Nov 5, 2012

What is to be expected

So the sitrep is as follows:
Visitors: some
Breastfeeding: mixed
Sleep: patchy

Little Wotserface is doing well, no problems, to repeat the oft-repeated clichés she's got a good pair of lungs on 'er, she's gesturing like Superman, she's a hungry little thing, etc.

And hungry she is beyond the ability of Nicole to supply. In a situation where demand exceeds the productive capacity to supply, we expect inflation. And this is what is indeed happening as productive capacity is adjusted. The breasts they are a-growing, but in the meantime little Thingummë isn't taking No for an answer. After all, she doesn't know the word yet.

Night One was OK. We knew Night Two was going to be difficult. Eloise has been magnificent. After announcing that frankly she wasn't going to get to sleep with all this caterwauling, she assisted Nicole in keeping Sprog under control, even changing a nappy, before eventually flaking out.

I fell asleep on the sofa, fully in the knowledge that I might be called on later, and I was awoken at three in the morning by Nicole who was past the point of no return, having been bled dry of what little colostrum she had to offer. She lay herself down to sleep, and I set to pacing, rocking and humming upstairs through the ambulance call of Number Two's plaintive cries, her woodpeckering upon my breast, her near attempts at falling asleep so casually abandoned, until eventually she could maintain it no longer and we fell asleep on the sofa, she on the safe, backrest, side of my chest, and grabbed a few hours of sleep until around seven a.m.

Night Three wasn't quite a repeat, but it made a pretty good attempt at it. Nicole's norks were getting their acts together but the Night Terror, having emptied nine of them of what they had, just wanted more, and with a abdominal numbity and masticular discomfort on Nicole's part preventing further suckling, she began to express her frustration through the medium of voice.

Eloise was sound asleep and completely oblivious to any of this, but Nicole retired upstairs for some shuteye while I commenced the humming, rocking, pacing thing to occasional success. Having repeated Frère Jacques, Men of Harlech, Hark the Herald Angels Cry, Once in Royal David's Bitty, and the theme from Take H(e)art more times than I care to remember, having climbed into bed with hope in my heart and climbed out again with resignation in my gut to continue the trial, Nicole came in announcing it was three o'clock or something, I forget exactly what, that she'd had a nice kip and Spud seemed to have been very quiet.

"Oh, you bloody think so" said I, as I closed my eyes.

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