Sunday, 25 December 2011

Christmas and this time of year in Finland

So it's that time of year again. There is no white Christmas in Helsinki this year which is especially sad in a country like Finland, because no white Christmas means a grey Christmas. This is what it looked like when I left the house last Monday at midday.

If you have never experienced the extremes of northern seasonal light differences you cannot appreciate the effect that something as simple as daylight, or lack of it, can have on your body. Growing up in Trinidad, light is something you take for granted. It is always around every day, rain or shine, all year round for twelve hours a day. In the far north there can be continuous sunlight in the summer, while in the winter the sun never rises. Luckily for me Helsinki isn’t so far north that we have such extreme daylight variances. There are daylight hours in the winter. The problem is that it can be so cloudy, especially when it is a rainy winter like this one, that you don’t see the sun.
This kind of weather can cause Seasonal Affective Disorder (SAD), or winter blues in layman’s terms. It is a condition where your brain doesn’t stop producing the sleep hormone melatonin. Normally when the sun rises in the morning your eyes, although closed, will “see” the sunlight. This stimulus will signal the brain to stop producing melatonin and you wake up. In the evening when it gets dark the opposite will happen. So guess what happens when you never see the sun? Basically your melatonin levels go through the roof and your body rhythms get mixed up.
In fact, as I write, I am sitting in from of my bright light therapy lamp. It is the only thing that keeps me going when I haven’t seen the sun for a week or more. In the autumn/winter of 2009 I became very ill with SAD. In the middle of October of that year the sun seemed to migrate to Africa with the birds or something. After two weeks without sunlight I became extremely lethargic. Even though I was extremely tired I couldn’t sleep at night. I would fall asleep at five or six in the morning and then could not wake up during the day. I started getting headaches all the time, couldn’t concentrate and had no energy to do anything. At home I literally lied on the couch all day and had to force myself to do even the bear minimum at work. I felt like I was dying. After a week of these feelings, I thought something must be seriously wrong with me, so I went to the Occupational Healthcare doctor. He asked me a few questions and when I expected him to tell me I had some terminal illness he said I had SAD. I was shocked that something as simple as sunlight could have such a profound effect on my mental and physical health. He prescribed some low dose antidepressants, which I didn’t like the idea of, but thought I would try anything at this point. Then five days later my boss bought me a bright light lamp. A bright lamp can be used for bright light therapy during the winter months to help regulate your circadian rhythms and basically prevent you from going crazy After an hour of using the lamp for thirty minutes I suddenly had a burst of energy which I had not had in weeks. I went home and cleaned my house, made dinner and went to bed at a normal time for the first time in two weeks. I threw out my antidepressants. I loved the bright lamp so much I had to buy my own. I am sure it has probably helped to prevent postnatal depression this year.
Finns will ask me “Have you been taking your vitamin D”? Or they will say “Cheer up the days will be getting longer soon”. These comments irritate the hell out of me. I am taking my bleeping vitamins but it doesn’t help! And what difference does it make if the days are longer but the sun doesn’t penetrate the clouds! I read somewhere once that people in the northern countries are more likely to have a gene which prevents you from developing SAD. Also, I guess if you live your entire life here you are used to it and it probably doesn’t affect you as much.
So I don’t think most Finns really understand how very ill I get during the winter without my bright lamp. Anyway I’m glad that I have found something so simple but so effective in my bright light lamp.
 On a happier note, yesterday we celebrated Christmas. In Finland Christmas is celebrated on the twenty-fourth not the twenty-fifth. Finns will pay their respects to their dead loved ones at the cemetery with their family and then have Christmas dinner. It sounds like a depressing concept for Christmas but it makes sense to want to spend Christmas with all your family even if they are dead.
Christmas is the most important holiday in the Finnish calendar (not Carnival like we Trinis) and the Finnish Christmas menu is extensive. Finns will have a Christmas dinner consisting of starters of smoked or salted salmon and pickled herrings (basically raw fish), salmon roe (raw fish eggs), with bread and potatoes, and a special pink salad of carrots, apples and beet root. The main course will be ham, potato casserole, carrot casserole and swede/rutabaga casserole. They also bake plum pastries and ginger bread cookies. Some people like my mother-in-law even make a ginger bread house. My mother-in-law goes all out cooking and baking for a week before Christmas. She loves Christmas and loves to have the whole family around while she decorates, cooks and bakes.
This year it is just the three of us and our dog together for Christmas. Usually we would visit my In-laws who live in BudapestHungary but as we have a three month old this year we decided to stay at home. Our Christmas dinner was a compromise of a few of my favourite Trini dishes and few of my husband’s favourite Finnish dishes. This year I tried to make the traditional Finnish Christmas potato and rutabaga casseroles. Usually when we do not go to the in-laws’ home for Christmas I simply buy them. I pimp them out in my own casserole dishes, heat them in the oven and voilá “homemade” Christmas casseroles. Suzy homemaker I am not. But as we have been trying to eat more organic foods and less chemical-laden foods I decided to try to make them myself this year. I must say, after one experimental mistake of incubating the potato casserole at a temperature perfect for bacterial growth, my other attempt went well and my casseroles were very tasty. It was just like a Finnish mother (which I guess is what I am now) would make. I was so proud of myself that I thought, “Well A! A! Look at how dis Trini making peruna and lanttulaatikko nah!” Will wonders never cease? After nine years I still sometimes stop and wonder how on earth I ended up here. It is not the most likely scenario for a little Trini girl to end up in.
Now we have way too much food to eat in one week, for which I can’t help but feel a little guilty when there are so many unfortunate people in the world. But the food will definitely not go to waste. It will be frozen and enjoyed again and again for the next two months or so. Merry Christmas everyone and to all my Trini friends, enjoy the blazing Christmas sun for me. 

