The New Girl

Remember That One Kid I Had? Almost Two Years Ago?

He is, in most ways, the opposite of his sister. This is more common than not, I know. The second one is looking for a place to fit, after all. Where my daughter is...full of 90 degree angles, let's say, The Boy is round. And squooshy. He fits...anywhere. Snuggly.

We laugh that he is The Mayor everywhere he goes. Everyone loves The Boy. He is so, so easy to love.

He's also just easy. Period.

He's recently started to talk with real enthusiasm for the sport. Stringing three, four, even five word sentences together, with this adorable little two-beat pause in between words.

"Tank you----Mommy."

He's showing the first signs of potty interest (OH PLEASE) which culminated in him SITTING IN THE TOILET WHILE FULLY CLOTHED at the gym's kid's club. He's also started to require "Poo-pate" for his tooth brush, which, I gotta tell you, mature as I am, makes me snicker. He's car-obsessed. OBSESSED. One day, The Man and I were saying how, at his age, TLNG was crazy about Elmo. (Remember that shit?) And how The Boy has no interests and what the hell is wrong with him and what are we going to have for 2nd party decorations? And the next day, it's like some kind of little boy switch got fucking FLIPPED up in here and it's all, "START YOUR ENGINES! RACE-RACE-RACE-MOMMY-I-WINNNNNN!"

He's coordinated and swings a baseball bat like he MEANS IT. He has a little lean-to-the-side stance and EVERYTHING. Crazy. He climbs and runs and jumps and not a single person who knows us in real life can believe TLNG ended up with stitches before he did. We got a [giant monstrosity] swing set in the back yard. It's huge and I imagined that The Boy would be able to navigate it independently by next summer. At a year-and-a-half, that kid climbed the ladder, went down the slide and was able to sit straight-backed enough for a big-kid swing. He uses a scooter. He's just...pretty cool.

And here's the thing: he melts my heart. Completely.

The connection that I've had with my girl, since the minute she came out, has been crystalline--amazing. Sparkly and intense. Rock hard and indestructible. As she's gotten older, she's gotten easier in some ways and way more challenging in other ways. I fully expect this trajectory to continue. Ahem. (Send help. Or chocolate.) But there is an intensity to her, to us. Our relationship is rife--fraught--with strong emotion, with a degree of struggle. Part of it is stage. Part of it is personality style. And while I love her and really LIKE her, even admire her spirit, sometimes it's kind of hard to be her Mommy.

But my boy. Oh, my boy. I don't know how to explain it, really. If it's the product of age and stage or gender or birth order or temperamental style. Or, most likely, all of the above. He sneaked up on me. He came into the world sleeping in four hour chunks and self soothing and before I knew it, he was walking and eating and playing and snuggling. He was easy. So easy and quiet, I could all of a sudden understand how someone might forget they had a kid in the car. Started to believe people who said their kids slept through the night at 3 months, because omfg, he DID.

It took a while to feel like I really know him, I think. The volume of his personality is a little lower and it was a while before my ears could adjust to hear it. But he seeped into my bones along the way and it seems that, like his car obsession, my intense maternal love for him got flipped and all of a sudden I'm crying because one day, he's going to have whiskers and be taller than me. Our connection is there. But it's so different than that to which I was accustomed. Softer and more pliable. Looping and elastic and comfortable. And beautiful, too.

VROOOOOOOM!

Birth Story.

I had just taken my last dose of [voodoo medicine] homeopathic remedy to induce labor.  You have to take, like, six doses over 12 hours and at 9pm on September 26th, I'd finished it, told my husband (with my tongue in my cheek) that my labor was going to start aaaaaaany minute and went to curl up in the basement and watch some tv.  For the life of me I can't remember what I had on but about 5 minutes in I felt a strange, *popping* kind of kick.

And then I felt a slow, spreading warmth and thought, 'Oh, holy shit.'

Even though I was officially overdue, I hadn't packed a hospital bag.  (I had a feeling that I was going to be significantly overdue...don't ask me why.)  My daughter was in bed asleep.  My husband was upstairs on the computer.  I walked up the steps, into the bathroom, sat down on the toilet and had a fucking panic attack. 

'Um. I think my water just broke,' I yelled out to my husband, effectively passing my panic right along.

