Spilled Milk
I cried over spilled milk.
One recent morning I had just spent 20 minutes attached to the medieval torture device that masquerades as a human milking machine. I do this most days three times a day because I am obviously a masochist, but also because my melted brain thinks this is worth it for the nourishment of my offspring.
I poured several ounces of this precious substance, which might be thought of as time X pain, into a bottle, and as I was pouring it in, it occurred to me that it appeared to be seeping out.
NOOOOOO!!!!!!!!
In my morning bleary, I had not screwed the bottom of the bottle on correctly. NOOOOOO!!!!!!!! I lost four and a half ounces.
I couldn't even figure out what had gone wrong at first, and every attempt to find the cause seemed only to exacerbate the problem.
Seeing my milk wasted, I started to wail, which eventually devolved into a sad mammalian whimper. When he thought the coast was finally clear, Brian came into the kitchen and offered me a hug and a reassurance that all was not lost, and that I would make plenty more.
My boy is what is called a "hearty eater." At four months, he eats between 18 and 22 ounces while at daycare, which means while I am away from him, I hook myself up to that ungodly machine in a vain attempt to keep up with his demand.
"That sh*t is like gold!" This is what my sister said. And it's true. I keep thinking about Dune and the great value of preserving and recycling human sweat. Pumping for a giant, fat baby is kind of like living on the desert planet of Arrakis and needing to provide sweat/water for your baby's nourishment.
Yes, yes, I already supplement with formula. I don't have a death wish. But sometimes your brain, maybe from lack of sleep, gets tied into a pretzel, and you begin to think that your self-esteem is tied to being able to provide sustenance for your baby. It's kind of like when I used to play Monopoly. I would get so tied up inside trying to purchase certain properties that I missed the point of the game and wound up going bust because my brother had bought up everything else.
By the way, this is one of the reasons I am anti- game night.
Another thing about pumping: I do so once in the morning and twice during my work day. At work, I secret myself inside the cold, lonely HVAC closet and hold evil plastic cones to my chest while a machine sucks out my soul. Then I must engage in the delicate business of moving my human gold born of time and pain into a plastic bag. I measure and examine the quantity closely to determine whether I should feel okay about myself or feel like only half a human. I do this in our kitchen area as coworkers walk by on their way to the bathroom or to make copies.
Occasionally, while I am delicately pouring my breastmilk from the breastshield/bottles into a storage bags, my coworkers will sidle up and start chatting with me. At first, I found this horrifying. I felt as if I had been handling my own stool sample while these people were trying to make smalltalk. I would just stand there, clutching my breastshields and bags of milk, and try to look casual while holding my container of force-oozed human product.
"They don't know, right?" I asked a coworker.
"No," she said, "They have no idea."
My sister told me about how she had to use a sink in the room in which a group therapy session was taking place. At first it seemed unbearable. "But towards the end," she said, "I would just walk right in with my bottles of milk and be like, 'What?!?'"
Max has made wonderful and exciting (to us) progress in the past few weeks. He now laughs, touches his toes, and rolls over from back to belly. In fact, we must now put him to sleep on his belly, because if we don't, he will spend hours trying to roll over and touch his toes.
What a cutie! Now if he would only sleep for more than four hours in a row....
Our little stomper!