Monday, 12 December 2011

Sleeping in a box, sleeping outside and other strange Finnish child rearing habits.

  While the little one sleeps - outside of course - I will take the time to write about the topic that prompted my Facebook friends to suggest I write a blog. I had posted a few pictures of my baby girl on Facebook. In one of them she was lying in a cardboard box.

I knew this might seem strange to my non Finnish friends so I wrote a caption below the picture explaining that everyone gets a box filled with things for a new baby. This includes a cardboard box with a mattress for the baby to sleep in courtesy of the state. Everyone regardless of their economic status is entitled to a box or approximately 150 euros. The worth of the box is actually more than 150 euros so it is better to take the box. You fill out the form at least two months before giving birth and the package comes in the mail before you give birth. You can have a look at the contents of the Finnish Maternity Package at this link.

 Everyone I know has taken a maternity package and the box and mattress is very handy. Even though everyone buys a crib the box is nice in the first few days after the hospital because the baby is so small it feels more cozy in the small box rather than a big crib. Also, the box is portable and can be moved from place to place around the house. As someone remarked on my Facebook page a lot of thought has been put into the maternity package to ensure you have all the basic clothes and care materials for your new baby. Which is especially helpful for poor families as anything baby usually commands a high price. And yes those are condoms you see in the picture. They are provided in order to make sure you don't cost the state any more money making babies! No just kidding. It is to make sure that people don't have an "accident" soon after the birth of their baby. Most people don't realize you can be fertile again, as soon as three months after giving birth, even if breastfeeding. I will blog about living in this social welfare state another time.

 Now for the second "crazy" parenting habit of us Finns - babies left to sleep outside even in the winter. We don't leave the baby outside in weather colder than -10 degrees Celcius (well some hard core Finns do). And we do bundle them up warmly in their winter suits and several other layers of clothes and hats inside their baby carriage. At first I myself thought "These Finnish people mad yes!". But after having a baby and seeing how well she slept when we went for walks I was converted. Now when it is nap time I bundle her up and put her outside in the baby carriage. She sleeps for 3 - 5 hours outside unlike inside where she never sleeps more than 15 - 45 minutes during the day. Many people live in apartment buildings so putting the child outside means putting them on the balcony so they are not in the street. If you live in a house, the child is in your yard, hardly a dangerous place.

 This practice seems to be a Scandinavian habit because I have heard of two women being arrested in the U.S. for leaving their babies outside. A Swedish woman left her baby outside a restaurant in Amherst, Massachusetts and a Danish woman left hers outside a cafe in New York city. Due to cultural differences someone called the police and they were arrested. The crime rate in Scandinavian countries is quite low so people don't worry about child abductions. Being from Trinidad I have a hard time talking myself into leaving my baby outside the store or restaurant in the centre of the city while I nip in for a bite. But leaving her in the yard or just outside the daycare centre is definitely safe and will help her improve her cold tolerance.

 Finns definitely seem to be more liberal and give their children a lot more freedom than we would in Trinidad or the U.S. American parents tend to hover, Trini parents tend to be strict and restrictive. Finnish children walk to school or take the bus to school by themselves from a very early age and are climbing trees and playing in the forest unsupervised. I've told my husband that I don't think I could allow my children to be playing in the forest unattended in case they should be injured. But he thinks that's the only way they will learn how to take care of themselves and is worried I will be an overprotective and stifling mother. Most of my Finnish friends' parents seem to be very hands off, allowing them to live on their own terms and hardly interfering. Not so in Trinidad. In Trinidad parents, grandparents, and relatives always have two cents to add about how you should be living your life and always want to know your business. I think it would be good to adopt some of the Finnish parenting styles. I hope to become more relaxed and not be an overprotective, overbearing and interfering mother.

