Spice woes / Bottles

We were up aaalll night dealing with a number of things, most especially a nursing strike. I was having a stressed-out day yesterday for abuse-anniversary and dentist reasons, and so in the interest of self-care and general laziness, I ordered pizza. With pepperoni, which we almost never get.

And apparently Noah hates it (this is my best guess) because he hunger-cried, drank, shrieked in indignation, slept 20 minutes - etc. - all night long. I pumped (and dumped) a bit in between to get the nastymilk out, and by 6 this morning it was sorted out. But in the meantime it was horrid. It's somehow deeply distressing to have a hungry baby and have him treat the breasts like poison. I admit that, on top of the rest of things, it pushed me to sit in the rocking chair and cry a little.

And you know, Noah went to sleep while I was. I was feeling guilty that perhaps his upset was not just the pepperoni but that I was having a somewhat-hard day underneath the calming routine of playtime and naps and feedings and such. But I think it really was the milk. This may be one of those cases where the expectations on mothers to be calm and sainted and never upset is a bit of a crock. I certainly believe that a totally stressed mum will affect her kids, and that's one reason I went for pizza. But I also saw that it's not the complete end of the world to be human, too. Yay.

This morning my mother dropped by unexpectedly with a friend of hers at about 10 am and I was in my pyjamas and my hair was a wreck. But you know what? It was okay. Another yay. I'm glad I have decent pyjamas that are more like "loungewear" though. And she brought a gift from a godmother-type individual (to me, not Noah): a Pack 'n Go! Oh my god! Spiff baby gear!

This afternoon I had a root canal. Readers of my other journal may remember that we used to have a severe dental phobia, because of childhood shit and threats, that we have been working on with the help of a really good caring dentist. And generally speaking we're fine with routine dental stuff now. But this was our first root canal, and the whole idea was a little freaky, especially since we'd had no pain or anything to make it look appealing by comparison. So that was the stress. It went fine, so far. The freezing is still wearing off. :) I have revowed to make sure Noah grows up flossing, which (besides brushing, which is a given) is the number one way to prevent all this kind of nastiness.

On Noah's end, he had to do without Mummy and tits for 2 hours, but I had pumped some milk (before the pizza, thank god, and believe me I thought about using it in the night but decided we needed to work out how to work the spice issue out) and put it in a bottle.

Carl tried when Noah got fussy, but he didn't get the hang of it yet (although Carl said he got the taste of some milk and calmed down, he just didn't keep going). He wasn't all that starved by the time they picked me up, anyway. But it was a first step towards being able to take a class in January, which I am really hoping to do - one class. One night a week, for me and my adult brain. If I can manage to tear myself away. After the root canal I felt like I'd been away from my baby forever. Which may inspire a post later on, but right now it's time to go dance around and kiss some baby toes. :)