avocado8

So Close, and Yet So Far

I mentioned in a previous post that if we didn't get out of the house at least once each day, Austen would want to nurse practically non-stop. (This is the main reason I've been going so nuts with the snow-in.) If we can't get out (or in between outings, if we can), I spend all my time either nursing him until he conks out or trying to make him think of something other than nursing.

It occurred to me this afternoon that walking Austen around the house in the Baby Bjorn isn't the best way to distract him. I used to think that when he rubbed his nose violently back and forth against my chest he was just restless, but I now think he's hoping to wear a hole in my shirt so he can get to a nipple—trying to dig his way to China, so to speak.

I don't know why it took me so long to figure this out, especially since I've long been able to distinguish the "I WANT TO NURSE!" cry from any other. It's more of a bark or a roar than a cry (or a bark surrounded by a cry); phonetically, I think it'd be spelled RRAHR. If I deny him for too long and then finally offer him a nipple, he'll often RRAHR at me one last time before he latches on to let me know that HE'S BEEN WAITING, DAMMIT.

Last night when I tipped him on his side and held him in the crook of my arm (otherwise known—to him—as "nursing position") in an attempt to soothe him to sleep, he started shrieking OPEN THE FLAPS! OPEN THE FLAPS! like a hysterical Han Solo. Or at least, that's what I thought he said; it might have been "nyah! nyah! rrahr! nyah! rrahr!" Hard to tell on so little sleep.

We occasionally try to pacify him with, well, a pacifier (binky, dummy, nuk-nuk, whatever), and sometimes it works so well that we can't quite believe it: he's asleep in seconds, and stays that way for hours (6 in a row, in fact—a new record!—last night). Other times, he howls angrily as soon as the silicone touches his lips. My favorite reaction—or at least, it would be if I weren't already at my wits' end with all the screaming—is when he accepts the binky for a few seconds and then spits it across the room as if to say WHAT IS THIS FRAUD YOU HAVE PERPETRATED UPON ME? To paraphrase a former boss of mine (who actually said what she said in an official review): my son does not suffer fake nipples gladly. Bring on the skin, baby. RRAHR!