After what seemed like an hour of bumbling around, trying to figure out what to do, my brain took over and I directed The Man to call his mom while I called my midwife and started to pack a bag. 

I had yet to have a contraction.  

My midwife advised me to go to the hospital, since I was GBS positive and they needed to start the anti-biotics.  I was happy to go, as the labor with my first progressed pretty rapidly and I had some fear that I wouldn't make it on time.  (My sister had given birth to my niece and her labor was so fast that the midwife almost missed it. It, uh, was a home-birth ANYWAY but I was glad that *I* didn't have to deliver the baby.) 

Anyway.

The Man and I got into the car when my MIL got there and off we rode.  My sister was meeting me there.  (The Doula was out of town and in retrospect, it was so, SO great to have The Little Sister there. SO.)  All the way to the hospital, I thought of my daughter.  I wept for her, a little, knowing that when she woke up, her whole world would be different.  We had prepared her as well as we could, of course, but I already ached for what she was about to go through.

About a minute away from the hospital, I had my first taste of memory.  The contraction was slight and easily managed but it brought back a visceral, physical memory from deep inside my body.

'Oh yeeeeah, I remember this shit,' my body said, 'this shit huuurts.'

We got settled into the room and my sister came and the nurse was asking me questions and talking about the iv antibiotics and blah blah.  Then she asked if I'd saved the pad because she had to see if my membrane 'had really ruptured.'  She said this in a way that made me worry about whether or not I'd misinterpreted the event.  Like maybe I'd just been peeing my pants for the last 15 minutes.  She got the long ass q-tip and lo, the water had broken.  She checked me and told me that I was 2cm dilated. 

'It's going to be a LONG night for you guys,' she said, 'we're not going to see that baby until tomorrow morning.'

This was the first time that I tried to tell her that my last labor had progressed quickly.  I also tried to communicate the feedback I'd gotten from the nurses last time.  They were all, without exception, shocked at my behavior during labor.  Quiet but joking almost throughout.  I wanted both the staff and my midwife to know these things, in case it was the same this time.  The only reason that I hadn't had my daughter within 6 hours, start to finish, was because I pushed for OVER THREE HOURS (and I was still joking then, em effers.)

The nurse asked me if I wanted something for pain and I declined, telling her that unless the labor was long and unproductive, I didn't want medication.  The contractions weren't really difficult at that point.  I asked when she was going to call my midwife.  She smiled at me like I'd said something endearing.

'Oh,' she said, 'I won't be calling her for a WHILE yet.  When it gets closer I'll give her a call.'

This was about 11pm.

They came in and hung the antibiotics and I found out that my blood pressure was elevated (AGAIN) and so, I had to wear the fetal monitor OF DOOM constantly instead of intermittently and I was PISSED but RESIGNED and so I just moved whenever I felt the need to and the nurses had to come in and rearrange it and they weren't as sweet about it as the nurses at the last hospital but oh WELL, right?  SORRY, thems the BREAKS, OB nurses. She also asked me about 1229489 more times if I wanted anything for pain.  Something that doesn't bother me at all right now but at the time, made me inexplicably annoyed.  It was almost as if she'd never seen anyone like me before.  Like she thought she knew me better than I knew my own self. Like she just knew better.

My sister considered going home and then coming back later (since it was going to be so long and all) but she had a feeling that it wasn't going to be as long as the nurse thought and so she stayed.  I felt the same way but since I'm the sort who's inclined to 'Not Get My Hopes Up,' I tend toward the, 'Well, it COULD take all night, I suppose.'  

I was still joking, even though the contractions were getting more intense.  I looked around the room and I was Tweeting, my sister was texting and The Man was updating his Facebook status. Ah, technology.  At one point, the two of them (neither one a doula, obv.) were trying to time my contractions.  As the pain set in, I'd let them know and then while I'm 'Going Inside' trying to 'Breathe Deep The Giving Of Life' and all that shit, I hear them whispering to each other. Talking out the sides of their mouths, quiet-like, thinking that I can't hear them while LOST IN THE PAIN OF LABOR.

The Man: 'Are you supposed to start timing from the beginning of the contraction to the end?'

The Little Sister: 'I think so. Or. I don't know. I'm timing from the beginning until the end, you're supposed to time how long in between.'

TM: 'So, should I time from the end of one to the beginning of the next? To find out how far apart they are?'

