An Obsession With Nipples

Maybe it’s a breast feeding thing, but I’ve recently come to realize that both my children have an obsession with nipples. Well, not Cassie so much. She **had** an obsession with nipples when she was about Sam’s age (almost two) but I think she eventually grew out of it. Sam, however, is in the full height of nipple obsession, which means it will be a while before I can take her bra shopping with me.

Both girls were breast fed. In fact, I just weaned Sam about two months ago. I had planned to let the little fart wean herself, but she had already passed the point that Cassie stopped (18 months) and was not really nursing any more so much as chewing my nipples to death. I think she saw that last before bedtime nursing as a delaying tactic. She would chaw away and rather than drift off to sleep, keep herself awake by thrashing around in my lap, occasionally bashing me in the head with her flailing arms and legs. I got tired of this after a while and decided that since she wasn’t going to peaceably wean herself, I’d just have to do it for her and so I cut out that last nursing cold turkey.

Needless to say, what followed was a couple of weeks of Sam grabbing at my breasts right before bedtime, demanding to be fed. “Nurse! Nurse!” she’d scream. My solution was to hand her to Michael, who’s nipples are too hairy for Sam to chew on. Mine however, are still fair game, and Sam takes every opportunity to point them out when she sees them. If she sees me in the bathtub, Sam will point and go, “Nipples. Nurse.” That is the quickest way I know of for her to end my bath. I can’t get dressed fast enough, especially if I see her jaws open up to clamp down on my recently reclaimed nipples. Not that I think it will hurt if she latches on — god knows she killed off all the nerve endings in my nipples long ago — but I honestly to feel like dealing with the thrashing and beating that came to accompany those last nursing sessions. I mean really, do I need to be beaten black and blue by my toddler?

Sam is also fascinated with her own nipples, much the way Cassie was at her age. She will pull off her shirt to show them off at odd occasions. Again, makes it a little hard to go out with her in public places. And she will point out nipples if she sees them anywhere she goes (like if she sees a shirtless man in a poster or advertisement). Cassie used to do this. I remember one time sitting in zen meditation at home, with my Buddha figurine on the floor in front of me. Cassie walked up to the figure, looked at it and then pointed at the bare side of its chest to proclaim, “Buddha! Nipple!” And that killed that afternoon’s meditation, you can be sure.

Cassie is also the child who once ran through the bra section of a lingerie department in a J. C. Penny’s, screamaing, “Boobies! Boobies!” as she snatched bras off the rack. To this day, I still cannot walk into J. C. Penny’s.

But Sam’s latest fascination is not with anything on my chest, but rather with the small brown mole on my left arm. I’ve had this mole for as long as I can remember, and both kids are obsessed with it, to the point of driving me crazy. They like to poke and prod at it, even though I’ve told them not to. Sam in particular likes to grab at it and shout out, “Nipple!” “No, no,” I say. “That’s a mole.” “Nipple!” Sam insists. I live in fear of the day when she’ll try to latch on. If you ever see me walking around with a toddler fastened onto my left elbow, you know what happened.

I Want To Blog…

I really, really do, but stuff keeps coming up. You know, it was so easy to blog when Sam was an infant. She nursed 12 times a day, so all I did was sit in the glider and type away on my laptop. Now when I nurse Sam, I spend all my time trying to keep her fingers out of my hair, my ears, my nose, my eyes… That little fart keeps thrashing and twisting in my arms, and then she’ll roll over and thump me in the chest, as if to say, “More milk, lady! These boobies aren’t working fast enough!” And the chewing! My god, I’ll be lucky if I have any nipples left by the time this kid weans.

What were we originally talking about? Oh yeah, blogging, or my lack there of. It’s kind of difficult these days…

New Laws to Protect Public Breast Feeding

Well it’s about damn time…

New Laws to Protect Public Breast Feeding

I’ve breast fed both my kids in public. If you’re a breast feeding mom and you want ever to leave the house, you pretty much have to nurse in public. Of course, nobody has ever come up to me and complained about it. That’s probably because I have this reputation for being a mean, scary she-bitch who would rip your head off if you even looked at me wrong. I don’t know why I have that reputation. I just do.

