates. By that time we were super good at picking good matches for our family. So we offered one of them a job an hour after she left the interview and she's been with us since 2010. She in turn has been very good at helping some of my friends find help and she never leaves on holiday without getting one of her friends to cover for me. She is exceptional. The first nanny, who we ended up firing, was actually not a bad nanny. We learned from that experience that you have to be super clear about your expectations and you have to give yourself some time to adjust to the idea that there's a stranger making decisions regarding your child without your constant input. Sure, you give guidelines and rules, but at the end of the day, unless you want to answer questions all day long, you have to accept that another adult may do things differently than you would. I'm not trying to be snarky about it, but it takes time to adjust and we needed to be a bit patient with ourselves (as opposed to projecting our own discomfort on her and firing her the minute she did something that we felt wasn't perfect). We also learned that we had to identify those key things that are crucial and focus on them, making sure that the nanny was meeting our expectations in specific areas that were not negotiable. Or else you drive yourself nuts fretting about every single thing. On the other hand, what we learned that was most important is that you can never fire someone early enough. Once things started to go badly, we hesitated. We argued amongst ourselves about the best way to handle things. We sat her down and tried to get her to change, tried to explain what was going wrong and what we expected. We negotiated with her on points she felt weren't working. We let it go for months until I finally agreed with DH to let her go. I think it was the happiest day of his life. My current nanny is fantastic because she does a lot more than take care of the children. I was hesitant at first because she has her own child, and it did mean at first when the child was little that I had to accommodate HER childcare needs (like when her child was sick, my children were left without a nanny for a day or two.) But that passed as her child got older, and her having a child was actually a big plus because she knows what it's about. And she knows that she has to be reliable since she herself understands the consequences of flaky childcare providers. In the end, our two families are quite close, the children play with one another all the time and her husband sometimes helps me out. I've given her over time a lot of leeway to manage the household and flexibility to deal with her own life. In return, she's given me a lot of extra hours and her own flexibility to deal with my life (I'm particularly bad at being home on time, and I am crap at managing my own calendar, so she often gets the day-before "oh my god, can you babysit tomorrow night, I have a work thing?"). The basic lesson there is that as trust grows, you can come to rely on the person very much and if you form a strong bond, that person can become useful in essential ways that were not part of the original plan.

The weirdest I got was from a man who lives across the border from me. He lives in a city about 45 mins drive, but in the US and I'm in Canada. He reached out to me and I politely said "you sound like a great guy, but I think you live a little bit too far from me for it to be practical". He responded "I don't know if you've looked at a map, but it's only a 45 mins drive". I thought really? You can't see how 45 mins PLUS A BORDER CROSSING might be a tad inconvenient??

I find when I do reach out, I'm kind of the Ghost of Things to Come, and generally people do not feel super comfortable talking to me. At first anyway. Eventually they realise that it's nice to talk to someone who understands the exact situation, and right about the time where they become exhausted from hearing how they have to remain positive, they reach out to me to vent. What I always find strange is the few times that I suggested this site to other young widows (sadly a couple of women I know have joined our ranks in recent years), no one seems to be interested. I keep thinking "if you only tried, this would be SO helpful. I promise." I guess it doesn't come naturally to everyone to grieve through internet posting...

On a recent trip, I asked my daughters to "allow" me to go to my favourite store for 20 mins. The youngest complained and the eldest told her "look, maman has been really nice to us finding cool things to do all week, so now it's time she does something for herself without us complaining." She is 7 and amazingly emotionally intelligent. The youngest, who is four and regularly asks to be carried on the one-block walk to synagogue, promised she didnt need a stroller for this vacation. And man, she walked everywhere with no complaints, slowly but surely saying proudly every time "I am four, I am a big girl and I can walk!"