bebe con leche

Vital lesson learned the day before yesterday - don't let him sleep too much in the afternoon or he's up all night... so yesterday was 'activity day'. For a 3 day old baby this means lying on one's back staring at the ceiling, lying on one's back staring at the lilac tree, lying one's back staring at some dangly toys or lying on ones back wailing and looking at Mum leak tears of frustration, not to mention quantities of breast milk.

Yes, the boobs are back... but not as we know them, Jim. For the very first time in my life, the playground term 'over the shoulder boulder holder' is an accurate description of my lingerie. Yesterday I went for a nap in the afternoon and in my sleep someone quarried all the soft tissue out of my breasts and replaced it with some sort of rock-like material which continued to be forced into my skin until bursting point was reached. Bursting point apparently comes when the baby cries and breast milk starts soaking out and through my clothing into whatever it can find, baby-shaped or otherwise.

This would be great if little Charlie would wake up and actually feed, however he's decided that boobs are wonderful comfy things and ideal for falling asleep on. The textbooks all say 'at a few days old your baby will feed for between 20 and 40 minutes'. Bollocks. He wakes up making sucky noises at which point I wait to see if he's just tetchy or if he's really hungry. If he doesn't go back to sleep and starts making noise, I swoop him up and put him to the boob at which point he latches on, gulps frantically for about 30 seconds and then falls fast asleep. The only way to wake him up is to put him back into his cot at which point the whole travesty starts again. The result is that it takes at least an hour and a half to get a full feed into him, not to mention some pretty severe vocal chord abuse. And he wails as well.

Last night we reached breaking point with this as he decided that both breasts are in fact possessed and he wasn't having either of them. In total frustration I sat mooing quietly to myself while attached to a breast pump and we gave him the bottle which he took immediately and without question as if to let us know that was what he was really after all along.

He woke again at 2:30 and was up refusing boobs until 4:30 when I repeated the process and D bottle-fed a very happy little boy. Thinking I was now doomed to the barnyard for the rest of his babyhood I woke this morning prepared to start again however today the devil has left and boobs are back, just as 'Marie Claire' magazine promises every few years.

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