When it comes to nursing, you’d think Baby Bug and I had completely different agendas. I want to get the baby fed, she wants to make it into a big production. The bigger and fussier, the better. Baby Bug likes to fake me out with all kinds of tricky moves. Here are some of them:

The first face of Baby Bug is what I like to call “the sneaky weasel”. We usually start out our battle with this face. This is what she does when I place her smack dab in front of my boob. If it was a bear, it would bite her. But no, she cannot see in front of her face. She pulls to the left, she pulls to the right…anywhere but where the boob is. The boob that is practically dripping milk right on her nose.

The second face of Baby Bug is the “flailing mad badger” face. This is the most common face of Baby Bug and what she resorts to most of the time. This is the “I’m-so-hungry-I-can’t-even-keep-my-head-still” face. She sputters and wails and chomps at the air. When I do manage to get her snarling mouth somewhat near my nipple, she bounces her head off my breast like it was some kind of skull trampoline. Or if I’m holding her head, it looks like I’m trying to dribble it off my chest like a small basket ball–which I’m not! Bob, bob, bob goes her head. Flail, flail, flail go her fists pounding me
on both sides wildly. Spittle and milk fly everywhere. It is a messy job being the badger baby.

After about five minutes of the “flailing mad badger” face, Baby Bug wears herself completely out. This usually happens at exactly the same moment that she has finally found my nipple. Right when she’s about to take her first sip of milk, she falls into a deep instant sleep. It’s as if she couldn’t find another calorie of energy to make another move. She lays there like a possum playing dead, not moving a muscle. This lasts for about a minute and then goes immediately back into “flailing mad badger” face. Rinse, repeat.

Occasionally Baby Bug does manage to latch on and when she does, she reveals her most stealth secret move: “the invisible shark teeth” face. She’s a tricky one. You would never guess this is coming as she looks up at you with loving eyes, shaded by long beautiful eyelashes. But just when you let your guard down, she goes in for the kill with a razor sharp bite to exactly the spot on your boob that is the most sore. This always sends me through the roof screaming. Never underestimate the power of a well placed shark bite.

The last face of Baby Bug is “the zen baby” face. This is also a trick. Baby Bug will relax and assume a peaceful blissed-out face. Do not fall for it. It does not mean she is happy and full. It does not mean she wants to be put to bed for some restful sleep. She is just stalling while she saves up energy for the next go around of “the mad flailing badger” face. Either that or she is just telling you that she is, “so over it all already and Mommy needs to chill for five minutes, sheesh!”

But things are going better. Really. I’ve figured out my biggest problem is that my milk lets down too fast. The streams of milk squirting all over and running down my sides into my pants should have been a clue. But what can I say? I’m new at this. I read up on kellymom.com and figured out that expressing somemilk first into a towel and then offering a dry (not a slippery slimy) boob to Baby Bug is much more productive. She doesn’t immediately pull off, as I try to smash my poor boob into her face, if she isn’t getting gushing mouthfuls of milk that make her choke.

So! We are making progress, we are! Onward! Onward! (I’m so jealous of my friends who are using formula. Arrrrrrg.)

Nobody told me that babies can squirt their poop. Maybe I read about explosive bowel movements on somebody’s blog or another but in my mind, it was a totally different thing. I thought it was like one of those little accordion bottles of puff paint squirting, not full-on paintball wars! Oh my goodness! Baby Bug got me twice today! I think I should wear goggles when I change her.

This was not what I needed when I don’t have that many clothes to wear in my sort-of-six-months-along-but-not pregnant body shape. She got the changing table pad, her about-to-be-put-on clean diaper, my last clean spit-up rag and me! And I was standing a good foot away from her at the time. I screamed it scared me so bad. Toby rushed in from the other room thinking a knife had fallen into her eyeball or something. “No, it’s just your daughter and her amazing power rifle butt.” I had to tell him.

Today was one of those not-so-under-control days. I seem to have two types of days in my new mother-hood role: a kick-ass, I can do anything, I’m a super-mom day and a four-things-have-gone-wrong-at-the-same-time, I’m-going-to-just-lose-it day. On the good days, I get the dishes done and I brush my teeth. I cook dinner at dinner time (something besides warmed up lasagna) and I have lots of time to coo and cuddle with Baby Bug. I manage to get in all 8 feedings of the day and she eats for more than two minutes at a time before nodding off into a nap. And sometimes I even remember to water the plants.

