I could write about how I had to pause between hurling spells to nurse my baby, or I could complain about how my once abundant milk production has dwindled to mere drops in my dehydrated state. I could tell you that I’d rather get sick with anything, ANYTHING, other than vomiting. I could even, were I so selfishly inclined, go on and on about how miserable the last few months have been and how I’ve never been sick so often with so many different afflictions and WHAT THE HELL IS GOING ON, but… I won’t. Suffice it to say I am better now, I can lift my 20 pound son again without falling immediately to my knees, and I look endearingly emaciated. (Whu-huh!?) It’s just that as I lay in bed yesterday with my mouth hanging open and my eyes sliding in and out of focus, my 18-year-old sister, with barely concealed jealousy, came in and said “If it’s any consolation, you look anorexic.” Oh did I say endearingly emaciated? I think I meant SCARY AS ALL HELL.

Ok, so I’m better. Thank You, sweet Jesus. (Which is what I said every single time I picked my brittle bones off the bathroom floor. “Thank You, Jesus, that I didn’t die that time. Somewhere in the middle just now, I thought I was a goner for sure, but I made it!”)

In other news, my sister, who has been staying with us for almost two months, and my parents, who have been here almost one month, all moved back home today. The house feels a lot bigger and emptier than I remember, which makes me feel oddly blue. Also it’s a lot cleaner. (rimshot!) But seriously. Honestly I’m kind of worried Noah’s going to be major bored when he realizes the only faces he gets to see are mine and Lance’s anymore. I’ll have to buy him some more toys. Or maybe I’ll teach him how to pull Lucy’s tail tomorrow.

What else can I tell you that’s not about BARFING ALL NIGHT? Lance gave me an amazing neck-and-shoulder massage last night – oh wait. THAT’S BECAUSE THEY WERE SO SORE FROM ALL THE BARFING. Well, I tried.

Me! Crafty! As in one who makes, even enjoys making, crafts! Also as in one who has asked for not the usual slew of new clothing, but her very own sewing machine for her birthday, with which she eventually plans to make her own clothing! I promise I’m still sarcastic, though. I’m still me, somewhere down there, underneath all that glue and construction paper.

Anyway, I made Noah this Origami crane mobile! All by myself! With the help of an easy youtube You Can Make an Origami Crane, Too video!

The best part was Noah’s reaction. I documented it for you. Well, really I documented it for me, but you can share in my joy. It was the best thing ever, and it left me wondering what else I can fold from paper and hang from the ceiling in order to see that big gummy smile again.

You have to imagine it with all the squeals and frantic kicks of his chubby legs, too.

Oh yeah. On my way to becoming Supermom, y’all. It almost makes up for that time I was wearing a pointy necklace when I picked Noah up from his crib, and then he bashed his head into it and started screaming bloody murder. Almost.

Before he was born, I started praying about the sleeping thing. See I had heard this thing about babies: “The thing about babies is, they don’t sleep.” And I was all, “Nuh-uh, my baby is going to sleep because I don’t function when I don’t sleep and I’m going to pray about it.” So I did, and I got other people to pray about it for me; any time anyone asked me what they could pray for about the new baby, I always said “pray that he sleeps good.” And FYI, if you’re one of those people who likes to tell pregnant women “Get all the sleep you can now cause you won’t be sleeping after the baby comes!” PLEASE STOP. If I had had a sleep bank and I could have stored it up and I could just make a withdrawal after he was born, I would have done that. But is that a real thing? Didn’t think so.

Every night as I lay down after Noah’s late-night feeding, I prayed to (read: begged) the Lord to have mercy on me by letting my son sleep. When I eventually lost faith that Noah could sleep through the night, I started asking God for just four hours. After many nights, I lost faith for four hours and started asking God for just three. It wasn’t working, and I felt angry with God. Angry, and confused. It wasn’t even that He was ignoring my prayers; He was seeming to do the OPPOSITE of what I was asking Him – the harder I prayed, the less Noah slept. It was so simple really, and I know so many other mothers who boast that their child started sleeping through the night much earlier than Noah. All I was asking was for Noah to sleep. What was God doing to me?