[pause]

TLS: 'Hmm. I think so.'

Me: 'You both KNOW I can HEAR you, right?'

About 1:00 am or so, the contractions started to get more intense. I told my [crack-pot] cracker-jack team, who sat, one with a book, the other with a smart-phone, continuing to joke and loaf about, despite the dramatic increase in crampiness in my uteral region. It is a weird thing about a big experience like that, maybe, but I was shocked on a couple occasions that they couldn't, like, read my mind or intuit the change in my internal state. I know that's ridiculous, really, but it's kind of when a little kid presses on her bruise and says, 'Doesn't that hurt?' I had to actually speak. Out loud.

'Hey. I could use a little...you know, labor support over here.'

They both jumped up and it was about this point that The Man started to resemble one of those life-sized, movie house cut-outs of himself. He stood at one side of the bed, ashen-faced, and tried not to panic. My sister leaned in, comforted and did what a doula would do. The pain was still managable with that support and I recall that hour or so passing pretty quickly, despite the jump in intensity.

I wanted to sit upright and since it had been hours since I'd seen ANY medical professional, I got out of bed and planted myself in a rocking chair, monitors in place. The intensity of the contractions steadily increased and I distinctly remember thinking that if I wasn't progressing, if these contractions weren't productive, I'd skip the epidural and go straight for the cyanide.

Ahem.

Anyway.

For whatever reason, when each contraction would roll through, I would grip The Man's hand in mine, put my forehead on his forearm and push my head against it, like I was trying to snap that fucker in half. I'm so not kidding. I'm chuckling as I write this but at the time, it seemed like a completely logical pain reliever. So, there you are.

The contractions were getting longer and longer with shorter rest in between and at about 2:50 am, I looked at my sister and asked, 'Dude. Am I going through transition in this fucking rocking chair?'

About that time, the nurse came in. I don't remember if she asked me how I was doing or whatever. I just remember asking if she called my midwife yet.

'No, not yet. I'll call her when you get closer,' she said.

'Yeah, but..'

'We'll hang the second bag of anti-biotics at around 4.'

'Yeah, but...these contractions are getting pretty strong,' I said, 'Are you going to check me?'

'We don't like to check too much if you're GBS positive. I see that your contractions are getting more intense on the monitor. When we hang the next bag of anti-biotics, I'll check you. So, unless you tell me that you have to push, I'll see you in a little bit.'

And then, she left.

My sister said, 'She's not making it until 4. She's going to have this baby before then.'

I was starting to believe her and abandoned all thoughts of a cyanide capsule.

Around 10 minutes after 3:00, I felt like I had to pee. I'd felt that way after each contraction and I decided to go. My sister went to get the nurse and while the details are muddied, I recall being half-in and half-out of the bed, the nurse at my side, helping me to the bathroom. And then she said, 'Now, don't you go having that baby in the toilet.'

And.

And I.

What?!

'That doesn't happen,' I said, but it was a question.

'Oh, yes it does, more than you'd think,' was her answer and then I realized that I was having another one of those moments when I thought others should be able to know my thoughts. Because suddenly, I wasn't going anywhere and I wasn't going to do anything.

Besides push out a baby.

The next few minutes were full of flurry and panic and flashes of motion and sounds. I was fully in the bed and gripped by such a fierce urge to push that I have no words to describe it. At some point, the nurse checked me and said something I didn't get, followed by, '...you are a 9, though,' along with some kind of injunction not to push. They were waking the on-call doctor, who was sleeping down the hall.

My mind and my body were in a battle, for sure, I was full of worry and panic, trying to hold in the urge to push and cheating--I couldn't help it--bearing down even though I was afraid I was hurting myself in the process. Not to mention, you know, no doctor, no midwife. I remembered my sister having to dance around in her bathroom and fight her own urge to push while we waited for her midwife--it was a home birth and it was the midwife or me and I remember hissing, 'You better cross your legs and keep them together because I am NOT delivering this baby!'

I had a true appreciation for her at that moment because as I laid on my side, trying not to push and failing, I couldn't believe she held out. I could feel my baby trying to get out of my body. I was  freaked out that I was only dilated 9cm and was afraid of rupturing myself and then, from somewhere, I heard one of the nurses say that if my urge to push was so great, I was probably a 10.

Okie Dokie.