Sunday Morning Musings

Just some random thoughts about what’s going on in our house, in no particular order…

Thought #1 – Living In The Mobile Age

Sam is getting more and more mobile, and as a result so am I. She’s crawling, (often on her hands and toes like a baby gorilla), standing, cruising along holding furniture, and in general getting into stuff. I am racing around her in an ever increasing circle, trying to put stuff out of her reach. Cassie got into a lot of stuff at about this age, and Sam is doing the same, but there are some differences. Sam will climb stairs. Cassie never tried them unless I was there to help her along. Sam grabs different things, namely Cassie’s toys. So at least I’m not the only one scrambling to remove stuff from Sam’s reach. Cassie was fairly easy to distract. If I took something away from her, I could give her something else to play with and she was happy. Sam is a bit more stubborn.
Ah well, it’s that age, and as exhausting as it is keeping up with Sam, it’s fun to watch.

Thought #2 – The Speakers Of The House

Sam is starting to develop a vocabulary. She now says Mama, Dada, and “Doh!” which I think means “No!” At least she says “Doh!” every time I tell her “No!” She also waves her hands and says “Duh!” when we ask her if she’s done eating.
Cassie has come up with a few new words as well, making me think she has inherited my talent for swearing. Oh well. By the way, did you know most preschool teachers think “Fart” is a dirty word? I thought it was pretty harmless myself.

Thought #3 – The Tooth Hurts

Sam is keeping me up nights again. Apparently she’s got another tooth on the way. Unlike Cassie, who only went through a day or two of fussing before a new tooth appeared in her mouth, Sam spends weeks in miserable preparation for her new pearly whites. I find myself waking up a couple times a night to nurse and comfort the poor thing. That is, right up until she uses the teeth she already has to chomp down on me. Sam will probably learn to swear just like her sister and I, I’m sure.

Thought #4 – Words Of Wisdom From The Mommies Group

On seeing something mysterious go into a toddler’s mouth at the playground… “Finding no bug in your child’s mouth is better than finding half a bug.”

On seeing a child embark on yet another new and exciting adventure involving the stairs and a pair of roller skates… “This can only end poorly.”

Said to a teething baby… “Don’t bite the boob that feeds you.”

That’s all I got today folks. Have a nice Easter.

Whining and Dining

I’m starting to hate mealtimes around our house. I used to love food. I used to love to sit down at dinner, relax in my chair at a meal that Michael cooked (he’s an excellent cook, he learned from his father) and enjoy spending some quality time with the man I love. Those days are gone. In fact, they stopped right after we had kids.

The problem began with Cassie, our oldest. She would never let us sit through mealtimes. You see, she had colic so she screamed from 4 p.m. to 9 p.m. every night for the first three months of her life. We tried our best to keep her calm during those horrible witching hours. At first, one of us would sit with Cassie and rock her, pat her on the back, coo to her, sing to her and do whatever we could to make that child happy while the other parent ate. Then we would switch off. Of course neither parent could eat fast enough for the other parent’s satisfaction, which meant one of us was usually starving by the time the other one was ready to take baby. In fact, not only starving but probably crazy because she had just spent twenty minutes with a tiny hysterical person screaming in her ear. Note that I said SHE, not HE. I usually let Michael eat first. That’s because I love him, but I started to resent him after a few meals so we stopped doing the baby swap before I got too angry with him and tried to chew his head off.

