The Good Fight

There's a great ER episode called "The Good Fight". It's in season 5, the first of Lucy Knight's 2 seasons (too bad they had to go and bump her off like that, huh?). She and Carter (who was my boyfriend for many, many years-- don't you forget it) search all over Chicago for this guy whose daughter was in a car accident and has a weird rare tissue type and can only receive donated blood from him. It's a fantastic episode. It's the first time you see a glimmer of that adolescent sexual tension between them.

But perhaps I should have titled this post, "The Battle of the Boobies"-- perhaps that would be more accurate. Over the past couple months, I have had problem after problem with nursing, to the point where it's become this big source of anxiety.

But why? SJL was nearly 23 pounds a month ago and in the 94th percentile for weight. The girl is big, strong, happy and thriving. She eats food like a champ when she doesn't nurse well, unlike a certain older brother of hers (and boy did I lose sleep over that shit). We've gotten this far-- over 10 months-- and to many people, this would be a huge accomplishment, but to me, it's just not. And no, this is NOT to say that this amount of time is right or wrong or what or anything-- it has nothing to do with what anyone else chooses. No judgment whatsoever. This is all about some weird, random, hormonal, internal pressure that I'm putting on myself for no rational reason. Yeah, the whole thing is irrational and non-sensical.

Well, I won't go so far as to say I'm nuts, but I will say that nursing the baby has become a source of anxiety for me, and I do feel like I'm fighting a battle with something that just shouldn't be fought with. The thing is, as much as I feel like I'm in fight-or-flight mode these days with general cortisol fatigue, I always seem to choose to FIGHT and never to FLEE. Perhaps this is my problem. And oh yeah, I have some issues with letting go. Just some.

It all started a couple months ago when, seemingly out of the blue, I lost my letdown reflex for a couple days. I always have letdowns-- always-- so when other moms said, "oh, I often don't feel a letdown" my response is, "nope, I always do-- I didn't only when I was pregnant" (NO, don't get any ideas.) And then, I started to psych myself out, and the more I thought about it and worried about it, the more that letdown vanished. Remember that Sex & the City episode when Samantha loses her orgasm? Good times.

So, I freaked out about it, and things eventually sorted themselves out. And it happened again a week later, and pretty much on and off for over 2 months. Funny thing is that I never had problems when on vacation-- hmm...

So, I changed things up. I started dropping feedings-- after all, a big girl like SJL doesn't need to nurse 9-11 times in 24 hours. She just doesn't. So since nursing was causing stress, I just cut down the number of times I did it and tried to do some good old fashioned letting go. That worked for a while until she cut her 2 top teeth, and now those teeth are just raking away and making nursing really painful, and today she even broke the skin. OUCH. No good.

But here's the thing: I suck at letting go. I suck at not caring. I really care. But really, it doesn't make sense, because I do NOT plan on nursing this girl on her wedding day or her first day of Kindergarten. At one point, I thought it'd be great to go to age 3 or even 2, but now, I don't want that-- I just want to not care. I want to not have all this emotional crap tied into this. I know in my head that it will end one day, and I'm really fine with that. Believe me, I would love to sleep through the night and get some time away and have some space and all that good shit. Maybe we'll be done in a month, and I'll look at nursing moms with longing and a little jealousy, or maybe I'll dig up my black boots and drink some cosmos and go dancing like it's 1999. Who knows?

And I also know that nursing is temporary and that my relationship with my child will last a lifetime-- and that our relationships with our kids are dynamic and always changing. But man, babies are pretty simple-- at least my daughter is. And I'm number one to her. The only word she says with any consistency is "mama"... And Chickie's first was "uh oh". Gotta love that irony, huh? And that brings me to something else-- my relationship with him is complicated. Maybe because HE's complicated-- it's clearly related to temperament-- but who knows. Maybe I don't want to let go of nursing because I don't know what comes next. When I stopped nursing Chickie, I was pregnant with SJL, so I knew what was coming next, but now, I don't.

Perhaps I just don't know what motherhood means outside of pregnancy and nursing-- perhaps I'm doing myself a huge disservice by making something simple into something too complicated. Perhaps I don't want to lose a special bond with my child that only I have.

And I know we're not done yet-- but it's just getting harder and harder. It seems like she doesn't know how to nurse without raking her top teeth, and it's just getting really painful, and I'm not sure if it's going to get better. So, do I keep fighting the good fight? I wish I knew how to flee or to let go and walk away peacefully, but I think I'm missing that gene.