Just the lack of the doctor, then. I looked at my husband and thought he might fall over. I was on my side, trying not to push but feeling my son's head descend, I could feel him coming out.

'He's coming!' I yelled, 'he's coming!'

And then, you'll never believe what my sister said.

She said, 'He's coming! They went to go get him, he's just down the hall!'

It was straight out of a movie, I swear, especially when I'm all: 'I'M NOT TALKING ABOUT THE DOCTOR!! I'M TALKING ABOUT THE BABY! HE'S! COMING! NOWWWWW!!'

Two seconds later, the doctor walked in and pulling on his gloves, he said, 'Uh. Can we--break the bed down, please?'

The rest took another minute, at the most.

One big, long, push and he was out.

Sigh.

The Little sister went with The Boy to the little grow-light table. The Man was still a cardboard cut-out, holding my hand. I looked at him, misty-eyed and worried. And the first words out of my mouth were these:

'I am SO GLAD I never have to do that again.'

 

 

I Only Have 40 Seconds To Post. In Other Words, It's a 19 Second Video.

Well. HERE'S why I haven't had any time to blog.

Not really.

But kind of.

Forgive my totally trashed house. 

But Look!

(I have no idea where the sound went. I was, as per my usual, annoying and loud.)

Mr. Walker.

I'm thiiiiiiinking, maybe Baby Frankenstein for Halloween?

The Glory Of A Boy.

Hey, you know what?

My Boy is ALMOST ONE.  Can you believe that?

I can't.

Really.

Lookit:

 

 

The sparkly little eyes. The little baby mouth. CAN YOU STAND IT?

.

 

Forget the breast pad in the background. Look at the new-awkward-heart rending sibling relationship in the foreground.

.

.

I swear, I think he was watching TV but the wide eyes and the baby hair line? omfg.

.

.

Happy.

.

 

.

Happy. Even at the doctor's office. Ding dong, whaaa?

.

.

I LOVE the look on his face.  It's all, 'OMFG! DO YOU SEE ME?!'

.

.

.

.

Oh, man.

.

.

 Just Crazy Baby.

 

.

.

.

.

.

.

Not so new, less awkward, still heart-rending, and a little more...er...Cage-Matchy?

It's A Shame, Shame, Shame. It's A Damn, Damn, Shame.

I could make that shit into a song, you know?  I was looking back at the holes where the posts about my boy should be and whoa, it's a DAMNED SHAME. There is an EMPTY VOID looking back at me.  I fail at record keeping in all it's forms, obviously.

Anyway.

Wanna take a guess at how old my baby is now?

...

He's NINE MONTHS OLD. Nine.

(Can you hear the angels singing sweet, sweet music?)

(I can.)

At nine months old, we have officially exited the DREADED MONTHS of infancy, at least for me.  At nine months old, I think babies hit some weird peak of cuteness.  They are Adorable and still so...Innocent.  No ulterior motives, no real Knowing-Better when they are doing something naughty.  They look at you like you are the SUN RISING when you come into their rooms in the morning.  Plus, they start doing all kinds of cool things.  For me, this is when it starts to get good.

 

It's funny to me, because somewhere I have pictures of TLNG doing almost all of this same stuff.  When she was nine months old, the [bitter, horrendous screaming] colic/reflux hell was mostly over, so she was pretty sweet, too. 

It's so hard not to compare them.

I try not to.

He's generally a super-happy boy, with an incredible disposition.  Meaning, I can go almost anywhere and do almost anything.  Provided that he has enough 1) food and 2) sleep. (In that order.)

He says, 'mmmmmmm' anytime he's in the presence of food or drink or anyone eating or drinking.

You could die from the cute of that alone, trust me.

He's curious and once he figured out how to crawl [omfg, I'm so dead, yo] he was on that shit like it was his JOB.

I guess it is his job, though. So, GOOD WORK, KID.

He's also clapping and waving.

And smiling. A lot.

Oh. And he found the dog.

Just for kicks, here's a picture of my daughter at this age:

And the dog says:

'Oh, what the fuck. Here we go AGAIN.'

In case you're [still reading] interested in a comparison, here's my girl at nine months. Holy hell, it seems like yesterday.

In a way.

If yesterday was also forever ago.

Like Sands Through The Hourglass.

