the past (nearly) six months have been such a whirlwind – i had such high plans for this blog, and, well, yeah. when i’m not up to my ears with work or babies, i can’t quite summon the desire to put butt to chair and fingers to keyboard. but in the last few weeks we’ve had some big things, so i figured it’s time for an update.
in one day, we had our first cold (owain – turned into a nasty round of croup), our first roll over (beckett, tummy to back, multiple times) and our first teeth. plural.  both owain, and both within an hour. we never even knew owain was teething. beckett has been teething badly for about a month, but no teeth are forthcoming. poor kid. owain never made a peep about it. beckett will gnaw your finger for hours, but owain is still just a binky baby, preferring his pacifier over everything else. about a month ago, owain gave me a nice “mama”, but it hasn’t repeated (no biggie, i’ll still take it!).
the other thing i wanted to sit down and write about is breastfeeding. i don’t have time to do it justice, but it’s been a hell of an experience. it’s hard enough to nurse with premies, then i wasn’t much good with a pump, then four weeks after they were born i had to have my gall bladder out, which meant dumping the milk from the surgery meds. they’ve always had to have bottles because they needed the formula supplements, thanks to their prematurity and other issues, so they weren’t exactly primed to nurse, either. we’ve been in and out of the lactation office, and they’ve been great and got us over a number of hurdles, but the hurdles just keep coming. now, i have a nasty cold. it’s in my sinuses, and i can’t (or won’t) take a decongestant because it could very easily dry up my already very low milk supply. we only nurse once a day at best (and that’s when they’re not on a nursing strike) and then it’s frequently a matter of “wtf am i supposed to do with THIS?” or just plain old screaming as if i were torturing them. owain has never comfort nursed in his life, and while beckett will comfort nurse, she’s even trailing off now.
it’s been heartbreaking. i wanted to get to two years, or at least one. i even was willing to settle for getting them through spring, past the cold season. but now it’s looking like i’ll be lucky to hit the six-month mark which comes in a week. no one has nursed for the last three days. i’ll be shocked if there’s any milk there at all. so when i called the lactation group yet again yesterday to see what i could take for this hellish cold before it puts me in the doctor’s office and lands me on prescription meds and antibiotics, they first gave me a few options, then did the over-the-phone version of a sit-down with me. i had asked if i should get a pump to keep the supply up while the babies do their respective nursing strikes. there was a brief silence, and then the rough news i didn’t want. in the kindest way possible, the nurse told me that there’s a good chance that we were probably done if they didn’t come back on their own in time. and then she told me what i needed to hear: that i need to give myself a break, that i’ve worked so hard for these babies and tried for so long to get them nursing and that i just need to cut myself some slack and acknowledge that it takes two to nurse (or three, in our case).
the silver lining? as i was telling this to ed last night, he was standing in the kitchen holding owain, and beckett was in the play yard while i did dishes. as i started crying, and finished my story, beckett started chattering. at a break in my monologue, a perfectly beautiful tiny voice came up from the play yard, plain as day: “mehmeh!”
mehmeh. that’s me, whether or not my boobs and their mouths can do this dance, i’m still the mehmeh. and i feel anything but “meh” about that.
