All the Horrible Girliness

Usually, when the kid is done eating, he releases my breast and collapses into the Boppy pillow, his eyes closed, completely blissed out. He looks exactly like the kids in Trainspotting after they've injected themselves with heroin. This is my cue to put him down to sleep, which has been working beautifully for a couple of weeks now.

However, starting at about 3 AM this morning, he decided he didn't like this way of doing things anymore. Now, he just wants to sleep while still attached, and at no other time.

It's called cluster feeding, I think, when they want to suck for five minutes at a time, every thirty minutes, instead of allowing you to have any kind of life. I'm looking down at him now. He needs a bath and a change, a swaddling and a nap, but I know if I move him an iota he will wake, screaming, demanding another frou-frou French kind of meal. This must be what it's like for all-night Denny's waitresses when the tables are taken up with high school kids who nurse one bottomless cup of coffee for six hours and leave a thirty-cent tip.

If I were alone here, I'd do the bathing and changing and whatever, and just let him scream. But his grandparents live here, and when he screams, they come to find out why. And he likes to scream when they're around. Today he spent fifteen minutes staring contentedly at the mesh side of his playpen, listening to Nat King Cole, while I straightened up his room and sang along. The minute his grandmother came down the hall to see how things were going, he perked up and screamed. This happens all the time. My in-laws must think he does nothing but scream.

posted by Samus @ 8:34 PM