On a bad day, like today, I cry and scream at Toby that he’s not helping me enough. I lose it when I realize Baby Bug has just soiled her last clean diaper and the only diapers I have left are the too big scratchy ones that rub up against her infected umbilical cord. The hospital told us not to use alcohol on it and to fold her diaper down so that it can dry out and fall off. Well, Baby Bug is taking after me and she is short-waisted so that means her diapers come up to her chest, old man style.

I can only use the Pampers “N” size and not the “1” size because the “1” size are way way way too big. When I ran out of the “N” size, I thought I could just cut the top off the “1” size but that was a BIG MISTAKE. Now, not only did I have runny yellow poop all over everything, but I also had the fluffy insulation stuff from inside the diaper all over the place too. It was like I was trying to tar and feather my little girl with mustard and little fluffy cotton curds.

And then she started SCREAMING at me because I was running an hour and a half late on her feeding schedule and her highness does not like to be kept waiting when it comes to mealtimes. So that’s what, three things wrong so far? Let’s add the fact that I haven’t eaten all day, I forgot to take my morning Advil (necessary for stitches and sore nipples) and my milk is running down my chest into my jeans. I’m a mess. What I really want to do is run for the hills and take a nice long shower at the nearest Motel 6.

I’ve realized that eating is very important to my success as a mother. If I don’t eat, I can’t handle stressful situations. Baby Bug and I are on the same page on that one. After I fed Baby Bug, I nuked myself a piece of lasagna (all I eat these days, thanks to some very nice friends who brought us much needed sustenance in the form of a restaurant size pan of lasagna) and I came up with a brilliant plan to conquer the day. It’s amazing how the brain actually works when you’re not starving it to death.

I like to call my plan “Bliss Up Baby Bug” or “Operation Boob Bliss”. It works like this: I feed Baby Bug as much as her little walnut-sized stomach can hold, which was today a record 40 minutes of non-stop sucking (ouch-city). Then I watch her go into a food coma. Her eyes roll back in her head, a smile spreads across her face from cheek to cheek. She looks like a fat Rolley Polley little buddha baby gone to Nirvana. If I time it just right and feed her just enough, she’ll sleep for FOUR HOURS STRAIGHT!!! I don’t usually want her to sleep that long but today it was a godsend.

I rolled her into Toby’s office in the bugaboo (of course) and gave Toby strict instructions on what to do if she woke up and started crying. Then I hopped in my car and drove like a bat out of hell to the nearest Rite Aid to buy some diapers. It felt so good to drive again. Everything is so much lighter and faster now that I’m not carrying around a bowling ball wherever I go. Even though I’m far chubbier than I’ve ever been, I feel as light as a feather. It was heavenly to be out and about in the real world again.

But my plan was foiled. Did you know that they don’t carry every size diaper at the drug store or the grocery store? I did not know this. I just assumed that the whole aisle of baby stuff had everything. I mean, it is long enough. Every time I ever accidentally wandered through it pre-baby I was always in awe that there could be so much baby stuff to buy. Well, it doesn’t look so long to me anymore. In fact, I was downright disgusted that they would discriminate against size-challenged babies. There were toddler diapers and training diapers, cruisers and swimmers, size 1 through 52 but NOTHING in Baby Bug’s size. How can this be? Especially in a town where in-vitro fertilization is the new pink and everybody’s having twins and triplets. Where do they shop? Apparently not at Rite Aid or Gelson’s.

With my tail between my legs, I drove back home empty-handed. Poor little Baby Bug would just have to put up with the scratchiness on her sore belly button or I was going to be doing a lot of hand washing in the sink.

When I got back home, Baby Bug was still under my magic spell of sleepiness and she hadn’t even made a peep. Toby was so proud of himself for not mucking it up. He actually managed to get some work done too, which is really important these days since I’m the professional-stay-at-home-mom and he’s supporting us 100%.

I called the hospital and asked them where to buy size 0 diapers and they told me of two stores two towns away. Two towns away!!! Thankfully Toby was my knight in shining armour and he drove all over town until he found some at Target.

He bought every package they had.