With each passing night and still no sleep, anger turned to hopelessness. My prayers were shallow, holding less and less faith. “Let him sleep four hours” became “let him sleep um… as long as possible.” Fatigue, anger, and anxiety accompanied me every night, and I felt like I was reaching the end of my rope as Noah woke up more and more frequently. My faith that God cared for me and my tiny needs was dying. I prayed a different way every night, thinking maybe God was waiting for the perfect word order before He would act. None of my words mattered. I felt like God had turned a deaf ear to my pleas. As my faith waned I started feeling guilty for my prayers; after all, there were many people so much less fortunate than me. Who was I to pray for sleep when thousands of people in Haiti were still suffering? And I didn’t have faith or energy to keep praying prayers that were just bouncing off the ceiling.

So I quit praying about it. And the question started echoing around in my head, burning into my skull: “does prayer even matter? Isn’t God just going to do what God’s going to do regardless of what I ask Him?” My faith that God could “move mountains” or even do ANYTHING about Noah was almost dead. In desperation, I tried shifting my focus, and one night I prayed this instead: “When Noah wakes up tonight, help me discern what he needs, and give me strength to deal with it.” I just knew God would like that prayer. He was sure to answer IT.

Now, a good end to this blog post would be for me to tell you all about how fantastic that night was, that I woke up with energy and had the supernatural ability to deal not only every time Noah woke up, but the next morning, too. I’m sorry to disappoint you, Reader. What actually happened is that at 1:30am, half an hour after I’d fed Noah and put him back to bed and maybe 10 minutes after I’d dozed off, he woke up again, and I flipped my shit. I started crying, sat up and punched the pillow. Lance tried to hug me and I slapped him off me. Then I held out my arms and yelled at the room: “HE’S SUPPOSED TO BE ABLE TO SLEEP FOR SIX HOURS NOW! WHY CAN’T HE SLEEP FOR SIX HOURS?! WHY!”

Oh yeah. I rock as a mom so far. I think later I’ll smoke a nice big cigarette while I watch my baby play with knives.

The psalmist David, in the midst of all his trials, said “I am still confident of this: I will see the goodness of the Lord in the land of the living. Wait for the Lord; be strong and take heart and wait for the Lord.” I like to think he was like me: reminding his soul what his heart had forgotten. Maybe he, like me, didn’t see the Lord moving the way he wanted. Maybe he, too, was discouraged, losing hope with each new disappointment. But he’s talking to himself, willing himself to be strong, trust in the Lord’s goodness, and wait for God to act.

I hope you aren’t disappointed by this, Reader, but I don’t have the answer yet. I don’t even have a lesson for you to take away from reading this or a great way to wrap it up. I promise to do a follow-up post when I’m the perfect Christian mother with the perfect, sleeping son and a renewed understanding of God’s mysterious ways. The truth is, I’m wrestling in my faith. I’m wondering where God is in this and why He hasn’t acted on my behalf. Something so small, a baby not sleeping at night (which yes, I know, it’s what babies do), is testing me. It’s so much more than Noah not sleeping. It’s about my hope in my First Love. Do I still believe the Lord is good? Do I believe He is kind? Do I believe that he cares about even my smallest needs? This post, y’all, is the essence of my entire blog. After everything I’ve been through on my spiritual journey, I’m still in Kadesh.

I’m trying to do what David said; I’m choosing to look for the Lord’s goodness. I’m trying to be strong, take heart, and wait on the Lord.

You’ve reached the magic age according to your doctor and many of Mommy’s friends with kids. Everyone swears you will become a saint starting this month. A sleeping, happy, gasless little angel.

….

Well, I’ve never wanted a son who fits into a mold, anyway. You’re your own baby, and I appreciate that. This month you’ve decided to do a lot of things your own way, like sleeping until 1am, then deciding that’s enough sleep for one night. You’re a busy man, with things to do and places to be! You’ve also decided that schedules are not for you. Lord knows I tried to make you love them so you could be like Mommy, but you’ve already rebelled against them. You’ll eat when you want to eat, thank you very much. And you’ll sleep when you feel like it. And if your Daddy or I try to manipulate you to do things our way, you’ll remind us who the boss is around here. Your Daddy actually mentioned that it might be easier on all of us if we either A) alter OUR schedule so that we sleep all day and stay awake all night (eating as much as we want starting around midnight), or B) move to Japan. I laughed at his joke at first, but after a month of no sleep I am beginning to think he has a point. Japan is cool. At least in the pictures, the people all look cool.

This month has been very important. Your Aunt Ellen has been staying with us, which means you are getting more and more spoiled. And because you make cuter and happier sounds every day, we are convinced that you are about to explode with giggles any day now. We’ve been trying to help get that party started, and one day while we were tickling you or singing to you or making faces for you or something, as is our custom, you gave us a little “heh, heh, heh” chuckle. Sadly, you haven’t done it since then, because your Aunt Ellen and I erupted in such screams of elation that we scared the holy living shit out of you, and I guess you decided never to do anything like that ever again for fear of us jumping on top of your head.