Michael came up with a brilliant idea after that. He believed that if Cassie was going to scream no matter what we did, then we should just let her scream. So he would put her out in the living room where we could see her, lay her on her tummy on the floor (yes, this was her “tummy time”) and let her howl until all the dogs in the neighborhood went running for cover. “That’s so cruel,” I’d cry. “We can’t just leave her there on the floor screaming like that!” “Waaaaaaaaah!” Cassie screamed in the background. “What if she can’t breathe?” I demanded. “Her poor little face is buried in the carpet!”

“Helen,” Michael told me, “if she can scream, she can breathe.” Yeah, it was a ‘duh’ moment but remember, three months of colic makes parents stupid.

After Cassie got over her colic, she decided to change her nursing schedule. Suddenly she wanted to nurse at dinner time. This meant I would hold nurse her in one arm while trying to eat with the other. God help me if she was nursing on the right breast, because that meant I had to eat left-handed and I suck at doing anything left handed, unless it’s nursing. So I spent another two months trying to get through that and eat a meal. Any meal, because once Cassie realized I could nurse her at dinner, she also had to nurse at breakfast and lunch too. So my meals became catch as catch can.

Then Cassie grew big enough to eat in a high chair. I remember the day we got the high chair. It was like mana from heaven. I could not put that sucker together fast enough. Cassie had been waking up to nurse several times a night for the previous three weeks. She was, quite frankly going through a growth spurt and couldn’t get enough breast milk to keep her satisfied. With a high chair, however, she could now sit at the table and eat solid food… if you consider runny rice cereal solid. I remember that first meal. I spooned some rice cereal into her mouth. She spit it back out. I spooned in some more cereal. She spit it back out again. I kept spooning and she kept spitting out until after twenty minutes of feeding, I had what looked like a small sculpture of a child covered in pigeon poop. It took a few meals before Cassie caught on that she was supposed to EAT the cereal. So we progressed slowly, going from rice cereal to oatmeal, then barley to mixed cereal, and then the veggies (the orange ones first of course, because they stain so badly). And from veggies we went to fruits and from fruits to meats and by that point I was sick of spoon feeding my child. You see, I would have to feed her first and then hope that she would be quiet enough for me to get a meal myself. This very rarely ever happened, and to this day I can’t fathom why it took me so long to lose all the pregnancy weight, because I never got to eat. Well, actually I did, but it was more like grab something out of the pantry and gobble it down whenever Cassie gave me a free moment. Half the time I never even saw what I was stuffing in my face, and I’m pretty sure a few times I grabbed cat food instead of people food. Hmmmm. Maybe that’s why I didn’t lose the weight…

In any event, it was high time, for Cassie to feed herself. Thus began the days of finger foods. I thought this would make life easier. I was wrong. Cassie’s typical meal consisted of things like Cheerios, shredded cheese, cut up and served with little bits of bread, maybe some diced up lunch meat. And milk. She always had milk. In fact, she’d usually ignore the rest of the food and just drink milk. The kid lived on a diet of milk and air, I swear to you. I remember when I gave her spaghetti, the meal that went everywhere – in her hair, on her face, all over her body, all over the dining room, down her diaper… Some of it must have made it into her mouth because it also came out of her diaper again later on.

She’d eat Cheerios, but only if they were properly prepared. Cassie liked to put them in her mouth, get them good and gummy, and then hide them under the lining of her high chair. The next day, she would crawl over to the chair, pull up, and dig out those stale, gooey Cheerios and stuff them in her mouth. The first time I caught her doing this, she just waved at me and smiled, soggy cereal spilling out the corners of her mouth.

But those days were easy compared to what came next. As Cassie got older, she also became pickier. Suddenly, I was spending 20 minutes trying to figure out what to feed her, only to have her reject the entire plate night after night. She got top of the line kids meals, while I only had five minutes to heat up leftovers for myself and Michael. It was miserable. I finally decided Cassie would have to eat what we were eating, because I just couldn’t keep catering to her. And if she refused the food? Well, she could go to be hungry. And that’s pretty much how meals went for the next couple of years. Then Sam came along and we went through the same routine all over again. At least Sam wasn’t colicky, but she did insist on nursing through every single meal I sat down to.

