Guest Author: Cambrie

I don't love to write, but I love Lev. So, here goes.

Becoming a parent is one of the best things--if not THE best thing--in my life. (Marrying Bryce was pretty great, too.) I did NOT anticipate how I would love it. I had a life list of things to check off and it was just an item on the list. However, that is not what happened. From the moment that I held Lev in the hospital (you know, after they sewed me back up), I was never the same. I love him dearly. Whatever he does is the most adorable thing or the most interesting thing or the funniest thing or the best thing I have ever seen. I mean, look at this kid. How cute is he! Even with that strange pattern of hair loss.

He adds so much meaning and light into our lives. I haven't slept more than five hours at one time since he was born but I don't even care. I love sleep but I love Lev more.

Let's be real. I get frustrated and I need time to myself. I do. And luckily, I have a great partner who lets me take that time so I can come back a better parent.

We always talked about how people who have kids always say: "You gotta have kids" or "It's hard but it's worth it." We rolled our eyes. Don't they HAVE to say that since there's no going back? Now I am here and I finally get it. They meant it. And let me just give you one piece of advice: you gotta have kids.

Just Some Lev Cuteness

 Lev is just so cute we need an outlet. 

He thought our weekly goals were hilarious, especially when I made that ooo sound. 

Crazy how much he has grown since he was born. And how much hair he has lost. Just like his old man.

He and his mom were tired so I sat up and watched them nap. He was pretty happy to get cuddles with his nap.

And finally just some random pictures...

Some Swiss Magic

With a newborn it becomes difficult to get out of the house, even in Switzerland. Add the coronavirus pandemic on top of that and it's pretty brutal. But the allure of the countryside is too strong at times, even for those hurdles. Here are a few random excursions we have taken to keep sane.

Kleine Scheidegg

Grindelwald to Lauterbrunnen on the train

Running at the Gurten, Bern's local hilltop escape

Paragliding near Thun with Sridar (Para). Flying felt strangely natural. I thought it would feel dangerous, but it felt just like all those dreams I have where I can float if I just focus hard enough. Very tempted to get certified.

The launch. This was one of the coolest experiences I've had here.

We took a trip to Brig just to get out of the house. It was a quick hour train ride. 

Train to Brig

Brig was abandoned due to corona restrictions (we also went on a weekday). 

 

Paternity Leave - a concept as foreign as affordable healthcare

I took six weeks off when Lev was born to learn how to keep him alive (and, as it turns out, how to keep my wife and me alive). Going into the six weeks I had thoughts like "Oh sure it will be rough, but we'll be able to travel around a bit and see things. I mean, he'll sleep like 16 hours a day. That's money in the bank right?" Oh how young and foolish I was. 

In reality we spent the entire six weeks right here in Bern. With a raging pandemic floating around we decided the world is no place for a newborn. We still went for a walk every day to maintain our sanity (I think we maintained it. I guess there's no way to know).

 

Lev goes full starfish to survive the winter walks

Frosted street lamps

We did take one small outing to nearby Thun, and seeing the mountains again felt pretty great.  

Statue of Odysseus in Thun overlooking the Alps

Besides that one trip though I kept myself sane by running as much as I could find time for (slash-as often as I could force myself into the frozen ice of the outside world). I really enjoy where I live. There is a trail 2 minutes from my door and it stretches all along the Aare. That is pretty much the only trail, but I muddle on. 

I'm up to 40 miles/week right now keeping at around a 7 min/mile pace. That's nothing to write home about (or, since I'm writing it here, is it?), but it is a nice comfortable pace. I would really like to PR in the marathon this year, and I think building up a solid base of mileage (kilometers since we're in Europe) will help me get there. 

Covered bridge when you run north along the river

Let's be honest, this little rapscallion took up 99% of our time 

 

And just like that (click) it all changes

 The birth of my son shelled me and softened me. Before you start your tirade of how much harder it was for Cambrie:

    1) I know.
    2) I am invested in this. We're in this together.
    3) Don't minimize the role of a partner. It doesn't help.

Now you can go ahead with your tirade, I'll listen.

Here were some thoughts I had along with a bit of a journal entry.
9 months (and one week) in the making but he was finally on his way Monday morning at 5am. We only had a few hours of sleep that night (what fools we were then. What children! Throwing away precious sleep like some piece of over-burnt toast. Cherish that sleep-toast past-Bryce. Cherish it like the sweet, scarce commodity that it is!). The contractions slowly increased in intensity and regularity until 11am when we decided to go to the hospital. 

Cambrie is tough. 

I had my phone ready to call a taxi and Cambrie stopped me. 

"I want to take the bus."

"Excuse me, did you say you want to take the bus while you're in LABOR?"

"The contractions are less painful when I stand."

"..."

So we took the bus.

At the hospital she went through contractions until two. The midwife (really great people, midwives) and I did our best to support her and try every possible position. This went on every few minutes or so until 2 when it was time to start pushing. The midwife's shift ended and a couple more came to take over. That's when you know this is taking too long.

She pushed for 1.5 hours. Tears poured down her reddened face between contractions. She did all of this with no medication. 

Finally it was determined that the baby was in the wrong position and couldn't be corrected. After all her struggle, a c-section was strongly recommended.

"A c-section was sweet release after what I went through" -Cambrie
I sat near her and held her hand in the operating room. By this time they had stopped the contractions and numbed her lower half. She was splayed on the operating table in such a manner that the verse in John "Marvel not that I said unto thee, ye must be born again". At that instant there was more in those words than I had ever seen. Suffering and pain of both parties is inescapable in the beginning of life.

