inconceivable

Bedtime was a fight. Acorn was wound up, even though we'd gone to the mall for a good long walk. I was frustrated and irritable anyway, and there was no nurse coming in to sit up with him so my already far too shortened sleep was likely to be even less.

And after 45 minutes of flopping around,  climbing out of bed, etc etc etc, I was ready to scream.

He wouldn't answer me when I asked if he wanted milk. So I got him some anyway - straight from the electric cooler currently in my bathroom (the fridge is on its last legs, and a new one comes Saturday, but between now and then I'm not risking my breastmilk in it). He settled in next to me, drinking greedily, and I listened to the rain and thunder outside and felt his breath on my cheek and thought, "you know, this is more how it was supposed to be."

Most of his life, the idea of giving him breastmilk has been inconceivable. First, there wasn't enough milk, then I stopped pumping all together.  And then when Leaf came, I was terrified that Leaf wouldn't have enough either. But I'm hovering right around the 700 ml a day mark - that's about 24 ounces, and is considered a "full supply" - suffient to breastfeed a term baby.

Leaf is getting hindmilk only, and Acorn can easily tolerate the foremilk (and it'll be a long time before Leaf can take the lower calorie, higer sugar-per-volume foremilk). So rather than wasting it, we've been giving it to Acorn. Clearly he can tell the difference - only milk and milk-like things go in bottles as far as he's concerned, and everything else goes in a cup (and milk doesn't belong in a cup at all...that's just plain wrong). But he doesn't seem to mind at all.

I'd like to say that bedtime was a breeze after that, but I'd be lying. It was another 45 minutes of flopping, asking for a diaper, and finally getting up and getting a chair and getting me to sit in it with him to get him to sleep. Even then, comparing his muscular 32 pounds to Leaf's 5 pounds....and comparing both of them to how big Acorn was when he was less than a pound and a half..... It's still inconceivable to me that this sprawling 3-foot-tall boy was once smaller than his head is now.