In between defending your life with every semi-laugh that escapes your lips, you’re figuring out how your hands work. When you nurse now, you play with my shirt or my hair, or you hit yourself in the face repeatedly. I’m not sure what that’s about, but you don’t seem to be in any kind of pain, and if I pull your hand away you just start doing it again, so I guess I’ll chalk it up to some weird developmental phase. Also, when we lay you down on your play mat now, you know how to touch the hanging toys. You punch the life out of the elephant with one hand, and you grab onto the octopus with the other hand. (And of course, you talk to them. I try not to eavesdrop because I know I should respect your private conversations, but your words and gurgly sounds are so darn cute I can’t help myself.)

Your favorite place in all the world is still the bath, and your favorite state of being is still Nude. You still holler when we put you in your car seat, the Baby Bjorn, your stroller… really anything where you have to be strapped down. You’re not about that. You like to be free, on your back, preferably naked, waving your arms and kicking your legs. You still need to be swaddled to fall asleep, but you are officially Houdini and you can wrestle your little arms out of the tightest burrito blanket we can wrap. Then you start crying because you don’t know what to do or how to fall asleep without your arms tucked in. This happens oh, you know, ALL NIGHT LONG. Man, I am excited for when you know what to do with those hands of yours that just keep zooming past your face at warp speed and waking you up. OH THE SLEEP THAT WILL BE HAD.

You’re so huge now I can’t believe it. Someone asked me if you were seven months old the other day. SEVEN MONTHS! That’s how big you are, Bubbs! You’ve outgrown all your three-month clothes, and you’re working on being too big for your six-month clothes now, too. Your Daddy looked at you nursing this morning and couldn’t believe how far off my lap your legs hang, and when your Aunt Ellen and I looked back at your newborn pictures a few days ago I am not ashamed to admit that I shed a tear (or two, or five. Don’t judge Mommy… you’ll learn that I’m very emotional and you must accept me for who I am, ok?).

But my favorite moments as your Mommy are on the mornings when your Daddy and I lay you between us and the three of us cuddle up together, with you waving your hands around and talking to us and us dropping in and out of sleep. You’re the best part of waking up, because your little face smiles at me no matter what time it is that you’ve deemed wake-up-time.

The other day I went to see a movie with your Grammy and your Aunt Ellen. I was ok during the movie, confident your Daddy was taking good care of you, but missing you all the same. But then I got out of the movie and called to see how you were doing, and your Daddy told me you hadn’t eaten any of the bottle I left for you and you were being pretty fussy. I can’t explain how it felt, knowing that you needed me and not being able to be right by your side. From that moment until I picked you up and held you again, I had a very hard time breathing, Bubba. I even considered getting a paper bag to hyperventilate into. The truth is I can’t stand being away from you, and even though your Pappy tells me I have to get over it, I am not sure I ever will. I think for the rest of your life, whenever we’re not together, I will feel your absence and your Daddy will have to remind me how to breathe deeply and slowly until I can see you again.

Love,
Mommy

p.s. Please start sleeping. Please. Please.

How sweet.

I don’t know about you, but this is what I pictured before I had Noah when I thought about nursing him. My biggest fear was that I’d have sore nipples, and I was all, I can total deal with that dude; breast is best and I’m on my way to becoming Supermom. Here’s a little something I’ve learned since I gave birth to my son. This is for all you pregnant ladies out there. Listen up. Ready?

BREASTFEEDING IS FREAKIN’ HARD, Y’ALL.

Did you get that? Because here is a list of people who will not tell you: your doctor, your baby’s doctor, your mom, your grandma, your girlfriends with kids, the author of your favorite book, God. They will all tell you that it is awesome, and that you will love it, and that it is TOTALLY NATURAL, and that it takes oh, a tiny insignificant amount of time to get the hang of it but then you’ll never ever want to wean your baby because of how wicked beautiful it is to nurse him. I am the only one who will tell you like it is. Which is the reason you are reading this, right? Right.

I was beginning to worry when I noticed that Noah was oh, SCREAMING IN AGONY EVERY TIME I NURSED HIM. I called the lactation consultant after a couple of days of this. I wanted to know if there was a chance it could be something in my diet, like dairy. She literally scoffed at me, told me to stop reading things on the internet, and that it was probably just a tummy ache. (According to her, all babies get tummy aches at four weeks old.) (That’s bullshit.) Her advice was to “give it a couple of days.”