Now we’re back to finger foods again and once more I find myself trying to feed to picky eaters. We eat a lot of leftovers in our house, and Cassie hates leftovers so she walks away from a full plate a lot of times. Sam, on the other hand, will eat everything in sight. However, I can’t get the food on the table fast enough for her. So while Cassie sits there and whines, “I don’t like this!” Sam sits there and screams to be fed. Meanwhile I’m running around the kitchen like crazy trying to get somebody eat something.

Because Cass rejects so many meals, I’ve had to come up with a strategy to keep her from wasting away. When I put her meal on the table, I tell her how many bits of each item on her plate she has to eat in order to get a treat. For example, she must eat four bites of steak, five bits of yams, and six bites of green beans. This sort of works. At least the meal is no longer a battle. Cassie eats the prescribed number of bites and she can have a treat. If she doesn’t she can leave the table but no treat. Still, this plan has its flaws.

“Mommy how many numbers do I have to eat?” she asks.

“You have to have seven bites of green beans, five bites of yams and four bites of steak,” I tell her.

Cassie pokes around at her plate until everything is good and mixed up. “Mommy, I’m done. Can I have a treat?”

“Uh, no. All you did is mix things up. You have to put the food in your mouth, chew it and swallow.”

“How many bites?”

“Seven bites of green beans, five bites of yams and four bites of steak,” I repeat.

Cassie draws the meal out into a long torturous process. I have to watch every single bite as it goes into her mountain. Otherwise, I have no idea how much she actually ate or whether or not she deserves a treat. While I’m watching her, I’m also trying desperately to cut up food for Sam to eat. Even with my little “bites” strategy, Cassie will still often leave the table with her plate untouched. I have made a mistake a few times of taking the food off Cassie’s plate and sliding onto Sam’s tray instead of saving it for Cass to eat later. Sam is always happy to eat whatever Cassie rejected. Unfortunately, every time I do this, Cassie invariably comes back right before bedtime and says, “I’m still hungry,” and of course we have nothing to feed her so we have to put together another plate for her to reject yet again.

The strange thing about feeding two kids as opposed to one is that this time around, I’m actually losing weight. Remember, no matter how many meals I missed because of Cassie, I still couldn’t drop those last ten pounds. Now however, I’m turning into the amazing shrinking mommy. In fact, I weight ten pounds less than I did when I got pregnant with Sam. Some of you might think this is a good thing. It isn’t. I don’t want to lose this much weight. I am not trying to lose weight, and I am in fact eating as much as I can, and exercising less than normal, and yet I’m still slowly losing weight. The pounds are dropping away and I’m afraid if I stand in the shower one day I’ll slip down the drain. My clothes just hang on me. I know for a fact my pants are going to fall off one day and I’m going to moon everybody in public. And people keep telling me I look too thin, or else I look ill.

I went to a doctor, who drew six vials of blood, thus making me 3 pounds lighter. The test results came back negative for everything. No thyroid, problems, no diseases, no nothing. I go back on Monday to decide what to do next. Maybe I’ve somehow discovered how to live on air, like Cassie does. Who knows? I can tell you one thing though. Both kids are asleep right now. I think while no one is watching I’m going to grab myself a meal.

Mommy Milestones

Today in mommy history…

  • Cassie moved up to the four-year-old room at her preschool. She recognizes all her letters and numbers and likes to draw pictures of her and Mommy.
  • Sam sat up for the first time all on her own, and then got scared because she couldn’t figure out how to get back down on her tummy. She’s cutting another tooth as well, which will make a grand total of three once it comes through.
  • Mommy got to talk to another adult on the phone and actually got through most of the conversation without having to scream for quiet. Mommy also got bit by Sam’s aforementioned teeth while nursing.

    Ow!

