When she cries, she purrs as an angry kitten. In certain occasions, however, she sounds more as particularly hungry tiger that has spent a considerable amount of time under the sun without water. In these ‘certain occasions’ I usually start opening and closing my chakras, looking for black cats on my way, turning round three times and spitting over shoulder. All these processes only make my temples pulsate as though I have a finger pressed in a vice.
This is how her third month on this planet began. Generally, this activity with all its inherent apocalyptic scenes and manifestations was repeated every time she had to eat. On the language of a mom of a newborn this would mean on every three hours of the day and more so during the night.
At the very beginning, with inherent for my personality optimism, I accepted the crying and refusal to drink milk as a stage of the baby’s life. Unfortunately, with time passing by, this stage began to resemble more of a baby puberty, menopause and crisis of the middle age altogether. My otherwise satisfactorily functioning nervous system started to overleap, flash and squeak as the alarm of a car’s accumulator fighting for its last minutes of power.
With trembling hands and sharp audition, for the past few days I had succeeded to get in touch with a prominent midwife from the Delivery Ward, a woman who specializes in supporting new moms with breastfeeding, the pediatrician of the baby, and all girlfriends with children with the longing to get some good advice. As could be expected I got so many hints that I was wondering how to schedule my day so that I can give a go to at least half of them. They varied from exclusive breastfeeding to dissolving the formula in cold water with lots of prayers and in the yoga asana OM.
What actually happened every time I tried to feed the baby: I put her on my breast – she fell asleep after a short down-in-the-mouth sucking. Some gentle tweaking of cheeks, light shaking, affectionate phrases, more gentle tweaking, bouncing and all of this repeated several times with limited breaks in between started. The result was zero. Then, I momentarily proceeded towards the second stage of the feeding – a bottle with formula. Its contact with the sweet baby lips with the shape of a heart (I swear!) was provoking the above mentioned pulsating temples. All that lasted for a whole month. During each feeding. Seven times a day. From worries I cracked a few capillaries to the left of my right ear, I experienced at least three arrhythmias and decorated my head with a minimum of a hundred white hairs. I cannot feed my baby, she will not gain weight, she will get sick, she will get a hernia from crying…. In general quite colorful pictures of the offspring’s future. And the problem was a cliche – I did not have enough breast milk and I had to supplement it with formula, but the baby preferred me and was crying like hell when approached with a bottle of milk.
My distress had already anchored deep in my heart and up in my throat when I decided to try something different. I made two things that completely changed everything. First, I started milking myself and giving her milk from a bottle. This activity cost me something average between half lifetime, tremendous torment in at least the ninth circle of hell and complete insensitivity in my right and then my left semi-sphere of my being. BUT, this way she did not have a direct contact with my breast and she forgot crying about that. And second – I changed the room and the atmosphere in which the baby was fed. She no longer sucked the bottle lying in me, but was now semi-lying on the active gymnastics. The effect was astounding. The baby started feeding again in full and blissfully, and my white hairs were exquisitely colored by my adorable hairdresser. The arrhythmias did not disappear but were rather provoked by exciting moments such as the first laughter and the very first step alone.
