I can honestly say that I was TOTALLY UNPREPARED for life with a newborn – mostly because apparently my first child wasn’t a human baby at all but some sort of puking, crying, fussing, alien monster who refused to nurse, stressed us out like crazy with jaundice, and generally made life miserable for at least his first four months of life. Looking back now, E and I are both going “Wow, we REALLY should have complained more to the doctor about that puking thing because obviously we were clueless about normal human babies”.

(Although honestly, we mentioned it ALL THE TIME and all we got was “Meh, some babies throw up a lot“, even from my lactation consultant. Clearly it wasn’t normal but since he was gaining weight no one cared how miserable it made everything in regards to our home life. If I hadn’t spent so much time doing frickin’ laundry the first time around maybe I would have gotten more sleep and not been quite so…well, horrible to everyone. Especially E. It was really sucky y’all.)

THIS baby is an angel. I would take a dozen of these babies. She spends all her time sleeping, only waking herself up with hilariously loud poops to get a new diaper, nurse for a while and then cuddle with anyone who holds her. She falls asleep again without any complicated shushing/swaddling/burping/dancing/begging/crying rituals in her swing or the (broken so it doesn’t actually bounce) bouncy seat or the co-sleeper or lying on the floor. She only requires one outfit a day and 90% of the laundry is a result of my overactive milk ducts and their ability to soak through anything in .43 seconds and not projectile baby puke.  When the baby nurse came to visit last week Caroline had already gained back all but 4 oz of her birth weight and I’m going to go ahead an predict by her 2 week checkup she’s already closer to 10 lbs than 8.

In further attempts to be absolutely nothing like her brother, Caroline has perhaps the world’s strongest latch and no doubts about using it to suck on pretty much anything (I’m hoping this is a good omen when it comes time to introduce a bottle). I’ve had to drag out my old nipple shield to deal with the tenderness and bruising – nothing serious or horrifying, but when she cluster feeds for two hours straight the pinching gets to toe-curling levels of painful. It’s not anyone’s fault – I don’t need a link to “how-to-get-a-better-latch” videos or whatever – just a result of her mouth being small and my engorgement being massive and a few lazy nursing sessions that did a little damage. Fortunately, my body remembered it WASN’T feeding a whole litter of babies this time around and I’m already back to normal nursing sized boobs instead of GIANT PORN STAR WHO STAPLED THESE BASKETBALLS TO MY CHEST??? sized boobs.

ALSO: I have a tip for sore nipples that doesn’t involve buying those super expensive gel pads I loved so much last time. Tea bags. Seriously. The baby nurse suggested it (she’s also an LC) and it’s amazing. Just steep two tea bags in hot water, let them cool off and stick them on your nipples. The tannic acid in the tea combined with the coolness helps soothe the bruising and pinching. The internet backs me up on this with science but my nipples back me up even more with “OMG THANK YOU”.

MORE ALSO: In the debate between “No, breastfeeding should NEVER hurt” and “A little nipple soreness can be normal while you’re adjusting” I am officially in the later camp. I know the difference between a good latch and a bad latch and even when we have it PERFECT I get a little sore after 30+ minutes of constant nursing. It’s definitely improving though, and I bet in 2 weeks I don’t even remember what I was complaining about.

As for the rest of my I-just-had-a-baby recovery, I can barely tell I just had a baby. I hesitate to say that I am AWESOME at giving birth (because someone awesome at giving birth could probably do it naturally in a wheat field at sunset instead of with an epidural) but my BODY is certainly prepared for labor and delivery pushing out an 8+ lbs baby, even if my brain is not prepared for that kind of pain. Like I said in my birth story, even my above average baby didn’t do any damage. She did so LITTLE damage in fact that I don’t even pee my pants when I sneeze anymore, something I was doing at 9 months pregnant. I KNOW. IT’S A CHRISTMAS MIRACLE. The worst part of my recovery was actually the stupid Tdap booster they gave me in the hospital that made my left arm practically useless for two full days and the rhogam shot I got in my left hip that hurt almost as much. That soreness combined with my milk coming in made me want to just hide under the covers and not let anyone touch me ever again – especially a toddler who thinks “jump on mommy” is the best game ever.