**A couple of days later**

I pull my screaming son up after another horrible nursing session and begin walloping his back to try and get him to burp. I was at my wit’s end because this breastfeeding thing was so awful almost every single time we did it. I was jealous of moms who talked about “comfort nursing.” Noah HATED nursing and screamed if I even held him close in my arms unless he was really hungry. And when he WAS really hungry? Well, let’s just say that pounding his back was the only thing that seemed to get him to calm down after a couple of gulps. I called the pediatrician to ask if we should give him gas drops, and we started shoving meds down his little throat every time he ate. He was never eating more than five minutes at a time, because of all the screaming you see. Apparently screaming makes it hard to swallow. I don’t know for sure, I mean I’ve never tried, but that’s what I assume based on the pool of milk that I watched dribble out of his mouth during the screaming.

So I cut dairy out of  my diet.

Did you read that? NO. DAIRY. Also NO HAPPINESS.

For a month, I didn’t eat cheese. For a month, I had zero happiness. (I’m just kidding.) (Kind of.)

**A month later**

I pull my screaming son up after another horrible nursing session and begin walloping his back to try and get him to burp. (Hey, at least it wasn’t dairy!)

I had a talk with a couple of people, including my pediatrician and my friend Calla Maria, who is studying to be a midwife and, incidentally, had taken a breastfeeding class. They both said the same thing: “Maybe you have a too-strong let-down reflex.” Do you know what this means, Reader? It means that my breasts, in their eagerness to feed the son of my womb, were over-producing so much that the second he dared a gentle suck they flooded his little mouth with a tsunami of breast milk.

He didn’t like that. Go figure.

Gulping and gasping, he would scrunch his little face in pain and try to keep going, out of hunger, but he just couldn’t. His mouth would rip off my nipple and he’d start screaming, and I started noticing that during this, my nipples were streaming! STREAMING! ON THEIR OWN! ACROSS THE ROOM! A STREAM OF MILK!

So I did what I do best, and started scouring the internets. I found this great website, and on it, I read this:
Does your baby do any of these things?

Gag, choke, strangle, gulp, gasp, cough while nursing as though the milk is coming too fast
Pull off the breast often while nursing
Clamp down on the nipple at let-down to slow the flow of milk
Make a clicking sound when nursing
Spit up very often and/or tend to be very gassy
Periodically refuse to nurse
Dislike comfort nursing in general

When I read this… I can’t explain. I was like going, yes, yes, YES, YES! YES, THAT TOO! It was like someone had filmed Noah’s life from four weeks on for research and written down their findings. I had no idea what to do about it right then, but I was so relieved that someone had figured out what was wrong with my son and me. IT WAS MAGICAL! I researched some more and talked to the pediatrician, and started strategizing how best to help Noah deal with my torrential boobs. I started expressing some of the milk before I fed him, only feeding him on one side per feeding (to try and slow the crazy milk production), and leaning back so he had to work against gravity to get the milk. Also so it wouldn’t spray directly into his throat and cause him to gulp, thus swallowing air. And, biggest of all for me and my schedule-loving self, I started feeding him on demand. I stopped looking so much at the clock and started paying more attention to his “hunger cues.” When he was really alert, or sucking on his hands, I’d feed him. That way he wasn’t crying and swallowing air before I even began the feeding process. It sucked at first, I admit (no pun intended), because I was feeding him every two hours. Sometimes more. Luckily he’s regulated himself now and he’s back to every two and a half hours.

But it worked. The difference was night and OH HAPPY DAY. Having him eat and then sit up, burp, and SMILE at me… it was like my birthday was every day, and Noah was wearing a little party hat on his balding head. I thought I had it made in the shade. I relaxed. I started seeing why some people actually enjoyed breastfeeding their babies. I was beginning to picture us like the mother and child at the top of this post.

AND THEN I GOT MASTITIS.

Mastitis: inflammation of a breast or an udder. Yeah. My udder? INFLAMED. I woke up one lovely Saturday morning, felt a little dizzy, needed to lie down again, and within an hour had a temperature of 101. And I felt like I was dying. And kind of wished I was dying, incidentally. My doctor called in a prescription for an antibiotic, which I had to take four of, PER DAY, for TWO WEEKS. I also had to buy a probiotic to make sure that Noah didn’t lose all the good little bacteria in his body.