Two Boobies, One Baby, No Exceptions

Had some fun today over at Rick and Cindy’s house. We went over to watch a friend of ours march in the Rose Bowl parade (she was one of the biker scout storm troopers that marched for George Lucas). While we were there, Sam started to fuss so I sat down to nurse her. I made the mistake of sitting on the couch next to Rick and his daughter, Izzie. Izzie is just ten days older than Sam, and also breast fed. As soon as Izzie saw what Sam was doing, she started leaning toward me, gazing at me very intently. Her look said it all. “Give me boobies… I want boobies… Give Izzie boobies…” I swear, I’ve never been hypnotized before in my life, but Izzie came pretty damn close to doing it. I explained to her that my boobies were for Sam only, but at that point she looked ready to leap out of Rick’s arms and latch on to me no matter what. Fortunately, her mommy was on hand to supply what Izzie wanted.

Blow-Off Week – Two Frustrated Artists And A Hungry Baby

Remember last time Michael took a business trip and left me home all alone with an infant and a preschooler? Remember our little discussion about Blow-Off Day? Well, how about today we talk about Blow-Off Week.

It had not been my intention to completely blow off work, exercise, play dates, house cleaning and all the rest of my daily grind this week, but due to circumstances way beyond my control, everything I had planned to do has gone right out the window. See, Michael left for Alabama on Monday. My parents, who spent a week riling up the grandkids, left yesterday. Sam developed a fever on Sunday and has done nothing but nurse since then, and Cassie has been her usual exuberant, tantrum-prone self. And me? I’m just plain wiped out.

Michael won’t be home until sometime Friday evening. In between now and then, I somehow have to keep Cassandra occupied and satisfy a ravenous baby. Both tasks are impossible. Attempting to accomplish some meaningful work at the same time is even more so. I had thought that I might catch a break last night. I nursed Sam early and then gave Cassie plenty of crayons, glitter pens and construction paper along with instructions to draw scary ghosts for our Halloween decorations. I figured a well-fed baby plus an occupied preschooler would equal free time for me. Naturally, that plan backfired.

Cassie, seated at table surrounded by a mountain of craft supplies: “Mommy, I can’t draw ghosts.”

Me, reaching for my drawing pad in hopes of doing some sketching: “Of course you can, sweetie. You drew lots of ghosts yesterday.”

Cassie: “No I didn’t. I can’t draw ghosts.”

Sam, lying on her full, distended belly on the play mat: “Waaaah!”

Me, pulling pencils, erasers, and a sharpener from my art box: “You’re not hungry Sam. Cassie, you drew ghosts for Grandmama just last night, remember?”

Cassie, pushing her construction paper away: “That was ghosts for Grandmama. I can’t draw ghosts now.”

Sam, rolling over onto her back and discovering she is now stuck there: “Waaaaaaaaaah! Waaaaah!”

Me, pushing the paper back toward Cassie: “Sam, you just ate. You’re FINE, trust me. Cassie, why not draw more ghosts for Grandmama and we’ll mail them to her?”

Cassie, dropping the paper on the floor: “I can’t. I need markers.”

Me, pencil in hand, ready to sketch: “I don’t know where your markers are right now, sweetie. Use the glitter pens I gave you. You like the glitter pens.”

Cassie, pushing the glitter pens away: “I want markers. Miss Erica let us play with markers in class today.”

Sam, scrunching up her face and turning beet red: “WAAAAAAAAAH! WAAAAAAH!! WAAAAAAAAAAAAH!!!!!”

The conversation halts as a gargantuan fart explodes from Sam’s dinky little butt. The resulting shockwaves are strong enough to knock me senseless while simultaneously launching Sam into the air. She lands in my lap and grabs at my left breast. I regain consciousness just in time to prevent her from gnawing a hole through my shirt to get at my nipple. I can barely fend her off long enough to get my shirt up and my nursing bra open.

Cassie, ignoring my current plight: “We have markers in the craft bin, Mommy. Can you go get them for me?”