Oh but THEN I got another kidney infection, less than 24 hours after being discharged. I spiked a fever in the evening and another in the middle of the night but held off on calling the doctor until office hours and then talked them into letting me do outpatient lab work to confirm (although REALLY? I know what a kidney infection feels like by now. Swearies) and calling in antibiotics to my pharmacy rather than possibly readmitting me. I did NOT want to go back to the hospital, especially with a newborn nursling. I feel infinitely better after almost a week of antibiotics. But this probably means I should reschedule my March kidney stone removal appointment to some time sooner or the infections might keep happening and that doesn’t seem fun.

And now that I’ve told you how well everything is going, don’t be surprised when I take it ALL BACK next week. It’s the first law of blogging and I just broke it. I hope you’re happy internet.

I think Baby Evan reads my blog, because some time between when I wrote this post and yesterday he totally weaned himself. I am thrilled and horrified and brokenhearted and nervous and happy and relieved and so, so confused. Technically he’s not TOTALLY weaned – he still wants to nurse first thing in the morning and occasionally asks during the day – but if I want to I could get him to drop those feedings without a single tear.

I just don’t want to. Not yet. As much as I would love a break before the new baby comes, I can’t even remember what life is like as a non-breastfeeding mother. I don’t remember how to wear clothes that don’t offer easy access to my chestal area. I’m not sure I can make it through a whole day without flashing some unsuspecting mall shoppers. I have very few “oh no the baby is upset” coping skills besides boob. I’m afraid I’ll start offering to nurse anything that cries, including stray cats and random strangers. I think that’s the sort of thing that gets you banned from Stop & Shop. I know I’ve only been breastfeeding for 1/27th of my life but it’s been such a huge part of every single minute of the last 14 months it feels like much much longer.

I’m really not even sure how this happened. One day he screamed if you so much as showed him a sippy and the next he signs “milk milk milk milk” but points to the cup on the counter like I’m a crazy person if I unhook my bra. If you’re looking for advice on how exactly to go about weaning your child, here’s everything I got:
Step 1: Get pregnant with baby #2.
Step 2: Give baby #1 sippy cup of rice milk.
Step 3: There are no more steps.

Really, I can’t take credit for this at all. I did nothing besides stop making gallons of milk that let down strongly enough to squirt across a room. I didn’t stop offering, I didn’t try to distract him, I didn’t give him a lot more solids than I was previously. Which makes me feel a lot better about the whole thing, since I was very close to forcing him to wean whether he was ready or not. Now I spend a great deal of time asking “Do you want milk? Mama milk? Please come here and try some nursies! Baby Evan, stop running away from meeeeeee!!”

As conflicted as I am about not making it to the two year mark, I think I’m happy where we are now and won’t do anything to intentionally alter our nursing relationship for the next few months. I’m going to be away from him for at least 12 hours in August and probably even longer in September (for a friend’s bridal shower/bachelorette party and wedding, respectively) and I feel like those will probably be the stepping stones to total weaning. And then I can be a non-nursing mother for at least a few weeks before everything starts all over again.

OMG I’m going to have to start ALL OVER AGAIN.

On Thursday afternoon, Jane from His Boys Can Swim tweeted that she was on her way to the doctor because her baby fell off a couch and that she felt like the worst mom ever. So I responded:

Of course, saying something like that is basically like running naked into the middle of a large field holding a flagpole during a thunderstorm and saying “Oh no, I’ve NEVER gotten struck by lighting before!” So three hours later, this happened.