My mind was flooded with emotions and fears, but in the middle of these hard times life becomes much clearer somehow. The most important things in the world to me were right here. I prayed to God that he would watch over my wife and child.

I watched as the doctors cut open my wife and pulled my son from her. The first time I held him in my arms there was an immediate change in me. I can't explain it except that I guess biologically this is what I am meant to do. To protect him and love him. I held him in my right hand and held Cambrie's now violently trembling hand with my left. 

I watched as the doctors massaged her organs and put them back inside her body. It is still insane to me that a human can have that happen to them. That she was cut open, another human was pulled out, then she was stapled back together.

After the surgery we all went back to our room and the whirlwind continued. Tests, cuddles, more tests, skin-to-skin, instructions on how to keep him alive. That's basically how the next several days went. We had never been happier, more exhausted, more in pain (Cambrie), or more overwhelmed before.

The hospital is situated across the Aare river from our house with a beautiful view of Bern. I couldn't stop taking pictures of the view, of my new son. I felt so cliché and predictable doing it, but I couldn't help it. It doesn't often snow in Bern, but it seemed like the clouds opened up and snow drifted down just for our new little boy.

Thoughts on scarcity

"Not the blood, sir. But all of a man's water, ultimately, belongs to his people-to his tribe...the human body is composed of some seventy percent water by weight. A dead man, surely, no longer requires that water" -Dune, by Frank Herbert

A roommate from college challenged me to read the book in 2008. I made some dismissive gesture with one of my eyebrows (especially after seeing a clip from the 1984 movie). Now, 12 years later I finally took the challenge. The book brings home some hard truths (it's also kind of strange, but that's neither here nor there). 

Here on planet Earth we face Dune's problem. 790 Million People. That is 1 in 10 people who don't have consistent access to clean water. Such a basic aspect of life that I so often take for granted. The last time I was truly thirsty is actually documented in this blog. I complained incessantly and have rarely felt so miserable. 

I can't help thinking about how much excess I have without necessarily appreciating it. How much of that excess should I morally/ethically keep for myself? If I believe that every human is equal (I think I do), then when do I start acting like I believe that? At what point am I comfortable enough with my life that I start reaching outside my own bubble? Looking beyond those right in front of my own face?

In the later stages of Cambrie's pregnancy, and with the ever-present pandemic lurking in the shadows of my thoughts I have not travelled around Switzerland as much. But that has not stopped me from trying to get to know the city I live in. Bern has so many things. One is water. There are 100+ fountains scattered around the city. Think of it. 1 in 10 people in the world don't have access to clean water, yet here it is pouring out of fountains and down channels in the street. Clean, cold, potable water. 

Here are a few of them:

This one is right outside my house. Yes, that's a tiny bear with a gun. Switzerland.

Out of these the most disturbing is perhaps the third picture. One of a man eating babies. Again, Switzerland.

Beyond the fountains, on the backdrop of the city runs the river Aare. The life of this city. Ask a Bernese citizen about the Aare and a dreamy look sweeps across their face. Tradition pulls people into the water in the summers to float down the river. 

This is along my favorite run near my house:

This is comes out as a jumbled mess of my thoughts on scarcity as I experience it (or rather, don't experience it). What I'm trying to get at is that I realize that I live in a bubble. Not just living in a place with access to water, but having access to health care, a stable job in the middle of a worldwide pandemic that has torn the lives of millions to tiny shreds of worry. I want to commit myself to looking farther than 2 inches from my nose. Looking past the Netflix lineup for the month. 

As I write this at my desk, I look outside my window. Snow is falling on the Berner Munster. A homeless woman drags her cart to the doors of the church many days and sits under the awning. Someone needs help so close to me I could yell to her, Ebenezer Scrooge style. But I don't know the German word for 'goose'. Fear continues to hold me back. 

Fear is the mind-killer. -Dune, by Frank Herbert
 

Alles Gute zum Geburtstag: A birthday for the ages

I turned 34 last week. My favorite thing to do on my birthday the last few years is to just be in nature, reconnect with who I am, who I want to be. Try to spot what is going right and what is not. 

Covid 19 has defined this year. It governs every decision from how to go to the store to how to travel around. To combat the fatigue of quarantine, every once in a blue moon we try to get a little farther from home. Renting a car helped us extend the leash that has tethered us to our apartment.

Friday we went to a remote region on the Swiss section of the Tour du Mont Blanc (an ultra marathon route going through France, Italy, and Switzerland) so I could get a bit of a taste for it. Let me just say that it was oh so sweet. The trail was pretty stunning but rugged. 

Cambrie came and opted to hang out by Lac de Champex while I went for my excursion of self-discovery.

The actual trail peaks at Fenetre de l'Arpette. I was 800 meters away, but it was a bit too snowy and boulder strewn to find my path without risking breaking my leg so I shifted my plans a bit. There was a steep chute that seemed to give a similar view so I risked the scramble and was satisfied enough with what I saw to come back.

The next day we thought we would take it easy. Let me try that again, we THOUGHT we'd take it easy. We tried driving to Oeschinen lake and found out once we were there that it's a four mile round trip hike with quite a bit of vertical gain. I asked Cambrie what she wanted (you know, 8 months pregnant Cambrie) and she suggested we saunter along the trail and she would stop whenever she got tired. She did the entire thing! Hero points for her. We had great views of the valley below, even though the lake was a bit crowded.