Me, as Sam proceeds to latch on and Hoover all the milk from my body; the suction is so intense, it’s a wonder I don’t implode: “My hands are a little full right now, sweetie. Could you please just use the glitter pens?”

Cassie, rolling her eyes: “Mommy, I’m an artist! You just don’t understand.”

Me, wearily eyeing my drawing pad which will remain untouched for yet another evening: “Trust me, Cass. I understand far better than you think.”

So that’s how the week has gone so far, and how I expect it will continue to go. I have plans to write and draw, but realize that I’m probably going to have to chuck all of that at a moment’s notice. Oh well. It’s Blow-Off Week. I’ll just keep doing the best I can.

***

I still haven’t made it to the scanner yet to scan in my cartoon from this past weekend. However, I managed to get this done on the computer yesterday. It’s a portrait of Cassandra. I think it’s a rather stunning likeness.

Flash illustration of Cassandra Jane, 24 October 2006.

20 Things I Can Do While Breastfeeding

This is my second go around on the whole breastfeeding thing. I nursed Cassie for 18 months. As of yesterday, I’ve nursed Sam for two months. Twenty months is a long time to breastfeed. The beauty of breastfeeding is that it usually leaves at least one hand free, and sometimes two depending on how you do it. Thus I’ve discovered there are a lot of things I can with a baby latched onto me, a good thing to know considering how much of my time gets devoured by feeding the little monster I call my baby. Please keep in mind that I am a professional mom (i.e. I actually have kids), so don’t try any of the below tasks at home unless you’re willing to deal with a potential mess.

1. I can sleep while breastfeeding a baby (well hell, anyone can do that).

2. I can brush a three-year-old child’s hair and dress it up in pretty flowered barrettes while breastfeeding a baby (that’s a little more difficult, especially if said three-year-old won’t hold still).

3. I can brush a three-year-old child’s teeth while breastfeeding a baby (even more difficult because three-year-olds don’t like to have their teeth brushed).

4. I can instruct a three-year-old child on how to bathe herself and end up with a relatively clean kid while breastfeeding a baby (a minor miracle, because three-year-olds also don’t like taking baths).

5. I can answer e-mail, search the net and write erotic stories and/or blog entries on my laptop while breastfeeding a baby (hey, I can’t not work).

6. I can perform a puppet show while breastfeeding a baby (it was a slow day).

7. I can push a three-year-old child on the swing set at our local playground while breastfeeding a baby (and I did it without flashing the entire neighborhood).

8. I can make French toast from scratch for Father’s Day while breastfeeding a baby (a feat that to this day my husband still doesn’t fully appreciate).

9. I can teach a three-year-old to make French toast from scratch and not have it come out burned, while breastfeeding a baby.

10. I can take an eye exam while breastfeeding a baby.

Yes, ladies and gentlemen, there are lots of things a desperate mom can do when she has to. Too bad I can never put any of them on a job application.

Feeding Frenzy

Ugh. Feeding Sam in bed all night last night did not work out like I’d planned. Instead of getting any sleep, I ended up becoming a 24-hour milk bar for a very fussy customer.

We started at 8:30 PM in the glider, where I nursed Sam for an hour. This wasn’t an easy, gentle nursing either, the kind where the baby falls asleep in your lap and just makes the occasional suck for comfort’s sake. This was active, vigorous nursing that started to chafe after the first thirty minutes or so. I tried to let Sam keep going, hoping she’d get her fill and doze off. But when the hour mark hiy and she was still hard at it, I decided it was time to put her down for bed. Not an easy thing to do. I had to wedge a couple fingers into the viselike grip of her tiny jaws and pry them apart. That pissed her off of course, and she instantly went from a hungry but drowsy infant to a flailing, fussy, farting fireball.