Since Baby Evan has been walking for a while now, I don’t watch him as closely as a good mother would I used to and in an attempt to rip apart my current knitting project he climbed around the couch, tripped over a shoe and fell face first onto the lower shelf of a wooden end table. He scraped a couple layers of skin off his forehead and the swelling – OH THE SWELLING – started immediately. So did the screaming. OH THE SCREAMING. Of course I used my trusty boob powers to put a stop to the noise immediately but after 10 minutes of nursing he was still pretty sad. Exhibit A:

You guys, this picture does NOTHING to show the true awfulness that was the swelling. And right on his biggest, bluest forehead vein too. It's the curse of the pale.

Of course, when I called my pediatrician’s office they has already closed for the day. Their answering service gave me the number of the on call doctor, so I called HIS office and explained Baby Evan’s head bump and asked if I should be concerned. Instead of the generally calm, reassuring voice of reason response I get from the nurses we see in person, this one was…not. She said things like “SKULL FRACTURE” and “BRAIN BLEED” and “IT’S REALLY A JUDGMENT CALL ON YOUR PART BUT…” What she didn’t say was the rest of the sentence after that “but”, which is: “If you were a good mother, your baby wouldn’t have fallen at all, but since he did why wouldn’t you immediately rush to the nearest emergency room?” So I grabbed the diaper bag, left a message for E at work, and drove less than a mile down the road to the hospital. (When we eventually have to sell this house, all I have to tell families thinking about buying it is “You can have your kid at the ER less than 3 minutes after they fall down the stairs/break a leg/cut off a finger/start bleeding from their eyeballs” and the offers will come rolling in. Guaranteed.)

By the time I got him out of the car into the BabyHawk carrier, Baby Evan was smiling. When the check-in lady called him cute, he laughed. When the  ER nurse sent us down the hall to non-emergency Convenient Care, he climbed out of my arms and ran around throwing magazines on the floor. The only time he cried the whole visit was when I wouldn’t let him push the very exciting shiny blue button that said “CODE” on it in the exam room.  When we were seen, a very nice doctor assured me the worst case scenario was a concussion, something most kids bounced back from with no problem whatsoever. Then he said if Baby Evan slept more than usual for the next 48 hours, I shouldn’t be concerned and I was all “Concerned?! Heck, I hope he gets concussed every day!” I don’t think the doctor got the joke. He sent us home with a handout on how to tell if your baby is bleeding into his skull and a promise to see us again soon when my daredevil child tried his next stunt.

The whole thing took less than 2 hours. By Friday morning Baby Evan’s forehead was almost back to normal size and the bruise was almost gone. He hasn’t done any extra sleeping. And because I am not a horrible mother, I made sure he really was going to be ok before I wrote about it on the internets.

Since I’m still exclusively breastfeeding and Baby Evan is still being exclusively stubborn and exclusively refusing a bottle or solids of any kind, baby feeding is a one-woman show around here. When I’m not too exhausted to function, I remember breastfeeding is not going to last forever and we’re creating a special bond that I’m never going to regret. Before I became such a fan of nursing, one of the arguments I’ve heard against breastfeeding is that dads can start to feel left out of the nursing dyad and resent that bond between mama and baby. Although I don’t think there’s any danger of that happening around here (hellooooo no night feedings for Dad!), in the interest of shared parenting and giving E his own special baby bonding time, he is the exclusive manager of all baby bedtimes.

Besides a handful of nights where he was at work, E has done bath, pajamas and rocked Baby Evan to sleep every night for the last 10 months. He’s also home to do about 50% of the naps, although naps are in short supply around here lately. Since he’s had so much practice when it comes to sending the baby off to dream of a land made of boobs, puppies and small pieces of plastic to shove in his mouth, E is the expert. So the same way nursing is my baby go-to mode when the baby is upset, sleeping is E’s baby go-to mode. All the time.

Uh oh, Baby Evan fell on his face? NAP.

Oh dear, the baby’s grumpy because he’s teething. NAP.

If that child doesn’t stop screaming soon my ears are going to start bleeding. NAP.

Dirty Diaper? NAP.

Um, maybe someone should stop the baby from eating that. NAP.

