Spilt Milk

Yesterday Penny went to full-time day care for the first time.  When my husband picked her up she had just finished a bottle and the teacher offered to rinse it for him.  ‘Noooooooo,’ he declared, in slo-mo as he grabbed the bottle and saved the ½ oz of remaining milk from certain destruction. Apparently, the other infants drink formula, so the teacher didn’t really get it.

More infuriating is the frequent conversation other mothers have with me about milk: their ‘freezer full of milk’ they had to throw away once their child weaned. Apparently, everyone is swimming in the stuff like Mickey in the Night Kitchen. Except around here.

In my household, breast milk is worth its weight in saffron.

On days I’m not with her all day, I spend hours a day pumping milk in hopes of barely keeping up with Penny’s appetite. In fact, I’m pumping right now and hen-pecking one-handed on the keyboard.  Even if I’m with her for the day I get up before 6am so I can pump, just to stash enough to get through the week. There have been weeks (plural!) when I’ve set an extra alarm for 3am so I can get an extra pumping session in.  And yes, I’ve even been crouched on the kitchen floor in hysterical tears over a dropped and very spilt bag of milk.

It’s hard on me to insist on breast milk for her, and not always know where her next meal is coming from. We’re pretty much living boob to pump to mouth, and it keeps me up at night.

Sure, the great milk shortage of 2010 was instigated by my business trip, and, OK, I’m a little compulsive about sticking with breast milk.  So basically, a big piece of this problem is fanatically devotion to do what might be best for Penny, but it’s not entirely unwarranted.  The one time I convinced myself that plenty of babies have formula and turn out fine (myself included) and agreed to formula being incorporated into her diet when she visited my in-laws without me (necessity was a factor in this decision) she got horrible diarrhea and her bum was glowing red and painful for a week.  So there! Take that voice of reason, trying to lull me into complacency. She won’t be OK without breast milk.

Rationally, of course, I know that’s just not true. We can use a different formula and she’d probably be fine. But for now, please, no dumping out my liquid gold and no bragging casually about your Breyer’s-factory-sized frozen milk repository. It just makes me want to cry.

I'm really miserable. Hooray!

I'm sure I've had plenty of hilarious things happen to me in the last couple days, but it's hard to remember them sitting alone in a hotel room with crappy food from the Asian food place at the mall around the corner that happens to deliver.  Yes, Asian food. Not Chinese, or Thai, or Laotian, but Asian. The panang curry is basically white, so creamy and sweet it tastes like coconut sticky rice with shrimp. The salmon sashimi was actually OK, but there were only 3 pieces, and the pork dumplings are mediocre, with a sauce that is also way too sweet.  Why do entrees taste like dessert? Why add sugar to a dumpling sauce? I just don't get it.

Being away from my daughter while I work is tough - I wish I could pick her up and make her giggle, and I feel guilty about being there- but at least I come home at night. When I actually get home and spend the rest of the night feeding her, bathing her, nursing her, and keeping her from gumming the power cords, I admit I sometimes wish for a night alone. But actually being gone for 2 bath times, 2 bedtimes, a swim lesson, and 3 waking ups? I miss her. I've never really missed anyone before. My first summer camp, in elementary school, while the other kids were crying for their mommies or their blankies, I decided I was never going home. I'd make a fort and live Robinson Crusoe style. Turns out, camp only lasts a week and they made me leave. 

Working today, I spent my time listening, talking, and thinking about work stuff, but the moment I got back to the hotel I just want to pick her up. It hurts, and it's such a strange feeling.  And while it's scary, I love that I have that kind of relationship with someone. Sure, when she's 12 I may feel differently, but what an amazing thing to need someone so certainly, so gutturally. 

I honestly worried that I would not love Penny unconditionally and maternally. And yet, despite a life-time of un-connection to other people and the related concerns that I was not emotional enough to truly nurture my child, my happiness is - while not entirely dependent on her (that's just not healthy) -inextricably linked being near her, seeing her smile, hearing her laugh, watching her learn, and knowing I have some part in it all.

So I am reveling in my loneliness. I am basking in my hurt and need. I am a better mother than I thought was possible.

Plus, the crappy food came with fortune cookies, and apparently the one I love is closer than I think.

Test Run: The Test Run

Since everyone (and his toddler- apparently 90% of toddlers have an online 'presence') has a blog these days, I thought I'd join the bandwagon. I brought some extra wagon tongues in case we have to ford a stream, and I'm a doctor in case little JohnnyPoopFace gets sick.

Except that I'm not a medical doctor, and my daughter's name certainly isn't JohnnyPoopFace. My husband and I at least did that part correctly.  In fact, for the purposes of my blog, we'll call her Penny. The rest, well, it's kind of a test run- I'll let you know how it goes.

After a lifetime in education, two years ago I found myself one of those regular hour jobs involving desks, computers, and semi-annual corporate restructuring. It wasn't that I hated teaching, just that the job I had wasn't worth living in a small town in Michigan.  I'm not intrinsically opposed to small towns in Michigan, but after two years of scraping my windshield and driving over an hour to Ann Arbor to buy fresh veggies in the winter, I am ethically opposed to my ever living there again. My husband, too. Quaint and lovely it turned out not to be.  So we ditched the ice scrapers, moved back to a city, and I found a more lucrative, less time-consuming, and more in-San-Diego job.

And then, 1 year and 5 months later, we had Penny.

I had to come up with a name for this blog because blogger.com told me to. It was very insistent. For a full day the open window asking for a name sat open, while I came up with such classic gems as 'My Blog' and 'I'm going to write stuff even though no one will read it'. I sort of like the latter, but it's a bit unwieldy.

We've decided to run the San Diego Triple Crown of half-marathons in 2011. Run may be overstating it, as I am not a runner, but I have committed to at least jogging the whole thing, thrice. I was the kid on the lacrosse team who played goalie because having small rubber projectiles hurled at me from sticks designed for leverage sounded better than running up and down the field all day. Or even once or twice. Sure, I'm in decent shape and I can walk for days on end (I did walk the Susan G. Komen 3-Day in 2004), but running has always eluded me (and the newly dubbed jugs don't help the matter). So this year is a test run.

Less literally, I settled on 'Test Run' because that what all of this - a career, traveling, cooking, and most of all my new role as mother and dairy farm (I finally understand 'jugs'!)-  feels like: a test run. Not that I expect there to be a test, or that I foresee any do-overs or take-backs in the near future.  Just that we seem to be making up most of it as we go - so far, pretty well - and that if I screw up I'll just have to make some adjustments for next time. (In case you're concerned for the well-being of my daughter at this point, I have to say that 1) my husband is a great father, and 2) I don't mean that she in her entirety is the test run, but rather that each interaction is a test run for the next, which means that by the time she's about 45 I'll have trouble-shooted the heck out of mothering.)

-CR, currently running on empty (computer battery)