It was 9:30 PM at this point, still early enough for me to get a good night’s sleep. Since Sam was only fussing but not actually screaming, I put her in the bouncy chair and left the room. I had this delusion that if I went downstairs for a little while and watched TV, when I came back up she’d be sound asleep. Big mistake. She was quiet up until she heard me enter the upstairs hallway. Then she started to howl. Being too tired to strap her into the front carrier and wear her out downstairs, I just gave in and pulled her into bed with me to nurse.

That was at 10:30 PM. A half hour later at 11, Sam was still nursing. The right side of my body was numb from lying still for so long. Sam, of course, was going full blast, just like earlier and once again I had to pry her off. She immediately started crying and grunting and hyperventilating, so I rolled over and let her have the other breast. Another half hour went by. By midnight, Sam was quiet but still sucking pretty strong. I pried her off anyway. My nipples were raw. She flailed for a bit, then finally calmed down and went to sleep. At 12:30 AM, I very carefully picked her up and strapped her into the bouncy chair, then went to sleep myself.

I woke up to a lot of grunting and hyperventilating. It was Sam again, of course. Her eyes were closed, but she was going nuts in the bouncy chair. I checked my clock. It was only 1:30 AM. I’d expected her to sleep until at least 2:30. How could she be hungry again that soon? Her eyes weren’t open though, so I thought maybe she was just fussing in her sleep and it would pass. I laid there for an hour listening to her thrash around in the chair. Finally, I gave up and pulled her back in bed again. My nipples still hurt, so I tried pulling her close to me and patting her on the back to lull her back into sleep. She dozed off after a while and I put her back in the bouncy chair.

Thirty minutes later, she was back in bed with me, this time nursing again. I swear, I thought she was going to suck my toenails out through my nipples. We went 40 minutes on one side and then another 20 on the other. My neck and back ached from lying curled around her. I wanted to lie flat on my back, but couldn’t do that and nurse Sam too. After another hour, I pulled her off and put her back in the bouncy chair. She raised a fuss. Then her hiccoughs kicked in. Sam has the loudest, most violent hiccoughs I have ever heard. They sound like large balloons exploding right in your ear. I tried to wait it out, but the noise was too much. I grabbed my pillow and went into the guest room. Even in there, I could still hear her hyperventilating and hiccupping. If an adult hyperventilated like that, they’d have passed out long before. Why couldn’t Sam do the same, I wondered as I pressed my pillow over my head.

At some point, I dozed off. Then I woke up again to the sound of crying. I stumbled into the bedroom and found Michael changing Sam’s diaper. It was 4 AM. He held her and rocked her for a while as I tried to get a little more sleep. Sam wouldn’t calm down. By 4:30, she ended up back in bed with me. Only this time, she was so agitated she wouldn’t latch on. She kept taking the nipple and spitting it back out. Then she’d wail each time I put it back into my bra. It took her a good fifteen minutes to finally hook up to the milk bar.

My usual wake up time of 5:30 AM came and went. Sam kept nursing. At around 6, she finally detached herself and went to sleep. I thought briefly about trying to put her back in the bouncy chair but by this time my back, neck and shoulders had seized up so that I resembled a giant question mark. Being unable to unlock my stiffened spine, I laid there and suffered before finally drifting off myself.

We woke up just before 8 AM, when Cassie came in looking for us. What a sweet child. What a loveable darling. No matter how bad her temper tantrums are at times, she does sleep through the night. How can you not love a child who does that?
Meanwhile, the human piranha dozed peacefully with her face tucked into my armpit. Michael took Cassie downstairs. I spent half an hour straightening my spine until I could finally get out of bed. Sam snoozed peacefully as I transferred her back to the bouncy chair. I took a shower and brushed my teeth. She never so much as sighed.

So Sam binged on milk all night long. Now I am dead tired, which means I will be facing my own feeding frenzy today, stuffing my face to sate my fatigue-induced craving for sugar and carbs. The only good thing about this is that I now weigh three pounds less today than I did yesterday. How much do you want to bet that Sam weighs three pounds more?