I hate getting mad at my kid The First Thing In The Morning or The Last Thing At Night.  It's not like I love getting angry at any other time during the day, but it seems especially heinous to get angry and/or deal with a red-faced, screaming three year old before my tea is even done steeping.  And, well, when my girl is going to bed...who wants to be mad then?  I don't want to be impatient, counting the seconds until I leave the room to go and finish what's waiting for me in the kitchen.  I want to send her to sleep with warmth. With love. And some measure of comfort.

***

Sometimes, the baby gets overtired and wired and has a hard time settling down to sleep.  And by hard time, I mean it takes more than the usual 2-3 minutes (literally, I KNOW) of bouncing on the yoga ball to put him out.  On those occasions, he doesn't fuss, he just wiggles, blows raspberries on my boobs, makes constant eye contact and busts into a huge-ass grin when I look back at him.  It's hard to be irritated at that, you know.  Even though the hard nights are still rarely, RARELY, more than ten minutes of bouncing and humming, I still feel restless, a little. Itchy for him to relax. Itchy to end my day.

***

These days, with my daughter, it seems that I am a Mostly-Full Cup of Irritation and it doesn't take but a little bit extra to have me brimming, threatening to overflow and make a giant mess all over the place.  There have been tantrums.  And hostility.  And tantrums.  And acting out.  And difficulty coping.  And...tantrums.  It's not totally clear to you which one of us I'm talking about right now, is it?  That's deliberate.  In my brain, my logical, intelligent, knowledgeable brain, I understand what she's going through, being three.  My brain understands the hard work of this difficult stage.  The pushing, pushing, [fucking nightmare] pushing against the boundaries has to happen.  The trying everything despite massive evidence that should dissuade, the freshness, the goofiness, the exploring emotions and options and alternatives--all of these are necessary. These are things that my brain knows.  But somehow, for some reason, my brain seems somewhat...detached from the process that usually begins with my daughter's ridiculous (and totally doomed) request and ends with me cleaning up the Irritation-Overflow Mess with a mop of my own regret.

***

When my son is wriggly and wiggly and can't get to sleep, I hold him extra tight.  I wrap him in my arms, like a human swaddle blanket, holding his head and chest snug against my body.  I hold him and bounce and hum 'Lullaby and Goodnight.'  He struggles at first and I hold, I contain.  I surround him, support him, make him snug.  When he strains against me, I hold extra firm.  And in about 35 seconds, his eyes close. And his muscles relax.  I feel the weight of him. The heft.  I hold his entire body in my arms. I bounce him for a minute or two more, looking at his sleeping form.  I realize that these days are numbered.  One day, he will be taller than I am.  He'll have whiskers and smelly shoes.  I look at him, quiet and peaceful, snuggled up against me and I ache for the day that he won't fit there anymore.  I try slow down and soak it in. 

***

When my girl goes to bed, she dismisses her father first and asks me to sit on the floor so we can 'Talk About Our Day.' I reach through the bars of her crib and stroke her hair or her soft, soft cheeks.  She sticks her arm through and we hold hands.  Lately, we talk a lot about the time outs or the times I felt angry during the day.  The things she did that set me off.  We talk about the other stuff, too.  The good stuff.  The fun stuff.  She wants me to stay a little longer.  I have to go and clean the kitchen, I tell her, when our time is up.  And when I close the door, in a hurry to get the rest of my work done, I think about how these days are numbered too.  The days of tantrums and irrational requests meant only to provoke and test, the days of three will give way to preschool at four and then movies in the theater with popcorn at nine, and then, before I know it, to driving her friends around at seventeen.

***

When I'm all the way done and the kids are both asleep, I think about them.  I miss them.  The idea of them has a spectacularly lush quality that can sometimes be lost in the day to day life that is caring for them.  But these days, one after the other, are gone.  Past.  So, I try to remember that.  I try not to be so itchy.  I try to empty my cup and do my best to slow down.  To relax against the snug restraints of this day to day life.

The Theme Song Was, 'Yooooou Light Up Maaah Liiiiiife.'

I saw a movie once, I can't remember the name...The Promise? Maybe?

Anyway, the gist of the story was that an photographer fell in love with a rich guy, whose parents hated her and the couple didn't care because they were in loooove and they buried a cheap-ass necklace somewhere and then she got into a disfiguring car accident and the parents would pay for surgery to make her look good again but the deal was that she'd have to leave their son alone.

