Find Me a Baby! Any Baby!

We finally had a breakthrough in the Hockenberry Household last night. Junior slept for 8 1/2 hours straight! (This may or may not have had something to do with Mommy's teeny, little glass of wine that evening.) Regardless, anything over 8 hours is a breakthrough. He's been pretty consistent in terms of sleeping 5-6 hours for the first shift, and I think we had one 7 hour night. But 8 hours was unheard of until this point. But like all things in life, this wonderful phenomenon came at a small cost. Mainly the fact that it meant that while Greyden got a good night's sleep, I didn't. Why? Because I woke up to the most excruciating pain of my life. I thought I was going to die. Actually, I thought I was going to explode.

No one tells you the downfalls of breastfeeding before you have the baby. You might hear come random, casual comments, but over all you really don't hear about the horrors: the latch problems, the cracked and bleeding nipples (or "hamburger" nipples as my friend called them last weekend), or random leaking in public. You do however hear a lot about how it's best for the baby and is an amazing form of bonding between mom and baby (and since I still refuse to lick him, this is how we get our bonding time in.) Lucky for me, I have never had any issues besides the sensitivity for the first few weeks. Junior took off like a pro from the beginning. But last night I discovered another downfall of breastfeeding. For Greyden to sleep for 8 1/2 hours meant that Mommy had a full (no pun intended) 8 1/2 hours worth of PORN BOOBS. I could easily have been Pamela Anderson's twin sister (minus the blond hair, the career born from Playboy, and the love affair with Kid Rock. So mostly it was just the boobs.) I would even be willing to bet that when she got her's they didn't hurt nearly as bad as mine did last night.

It wasn't too bad at first. I woke up at 4 am when I heard some chirping noises coming from Greyden's Pack and Play (which is still in our room from Thanksgiving when we gave our guests the nursery. We will find the motivation to put the nursery back together at some point I'm sure.) My first thought was "Thank God. I am SO ready to feed him." But pretty soon, there was nothing but silence. 15 minutes later the sounds started again. "THANK GOD. Let's get this party started." Nope, silence again. This went on from 4 am until 5:30 am. Every 15 minutes or so I'd hear him start moving around like he was about to get up, then pretty soon he'd be snoring again. Needless to say, if I thought I was ready to explode at 4, by 5:30 I thought I was going to turn into an Austin Power's Fembot and begin shooting everything in sight. Every time he made a sound, my poor, confused body took it as a cue to produce more milk. I seriously thought I was going to wake Kevin up by screaming "FIND ME A FREAKING BABY ALREADY!!!" By the time Grey finally (THANKFULLY) woke up to eat at 5:36, I was half afraid of drowning the poor kid. Luckily we both managed to survive the ordeal, although I'm pretty sure mom got the raw end of the deal as usual. I am told by the Breastfeeding Nazis Lactation Consultants that my body will soon regulate itself to produce the correct amount of milk at night based on how long he's sleeping, although I'm pretty sure they're just screwing with me so that I don't quit. So until that actually happens, I am putting an ad on Craig's List for donations of hungry babies to get me through. As people have told me since Day 1, when you have a baby, you do what you need to in order to survive.