Friday

Is the weekend here yet???

Yesterday was totally exhausting. I do not know why I'm working during my maternity leave, but I am. I'm going in to this job as a supervisor and I was hoping to just pop in from time to time to make sure my assistant is doing okay, but she needs a loooooot of hand holding and it's driving me nuts. My client's driving me nuts too because she sits there the entire time chit chatting, offering us snacks, fussing over Miles ("I think he needs a blanket, maybe he wants to look at something," etc.) and just generally being annoying. My dad does the same thing as me for a living so he offered to come in with me today and help get the ball rolling and speed things along. Is it lame to bring your dad to work? I don't care.

Directly after my half day of work yesterday I went to the zoo with my stepmom and sisters. I was already a bit harried and tired but that was an insanely wearying experience. The short version of my travails is that we were there for FIVE hours. I didn't have anything to eat or drink since breakfast - almost ten hours of starvation and dehydration, which is both sucky and also unhealthy for a breastfeeding mom. We walked for miles and I was completely exhausted but there was never anywhere to sit down. I had Miles in the baby wrap and was wearing a turtleneck and heavy coat because it was 10 degrees outside... but it was about 90 degrees inside all the exhibits, so I was drenched in sweat and Miles was probably roasting too. Everyone else had an awesome time but I was kind of in agony for most of it.

I had a proud moment at the zoo: my first real public breastfeeding experience (not counting support groups for BFing moms). I found a bench in the aquarium and sat down, pulled Miles out of the wrap, and found that the shoulder straps fell right across my chest in a way that nicely hid my boob from view when I put him on there. There was only a mom and toddler in the room when I did it, but I still felt pretty awesome for being able to nurse in public.

Miles was a total rockstar at the zoo and slept almost the entire time. When we finally got situated at the house he woke up and ate every hour on the hour for three hours, making up for a day of too much sleeping and too little eating, poor little man. Still, he did well last night with sleeping. I'm no longer clocking how much he's waking up nor how much I'm sleeping at night but I feel fairly well rested this morning.

Miles is such a mellow little guy. I have read that crying and fussing peaks around six weeks. Right now he's five and a half weeks and still so easy. He never cries for no reason; he cries when he's hungry (if I don't catch him before he gets to the crying stage), he fusses when he needs a diaper change (if I don't get to him in a timely manner), and sometimes he fusses a bit when he's tired but can't fall asleep. He also cries in the car seat sometimes. But mostly he's quiet and very easy to soothe. (The solution to crying in the car seat, by the way, is turning the radio to static and cranking the volume!) I'm going to miss the little bean so much when I have to really go back to work, but at least I feel confident that he will do well in daycare because he is just so easy to care for and so content overall.