Whatever.

I must have seen this movie at an impressionable age because it spurred in me two things: One is the fear of driving behind any flatbed truck carrying anything that looks questionably fastened. The second, is the love of cameras and taking pictures. 

Shortly after seeing that movie, I learned that my mother had a manual 35mm camera and, Super-Excited, I proceeded to take it into the yard and click away at many, many masterfully framed shots of yardage, only to discover that there was uh, no film in the back of the camera.

Although I majored in photography in art school (back in the days when dinosaurs roamed the earth and the photo majors pulled all nighters in actual darkrooms filled with actual chemicals and poor ventilation,) my work was nothing better than mediocre.  I can frame up a shot, no doubt.  All the fussy details tripped me up, though.  You know.

Anyway.

The long ass background is only to frame this up for you:

My daughter is obsessed with cameras.

Ob. Sessed.

Maybe it's because when she was young and impressionable, she broke my shit. Or maybe, it's just in the genes. Or the age. Whichever, I don't care.  It is an obsession I understand and am happy to abide.

I bought her a kid camera for her birthday two days ago.

She's already taken about 250 pictures.

Oh. Mah. GAH.

If I thought it was hard to cull and trash some of my OWN pictures, let's just say that I better get a better laptop and about 5389503 external disc thingies on which to store these images.

I am ENTHRALLED, friends.  Amazed. Absorbed by what fills her viewfinder.  Her viewpoint. Her heart. 

These images, almost abstract in their up-closeness.  Snapshots of her day to day.

They kill me.

 

 

 

 

 

 

  
  

Me: Knock Knock

You: Who's there?

Me: My son.

You: My son, who?

Me: My son wiggles his little wrist back and forth and so it looks like he's knocking on EVERYTHING.  It's super silly and really cute, I tell ya.

Speaking of cute:

He's usually as happy as he looks right here.
Which, you know, IS HARD TO BELIEVE.

***

Since TLNG is [an avid Ni Hao Kai Lan watcher] the daughter of a therapist she often talks about Feelings.  In addition to being well-versed in Happy, Mad, Sad and Afraid, she is also familiar with Annoyed, Irritated and Frustrated. Ahem.

Anyway.

For the past week or so, she's been talking about my Feelings, while stroking the outer-most ridge of my ear.  When I inquired about it, she said, 'That's where your Feelings live.  That's where they go.'  I tried to explain to her that Feelings are invisible, that they are inside you and that you can't see them.  But she persisted.  Then, a couple days ago, at bedtime, she was again talking about my Feelings.  She was reaching through the bars at me, as I sat on her floor.  She gently pinched my earlobe between her fingers and said, 'This is where your Feelings go.'

....

??

And then I said, 'Do..do you mean earrings?'

And she said, 'Yes. Like Nanny wears.'

***

My dad put in an offer on a house. It's absolutely PERFECT for him.  It is move-in condition and everything he needs with nothing he doesn't.  He low-balled the first offer and the guy came back with a counter offer and then my dad had to *think about it* and then he countered and then the guy countered, so they were 10K apart and then my dad wanted to counter 2.5K, even though his top number was 5K and OH MY WORD, am I glad I am not a realtor who works for my dad, is what I'm saying.

They accepted the final offer, with settlement date of end of July.  So. The summer should be...um..interesting.

***

I have been making an effort to keep the house cleaner.  This translates into cleaning a lot in the evening and then collapsing into bed to read (Percy Jackson. I KNOW) before passing out to wake and do it ALL OVER again.  I am trying to find the ZEN of cleaning.  (I KNOW.  Whatever. Blah blah it'sajourney blaaah.)

***

My girl is in the midst of some [Mythical Hell-Beast Training] cognitive leap in development.  As is her custom, it is accompanied by [the most annoying, irritating and frustrating behavior on the planet] behavior and sleep disturbance.  But look at what she's drawing:

This is a self-portrait. She's holding Baby-Baby.

.

.

This is the rest of the family. OMG. Look at The Little Brother.

.

.

LOOK.

And, I know I'm biased, but I also think she's morphing into a Stunning Little Beauty, really.  

It's a good thing I'm not really all into the Kid Pageants, though, because I don't think she'd go for the fake eyelashes.
Tactile issues, you know.