So why do I keep doing it then, you ask. I know you’re asking, unless you also are a breastfeeding mom, because before I got pregnant I heard a conversation at the gym one day between a new mom and a mom who had older children. The mom with older children was explaining how hard nursing was for her, and how her child had refused to latch, and how it had been painful. The new mom was all “Then why did you keep doing it, if it was so awful?” and I was like walking on the treadmill thinking “Yeah, why’d you keep doing it, Crazytown? Just so you could complain about it later? Sheesh.” And she was kind of taken aback, trying to explain, going “Well, I just knew it was best for my baby… and I felt like a failure if I gave up.”

The truth is everything I just told you, Reader, fades swiftly from my memory every new time I bring my baby up to my breast. Knowing that I am providing him with the best nutrition and comfort, knowing that he needs me, is so precious to me. I don’t understand why I love nursing my son, even after all the trouble it’s been for both of us, but I do. I’m determined to make it work, because it’s best for him and it’s best for me. And regardless of how hard it is, my doctor, my baby’s doctor, my mom, my grandma, my girlfriends with kids, Dr. Sears, and God were all right. I’m going to have a hard time weaning him when the time comes.

Because I hate nursing.

But I love nursing.

((sigh))

Recently, a girl I went to high school with gave birth to twin boys at 27 weeks. I’m friends with her on facebook, and she often updates her status with news about how they are doing. One of the boys weighs almost three pounds now, the other almost two. This is after weight gain since their birth. They are both in ICU of course, and at least one (maybe both, I’m not sure) has to wear earmuffs and eye patches to keep him from using his underdeveloped ears and eyes.

Her status yesterday boasted that she got to hold the stronger of her sons for an hour and a half, and she hoped they’d get to hold the other son soon.

Last night, I woke Noah up so I could nurse him before I went to bed, and I held him as close as I could for as long as I could. Lance came in and cuddled with us too. We just stared at him while he sleepily ate, both tearfully thinking the same thing without saying anything. Noah is healthy, so wonderfully healthy and big, and we can hold him whenever we want to. I feel ashamed that it takes hearing the hopeful status updates from a mother that rejoices in holding her baby for such a short time to make me realize how fucking blessed I am. (Sorry, Lance’s mom. There is no other word for how emphatically I mean it. I resisted the urge to type it in all caps, at least.)

I’ll probably post my oh-so-me breastfeeding post sometime later this week. But today, I’m not feeling funny enough. And I’m definitely not feeling like complaining. I’m feeling like the world’s luckiest woman. I’m feeling like I can’t wait for Noah to wake up so I can hold him again and hear him talk to me. I’m feeling painfully aware how unfair it is that a mother wouldn’t get to hold her babies or take them home with her at night. I’m feeling like praying for someone I hardly know, and asking you, dear Reader, to do the same.

Me: “Old MacDonald had a farm!”

Together: “E-I-E-I-O!”

Me: “And on this farm he had a dog. E-I-E-I— what?”

Lance: “A dog? Really?”

Me: “What! A farm dog!”

Lance: “Huh. Ok, then.”

Me: “With a woof woof here and a woof woof there.”

Together: “Here a woof there a woof everywhere a woof woof. Old MacDonald had a farm. E-I-E-I-O!”

Me: “And on this farm he had a…. goose.”

Together: “E-I-E-I-O!”

Me: “With a… um… a honk honk here and a honk honk there, here a honk there a honk everywhere a honk honk…”

Lance: “Old MacDonald had a drunk goose. E-I-E-I-O!”

Me: “It’s not a drunk goose. It’s just a goose. Geese say ‘honk’.”

Lance: “What’s a farmer doing with a dog and a goose anyway? What kind of farmer is this?”

Me: “Fine, YOU come up with one of the animals then.”

Lance: “Ok. Old MacDonald had a farm.”

Together: “E-I-E-I-O!”

Lance: “And on this farm he had a…. rabbit.”

Me: “A rabbit? A rabbit.”

Lance: “Yes! A rabbit!”

Me: “A rabbit is certainly no more a farm animal than a dog or a goose.”

Lance: “aHEM.”

Together: “E-I-E-I-O! With a—-” [blink, blink]

…..[blink, blink, blink]

Lance: “…HERE and a — there! Here a — there a — everywhere a ———!”

Together: “Old MacDonald had a farm! E-I-E-I-O!”

Me: “What the heck does a rabbit say?”

Lance: “Let’s sing something else.”