Well, rats.
I was doing just fine until about ten minutes ago, when the boy (looking at a picture we took of the girl on Monday) said that the picture was sad, because she's looking at the camera with her little half-smile and no idea what's ahead of her (which turned out to be several hours of hunger and misery as she refused all efforts to feed her).
Now I feel gut-punched and guilty.
Fingers crossed that she eats tomorrow.
(Which I guess is, if I'm being pedantic about it, today already.)
Daycare, Day One: The Hunger Strike
My first day at work, while slow and long, was pretty good. I settled in, luxuriated in the company of adults, caught up on Blogging Baby enough to discover that the girl made photo of the day, and finally got into a good groove with the breast pump.
The girl's first day at daycare, however, was not so good.
I had two main fears about the girl's first day in daycare. Fortunately, they were at such opposite ends of possibility that there simply wasn't a worst case scenario in which both could occur at the same time.
This, I am telling myself, is the silver lining.
The first fear was that the girl would like it so much, she wouldn't want to come home.
The second fear was that she wouldn't eat.
As you might be able to tell by the title, she chose anxiety door number two.
Were I less alarmed by the listless, sad baby I was met with at the end of my day, I'd be in awe of her stubborn refusal to take milk from anything other than the breast. She wouldn't take it in a bottle. She wouldn't take it in a cup. She would not take it on a spoon. She would not take it on the moon. She would not take it mixed with rice, for milk
sans boobie isn't nice.
Three bottles of milk went down the drain instead of down her throat.
I think those three bottles involved five separate pumping sessions. The mind boggles and the mama weeps. I mean, FIVE hellish pumping sessions for naught but the sewer.
Twenty minutes of nursing and a cuddle later, and my wilting little flower perked right up and was her usual chipper self, so I think if we can get past the part where she's not eating, she'll get to work on maternal anxiety the first.
Tonight, we try the Nuby.
Please please please let it be a miracle.
A busy few weeks...
Ever have one of those days/weeks/months where you spend a lot of time composing blog entries in your head while showering/driving/diaper changing? And then, for whatever reason, you never have time to type it out, so the world is forever denied your deepest thoughts on whatever it was you felt was so very important while you were blindly groping for the shampoo bottle and/or baby wipes?
Yeah, me too.
Guess who starts working outside the home next week? Guess who starts at, yes, the local Kindercare, the one I'd previously mentioned back at the beginning of this daycare hunt?
That would be a: me; and b: the girl.
It's contract work again, in a job I've done before with people I know I work with well. The budget will loosen somewhat, but not all that much, as contract work is an unstable thing, and we'll need to save up for when I'm out of the workforce again.
My mood's been zipping back and forth so much that I've got mental whiplash.
I'm really looking forward to time with adults, enough money that one unexpected expense won't break us completely, and to the girl having some interaction with humans who are not me. (Let us face it: I'm pretty boring during the day. All I really do for party tricks is read her silly books about hippos, make random animal sounds, and play airplane. I seldom stray from the house proper, am far less entertaining a peek-a-boo player than the boy, and I've got this pesky habit of wanting to wander off and use the bathroom. Plus, I won't let her eat the cats or my library books or whatever she's managed to find on the floor. I'm a total killjoy.)
On the other hand, I'm going to be handing my baby over to strangers for most of her waking hours. In a place with no kitties. Where she'll have to compete with OTHER BABIES for attention. Instead of napping curled up against a nice, warm breast after a long liquid lunch fresh from the tap, it'll be boob from a bottle and going solo in a crib. We'll have to put her in disposabutts during the day, unless we jump through a million hoops and claim medical necessity for the cloth.
So there is guilt. Hell, I had my first anxiety dream about it last night.
There are other things I'm not looking forward to: riding the plague bus the 15 or so miles to the office, having to wear clothing other than a bathrobe all day long, missing my regular afternoon nap, and the *@%$ breastpump. (It's a perfectly nice pump, as pumps go, but I really cannot state strongly enough how much I dislike pumping.)
The tricky part's going to be avoiding breaking the feast/famine spending habits. We've been a little lax with the budget this week, and we'll be needing to resolve the budget, revamp it, and make ourselves stick to it, and won't that be fun?
It's alarming how easy it is to justify things once you can afford to think about buying them. Just this evening, I was eyeing the fridge and earmarking funds for its replacement before I caught myself and issued a stern reminder that the blasted thing still works. Don't even get me started on the subject of our mattress (too small) and washing machine (too old and cranky).
That said, I am allowing myself ONE completely frivolous purchase under $50. I don't know yet what it will be, but it has to be something I couldn't justify if you paid me. And it has to be for me and me alone. No fancy wool-in-one diapers or dry clean only baby dresses.
In reading news,
Don't Kill Your Baby turned out to be more educational and entertaining than depressing, a result of its focus on 19th and early 20th century trends in medicine and social policy. It really deserves its own entry. (See my opening paragraph.)
(Other things I keep meaning to talk about: parenting choices and judgment, why Hirshman's arguments made me spit nails, and general irritation with the lack of respect for the job of motherhood. So maybe it's for the best that I've been lacking in time lately.)