Sunday, 11 December 2011

How I came to be lost in Finland

 My name is Danielle and I am a thirty-four year old female Trinidadian/Finn living in Helsinki, Finland. Today I posted new pictures of my three month old daughter on Facebook. In one of the pictures she was lying in a box so I had to add an explanation that it is standard practice in Finland. I also explained that we leave our children outside in their baby carriages to sleep even in the winter. That led to a bit of a discussion and a couple people suggested I should write a blog.

I have actually had a blog since the 90's when they weren't called blogs. It was a place on Yahoo's geocities where I kept my family and friends up to date on my life abroad. I had started it when I was studying and living in the U.S.A. I believe my last entry there was in 2005. Geocities was discontinued some time after that. Since then I have occasionally toyed with the idea of starting a blog but thought that no one would be interested. Well according to at least two of my Facebook friends people are interested. So here goes.
 I became "lost" in Finland because of my husband who is Finnish, which is one of the two main reasons foreigners end up in Finland. Foreigners get lost here either due to studying in Finland (university and trade schools are free) or because of a significant other. As wonderful as I now find Finland there honestly aren't too many reasons for foreigners to want to move here. The winter is a major deterrent, but more on that another time. When I first came here we were not married - which was a bit worrisome to my Grandmother. Finland is so progressive and liberal that I was considered a common-law spouse due to the fact that we had lived together for a minimum of two years and I was granted residence status because of it. I had met my now-husband while studying at a small Liberal Arts College in the US. There was not much more to do besides study, sports, drink and drugs in the small college town. I never did the last on the list but apparently a lot of the townsfolk's teenage children did.
 Anyway we met in August 1997 - my husband and I - and became friends. At first I was told by the college to come in September to start orientation with the American students. Then they realized I was an international student and asked me to come two weeks earlier with all the other international students which included my husband. He was from the college's Budapest, Hungary campus. It was good luck that I was sent a second letter asking me to come earlier as I am not sure if we would have become friends otherwise. Because I spent those first two weeks with the international students I ended up socialising mostly with the international students all through my college years. In the spring of 1998 we started to "go steady" and that was the beginning of my journey to Finland.
We were young and looking to experience all that college life offered so our relationship was a bit weak until the last two years or so of my stay in college. At that time my husband had already been studying in the USA for two years and working for two years. Because we still were not sure how strong our bonds were and whether we really wanted to be together for life we agreed that he would go back to Finland for a year to do his mandatory army service while I stayed in the US to do on-the-job training. We agreed to see other people, explore our options and then see where our relationship was at the end of that year.
I think that decision was the best I ever made because at the end of that year, after calling each other almost every day no matter who we had dated, we realized that there was no one else we would rather be with. So it made it so much easier for me to decide to move to Finland when he said he wanted to stay in his home country and not go back to the US. Deciding to move to Finland instead of insisting that he come back to the US was simple for me. Firstly, September 11th happened while I was still in the US so I was rethinking how safe it was to continue living there. Secondly, I didn't have any friends because all my friends were foreigners and had either gone back home or moved to New York where the opportunities are more abundant. And most importantly I had realized how in love I was. It took a year apart for me to realize that I would never find anyone as wonderful as he was.
I had never visited Finland and didn't even consider visiting before I moved. I came merely on the basis of my husband's and friend's information about the country (there was one other Finnish student at our college who is still one of my best friends here in Finland). Now when I look back I think "What was I thinking to move to a country with no prior personal experience of it?!" I would recommend to any one else thinking of moving to another country to visit before moving. I only started to become frightened the day I left Washington DC on a plane to Helsinki. My husband still remembers how scared I looked when I landed. But luckily for me I made lots of friends through my husband, work and my university studies. Also, I found a job quite quickly and easily after moving to Finland. So everything worked out well for me and I am still here.
 I have adjusted well. I have both Finnish and international friends. I can speak Finnish, all be it with lots of grammatical errors. I love the sauna, koskenkorva (Finnish liquor) and cross country skiing. Everyone in the neighbourhood stops to talk to me as I am the only black person they see cross country skiing in our neighbourhood. As of 2009 I became a Finnish citizen. I consider myself Trinidadian but also Finnish. And yes I put my baby to sleep outside in her baby carriage even in the winter, but that's another story for another time.