After the all the excitement of the first few days, there had to be a down day. Well that's life isn't it. That's how the cookie crumbles. That's the swings and round-abouts. I'll tell you what that is, that's a royal pain in the ass.
So the basic things you do as a young parent is feed, sooth, burp, change and dress your child. You also stand in astonishment at the wonder of him on an almost minute to minute basis. For the astonishment, please see earlier posts. The soothing, dressing and changing check - both of us are playing the veritable blinder on all those fronts.
The burping too, is simplicity itself. Feeding now, that's a totally different tea-pot of pigs. It turns out that feeding is something that evolution has forgotten or that the SMA marketing division have had a hand in eliminating. It's bloody hard, it happens at the wrong time of day and it's about as consistent as an Irish Summer's day. There is a thing called a latch. This is a mythical creature that lives somewhere in the upper Andes and can only be seen by the light of the full moon while holding a olive branch. This latch is achieved by pointing the nipple at the child's nose and theoretically he should raise his upper jaw and clamp up and over the aforementioned nipple, think Hungry Hippos. The funny thing is, children have a few competing instincts, the rooting instinct causes them to move their head from side to side. The sucking instinct means that as soon as anything comes near their mouth, they are away - fingers, tassels, other children, fire irons or flying insects are all fair game. Finally another part of the rooting instinct means they use their hands to locate the nipple, so they bring their hands up in front of their rooting, sucking head.
Picture the scene, baby serenely placed on the belly, arms crooked, nipple pointing directly at the nose, milk beginning to pour. The babies nostrils fill with the scent of freshly produced milk, his hunger is at peak and the instincts kick in. Hands come up, hands get near mouth, head is flailing around, mouth finds hands first before nostril adjacent nipple. Result; the child get a nostril full of milk, a mouth full of hand and he firmly believes he is being conned! The direct result of this con act is tears. Tears lead to a lack of any sort of latching ability and further upset and tears. The babies tears lead to parental tears.
This would be fine in the calm light of a summer's day with the sun shining and a gentle breeze lifting the dandelion seeds to pastures new. But mix this emotion with tiredness, soreness and a good dose of post birth hormones and the result is the feeling of failure. This feeling is quickly passed on to the father who is standing around like someone watching something through a glass screen, unable affect the outcome. I can write all of this because Ciara persevered and got through it. We got help and advice and we got through it. Having seen the real difficulties that she and Max faced and the strain that it put on both of them I have even greater pride in them both. That's not to say that it mighn't become difficult again tomorrow or next week, but at least we know it can work and who to go to for help.
So what's the point here. Breast feeding for a while is a good idea. This seems to be universally agreed (http://www.who.int/features/factfiles/breastfeeding/facts/en/index9.html). So one should give it a good shot. One should try and try hard. A man should support his partner to achieve this. If it doesn't work, have we failed?
It turns out that the answer is no. Breast feeding is really really good but if it doesn't work neither the child or parents have failed. Some mothers simply can't breast feed for many reasons and their kids turn out wonderful. Look, millions have grown up on formula and regular milk and have done very well. So why last night did it feel like failure. I think it's because myself and Ciara like to be good at stuff. One of those games, you have a hen, a bag of grain and a fox and you have to get them across a river. You can only fit two of the three in the boat at the same time. You can't leave the fox with the hen, or the hen with the grain. The solution is straightforward, people have been solving it for ages, but we saw or see moving away from breast milk as going out a buying a bigger boat or a muzzle for the damned fox. So lets not feel like failures and keep playing the game. If it changes difficulty level to something like P=NP? (one of the great mathematical problems) then we will buy a bigger boat!
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