I feel miserable and rejected.  The fact that she won’t nurse is constantly on my mind when I interact with her.  I’m trying so hard not to let my frustration with it change the way I feel about myself as a mother, but failing.

Failing.

Worse than that, this stress, this ball of guilt and anger in my chest, is impacting my milk production.  I sit in the nursery with her with that fucking pump attached to my chest and I WAIT, WAIT to see the bottle fill with my milk, WAIT to make a meal for her because she won’t just take it fresh from the source.

But I’m not making “enough”.  I’ve pumped out only eleven ounces today.  I’ve divided it up — three, four, two, two.  Three for breakfast, with a bowl of cereal.  Four for lunch.  Two in the late afternoon, with some bread and green bell pepper.

Two for bed.

Not enough.

I mixed that last two ounces with formula to total five ounces, after trying desperately for half an hour to pump out more.  I feel like a failure.  What am I supposed to do? Put her to bed hungry?  Watch her cry and whine and sob, refusing my breast?  I’m not going to starve her in the hopes that she’ll decide to come back to me.

I stood there over the crib, watching her drink from the bottle, her eyes fluttering shut.  When she fell asleep I took the bottle. I wanted to throw it across the room and scream.

How can my body be failing HER?

She’s been fussy for the last two nights, and I’m not sure why.  Last night alone, between 11:30pm and 7am when I finally gave up, she had three wet diapers and didn’t sleep more than 90 minutes at a time. I felt like I was just a pair of boobs to suck on and a pair of arms to fall asleep in.  Georgia, my midwife, says that Maia is just going through a growth spurt (she’s up to 9lb 6oz, which means she’s put on 10oz in the past week alone) and so she’ll want to eat a lot — but it feels like she has been going through a growth spurt and feeding this much since the day she was born.

I really shouldn’t complain at all about the fact that I have a baby who feeds so well.  I just wish I understood why she’ll only sleep in short periods at night, but she takes 3+ hour long naps during the day.  I feel like I must be doing something wrong with trying to establish her sense of “dark is a good time for sleeping”.

When my mom was here, we noticed that Maia passes out for hours after a bath and so we should probably bathe her shortly before we want to go to bed, but Chris and I haven’t been following through on that (I know, what a surprise, right?).  Still, I think we were both so frustrated with last night’s constant wakefulness that we really, really need to make the effort to soothe her to sleep with a bath.