The funny part is these naps have about a 70% success rate even when I didn’t really think the baby was tired. Unfortunately, when sleep ISN’T what the baby needed both Dad and baby end up frustrated and even more upset than when they started. It also means whenever I leave E in charge while I jump in the shower or head to the grocery store I come home to a sleeping baby – a sleeping baby who’s nap I wasted on stupid things like SHOWERS and GROCERY SHOPPING. Time I could have spent doing reckless things like leaving the dishwasher open for more than 30 seconds or sweeping the kitchen or trying to read a magazine without holding it up over my head. You know, getting REALLY WILD.

I suppose complaining that my husband is really good at putting our son to sleep is sort of like complaining my diamond shoes are too tight or this giant tiara is giving me a headache, but hey, we all have our problems.

Although in my current sleepless state it feels like a zillion years ago, it was only early January when I first attempted to night ween Baby Evan. It went pretty well. Not great, but well enough that I was optimistic that things would only get better from there. I was prepared for set backs during new developmental phases but was super relieved I wouldn’t have to go through angry, stressful, cry-it-out sleep training every couple of months. I was not prepared for a baby who forgot absolutely everything about sleep and how to do it.

First we had the horrible vomiting puking disease that made everyone exhausted for 24 hours and then ravenously hungry for a week. No matter how many times we nursed during the day, Baby Evan woke up every 2 hours crying. Between my own exhaustion from the flu and my fear he might be dehydrated I was in no position to wean anyone, so back to night feedings we went.

Then one of his lower incisors started coming in and the paaaaaaaaain was aaaaaaawful. Teething is one of those “developmental milestones” that almost always disrupts sleep routines everything. My happy smiley baby was cranky and angry and spent many an hour wailing and gnashing his teeth gums. The only time he felt better was while he was nursing. So how could I say no?

Now we have almost no schedule. The baby wakes up for two or three feedings between 10 pm and 7 am. Mornings can start any time between 5:30 and 7:30 with no rhyme or reason. Although bedtime is still supposed to happen at 7 every night, when Baby Evan is still chasing the cat, rolling on the dog and throwing every toy he owns on the floor at 6:55 he’s clearly not tired yet so we push it back. Then there’s the mysterious screaming and thrashing that happens 40 minutes after E puts a full-stomached, sound asleep baby in his crib with his blankey. And don’t even get me started on naps. We’re down to one a day – sometimes for 30 minutes, sometimes for 3 hours. I can’t even remember the last time I took a nap but I’m pretty sure it was before Christmas. Or maybe before I gave birth. It feels like it was before Y2K. Or maybe before the invention of electricity. So I would really like to take one some time soon.

The only reason I’m not back to the same angry, miserable person I was the last time we tried sleep weaning is that E has really stepped up. He’s still doing all rocking at bedtimes and every nap when he’s home. He handled the mysterious screaming fit at 8:45 last night and rocked the baby back to sleep after I fed him at 11 pm the night before. And on Sunday mornings I get to sleep in as long as I want until it’s time for church. He understand that one morning a week where I get to pee and brush my teeth without a child hanging off my knees is vital to my sanity and good for our marriage. It also helps that Baby Evan is at a really good age – able to entertain himself for a good chunk of time (when he feels like it) and fun to play with when he needs someone to interact with. I also get mini-breaks during the various playgroups, classes and activities we attend at Papoose because my social butterfly spends the whole time climbing into other mama’s laps. Thank God he’s cute enough no one seems to mind.

I think I’ll probably try the night weaning again in a few weeks but it doesn’t really seem worth it right now. I’m tired but not incredibly exhausted, frustrated but not overly so, and I fear the other incisor is about to make an appearance so it might be hopeless anyway. I think my only hope for night-weaning is ACTUAL weaning, which is so far in the future I’d need a crystal ball to see it. And since my psychic abilities aren’t all that great (but really, who saw that Tiger Woods thing coming? What kind of rich, powerful, famous dude cheats on his wife?!) for now I’m just going to go rest my eyes for a minute.