Eva's on strike. And as much as it would thrill me to write that she's concerned about the amount of unpaid overtime being foisted on the Brotherhood of Electrial Workers No. 504, it's more mammarian in nature.
Fair warning.
I used to have to coax and cajole that tiny, sweet rosebud of a mouth into anything even resembling an opening wide enough for the massive road signs Mother Nature so kindly supplies the helpless newborn. And even when the "Eats" crackled on and off in hot-pink neon fury, we kept at it, believing that practice would eventually make perfect.
And things were perfect, or close to it, for quite a while. It was really kind of a wonderful thing to watch her dive into me, the urgency in her tense little face giving way to calm giving way to satisfaction, and the loose-limbed slumber of the drunk.
Lately, as she's become more aware of the world surrounding the two of us, she's taken to pausing to note little changes in the environment, looking at me and grinning before plunging her face back towards the good stuff.
Today, though, for whatever reason-- teething? Curiousity? Accident? She bit me. And I yelped.
And this scared her, and she started to cry, and I did everything I could think of to soothe her even as I could hear the voices of our company coming in downstairs. But she would not nurse again, and as she'd had close to her full amount, I let it go and we went down together to be social.
But later that night, as I prepared to ride the good fortune of friends with open schedules all the way to another engangement at the Dollar Theatre, she refused to nurse again. And cried again, in earnest, this time. "Oh no, oh what should we do? Is she hurting? Go grab the Baby Tylenol. And the Orajel..--- She hates how it tastes. Ugh...poor baby! Here, Eva, num-nums! Num-nums!" I might as well have been tempting a nun with a ripped male escort and scratch card. She was having none of it, and it wasn't until we warmed up a bottle that she finally relaxed enough to eat a little something. Then she was asleep in minutes (because the awful spectre of My Boob had faded in her mind) after the big day we'd had with our friends.
And now, here I sit. I should be straightening up, or at least putting on my pjs and trying to unwind so I can get to bed at a decent hour, but my chest is aching with uncertainty as much as with liquid surplus. It hurt when she bit me-- she has no teeth, but there was some force behind it-- and I acted on pure instinct. But now I seem to have sullied the virginal connection we had together, and I'm certain it will be this moment she points to when she breaks down on the jury stand and blames me for a life off the rails. Off the rails, because I've put her off the boob, and now all I want to do is go wake a sleeping baby and give her candy back.
Please remember my attempts to defend myself, when I'm being interviewed later on by John Stossel for 20/20's exclusive on the mother of the world's first Embezzler-Tax Fraud-Art Thief (all white collar, of course. Only the best for my snookums).
I'm all for the union, but I would so be a scab right now if I could just get her to nurse again.
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