As the days start to become longer again, my thoughts turn naturally to the warmer days that lie ahead. It’s so exciting to see even a twinge of daylight at 5 pm. Some days it’s possible to get away with a lighter jacket or no gloves. Other days is feels positively balmy and it’s possible to open a few windows for an hour or two.
Winter wears on all of us but all the more so if you are struggling with depression. When you have little ones at home too, the December-January-February trio can seem to drag on endlessly. In our household, the herald of these more difficult months was always the Fall time change. I recall that one of my children seemed incapable of adapting to this change in the hours of light - and hours of sleep, correspondingly - for a few years running as a toddler and preschooler. So instead of waking up at 6 am, I was up and rolling at 5 am. All winter long. As I wandered around the house in midwinter, early morning darkness, I would long for that distant late April morning when I would once again awaken to daylight. Starting the day in the dark just seemed, for me, to make the day seem all that much longer.
The surge in colds and other viruses in the winter also took a toll on me. It seemed like everyone in the household would just about get over one thing and then, poof, the next bug had silently descended upon an unlucky someone. The frequent visits to the pediatrician had a familiar pattern: trying to manage the crew in the waiting room filled with others with unknown illness, continuing to wait in the tiny examining room with ever increasing impatience, and then, once help finally arrived, hearing the fateful words - “It’s a virus, rest and lots of fluids”- unless this was at least a second, or possibly a third, trek to the doctor with the same complaints.
Occasionally, we would progress to the flavored bottles of amoxicillin lined up in the refrigerator. One of my children had a period when she would only take medication in bubble gum flavor. This somehow smelled, to me, like a noxious form of artificial banana when paired with the “natural” amoxicillin scent. I was never even remotely tempted to actually taste what was inside that little bottle. Thankfully, my daughter was less repulsed than I. By making use of the lovely artificial flavors and numbing her mouth with an ice cube tucked into a paper towel immediately before making the entry attempt, I was able to get pretty much whatever I needed into her.
By Spring I recall longing for not single, happenstance afternoons when the kids could play outside, but stretches of days and weeks when we did not have to be trapped in the house together or holed up with play date friends at an indoor play venue in an effort to get out of the house. Avoiding these germ factories as much as possible became a goal of mine in December-January-February. If the temperature was in the 40’s and it wasn’t actively snowing or raining, I would everyone bundle up in all those coats, hats and mittens that I had collected and stored away like a squirrel. We would venture outside. Even if we were only able to muster a short walk down the block, taking a solid swing at exercising made me feel more content once we were back inside together.
As a toddler and preschooler mom, I found that exercise in the fresh air was a critical component of that other thing so very necessary for my sanity: a night with a solid stretch of at least four or five hours of sleep. In my humble opinion, exercise and fresh air – even if it’s a bit nippy – is the secret to making the whole daily machine run smoothly for the under-five set – and maybe, for that matter, all of us.