Nursing Round Two is just. Blowing my mind. It's working. Linnea is a week old tomorrow and today she produced actual tears. She's got tears to spare. I'm so relieved that my body is working and thus, so is hers. 'Course, I'm also feeling guilty because it wasn't this easy with Matilda. It was really, really hard with Matilda. She screamed for four months because, at least in part, she was hungry. I spent a lot of time near tears myself trying to figure out if what we were doing was normal or if we were beyond the insanity that is the normal newborn nursing schedule and into something being wrong. She nursed constantly. She hardly ever popped herself off looking content. The day I took this:
I really wanted to believe that it was working. I don't think it was, not enough. I'd break down and give Niclas a bottle to give her when it was either that or cry myself. But if you give them bottles, your supply goes down and if your supply goes down, good luck to you. So I gritted my teeth and stuck it out most of the time and tried so hard for her to be breastfed. After month four, she wasn't exclusively but I nursed her till she was a year and a half old. I didn't give up. I did give in.
This time I made sure we had a can of formula in the house before Linnea was born. There was no way I was going to starve another kid. No way I was going to grit my teeth through all that screaming.
I'm happy to report I don't think we'll be needing the formula.
There's nothing you can do about it
I'm trying to teach Matilda to respond to "How old are you?" with "Relentless" rather than two. Because the child is two and two is relentless. She's finally picked up "No," although she's mostly polite about it. Ask her if she wants some chicken and she responds with "No tank you." Orange? "No tank you." Milk? "No tank you." Yogurt? "No tank you." And on and on until the world ends. That is two. Two goes straight to the end of the world.
Two is also obsessed with her little sister. She wants to see her feet and hold her hands and kiss her head, "puss" she says, and help change her diapers and take her little hats off. She wants to sleep next to her, forehead to forehead. She wants to make sure she holds her between the diaper changes that upset Linnea and the nursing that calms her down. But ask her if she loves her sister and she says "No."
Relentless.