***

Now, I have to go and fix my son a bottle, because he refused to nurse this morning. *sigh*

Me: Knock knock.

You: Who's there?

Me: ZOOM ZOOM.

Supply And Demand.

If I ever pen a memoir on my experience of being a mother, the title is going to be, 'Motherhood: Who In The Fuck Knows?'

Because, SERIOUSLY. WHO in the fuck KNOWS what's going on with this gig?

Not me, apparently.

When people tell you that the experience of parenting one kid has NOTHING to do with how you parent another, they are NOT PLAYING.  The ways that my two kids are different are numerous to the point of [insert the symbol for infinity here.]  And, indeed, the early indications are that the way I parent The Girl will have some overlap but may be quite different from the way I parent The Boy.

But if there was one thing I counted on being the same, perhaps naively, it would be my abundant boob-milk supply.  With my first kid, I had such a crazy over-supply that it took 10.5 (TEN AND A HALF) months for my supply to regulate. Initially, it was the same with The Boy.  (He ate so much that my supply regulated in mere WEEKS.)  He latched on immediately and ate a ton and gained a ton and other than some Thrush, we had no difficulties.  At his four month well visit, he weight about 19 pounds.  Off the charts for weight.

I started to notice some frustration from him a while back, when a let-down wouldn't come fast enough, but I just thought he was getting bigger and wanted a faster boob.  He slept through the night early (for us) and I wondered whether or not that was going to effect my supply. The Lactation Consultant didn't think so.  But then my baby sitter told me last week that The Boy ate 5oz of milk during the time in which I only pumped 2oz to replace that missed feeding. 'Hmm,' I thought.

He was cranky at night and during the day and although he nursed frequently, he was fussy. He protest cried at being taken off the boob at night.  He woke at night after an hour of sleep screaming and crying.  I thought, 'Q: Teething? Cold? Development?'  (Of course, A: WHO IN THE FUCK KNOWS?)

And then, the next day, the sitter told me that while I was out getting my hair done, my kid took SIX OUNCES of milk.  When we hadn't even missed a feeding.

That's when I weighed him.

Fifteen pounds.

I weighed him again, just to be sure I didn't make a math error.

Fifteen pounds.

So, I started watching him closely. The letdown took a long time and he was only sucking and swallowing for a few minutes.  He protest cried when I took him off the second side at bedtime. So I gave him another ounce of expressed milk in a bottle AFTER he ate and he sucked that shit down, like, 'FINALLY, motherfucker. Fi-na-lly.'

I panicked and went to Target that night. To get starter foods, some brown rice cereal and I looked at the formula.

Formula!

(P.S. I don't think it's Devil-Juice. I just never thought that *I*--font of milky abundance--would EVER find myself looking in that aisle.)

(P.P.S. I also had NO IDEA how many kinds there are. Or how costly it is.)

If you follow me on Twitter (I hate that 'Follow,' yeesh) you may have seen my frantic plea for help regarding a diminishing milk supply.

[If I could do a screen capture or whatever, I'd put it right here. Imagine it being 140 characters of OMFGOMFGOMFG...no milk!]

The response was immediate and helpful (except for a few smart-ass tweets about praying to trees for help) and I'm on my way.  It seems to be working, if quicker let-down and no protest crying when taken off at night and sleeping without waking to scream from hunger are any indication.

Oh, MAN, guys. 

I was STARVIN' MAH BEBE.

So, yeah.

Apparently, I'm still a rookie.

[Edited to add: Today, before nap, The Boy breastfed and then took, oh, FOUR ounces of expressed milk on top of that. So, uh, looks like I'll be going out to get that formula this afternoon. {Sad Trombone}]

Oh, Here We Go.

You KNEW it was going to happen to me, didn't you? All you Super-DJs, Who Think You're Fly. You knew that one day, probably sooner rather than later, I would be where I am today.

Today.

This morning, in my kitchen, trying to open my new Bonne Maman Preserves to NO AVAIL, muttering to myself, under my breath, struggling with the [mockingly] cheery gingham-printed lid while pondering my advancing age and worrying about possible early-onset arthritis which will disallow opening of jars when I'm home alone, or, you know, WIDOWED or whatever.

When clear as a bell, from the living room, my toddler asks, "Mommy, why you say fawk?"

Oh, man.

You know what this means, right?

You know.

It means I'm totally fawked.