arbitrary

i am started to understand how arbitrary "what works" with your baby is. you can read all the books you want, learn all the tricks that are supposed to calm crying or stimulate brain development or encourage fine motor skills, but sometimes the whole thing feels like a crap shoot. take yesterday for example. yesterday was jeff's 31st birthday. now those of you who really know me, know that i pride myself on being a birthday princess. i love my birthday and i love other people's birthdays and i truly believe that as long and fabulous and drawn out you can make your bday, the better. so after throwing a dinner for our friends and family on sunday, jeffy and i still decided to go out on his 'real birthday.' jeff and i don't go out to fancy restaurants very often, but on our birthdays, we always treat each other to a dinner at the red bird, our favorite, spendy spot in town. well it just so happened that on this year, the year of our struggling financial situation, dealing currently with only one income, i luckily had held on to a gift certificate for this particularly fabulous wine bar. so jeffy and i decided to try our luck at an early dinner with the baby bucket.

at all. there are also fancy people there. people wearing expensive heels instead of the red bird wine bar is dark with trippy red lights hanging from the ceilings and walls. there are no windows and it's generally fairly cool. it has a super, swank city vibe - not very missoula. women in here wear real carrie bradshaw style heels instead of sturdy danskos. people here are on first dates and are trying to look sexy. we tried to slink in, inconspicuously, as if we fit in. we found a booth in the far corner of the restaurant and immediately upon sitting down, eliana started to fuss. i pushed the table back, slyly lifted my peasant blouse, and tried to nurse. this caused her to fuss more. the fussing turned into crying. jeff and i have this theory that when i'm nursing in public, elie picks up on my self-conscious vibe, and then becomes distressed herself. jeff suggested i go out into the lobby of the hotel by the restaurant and nurse her in a place where i felt more relaxed. he was happy with his beer, chatting with our server who just happens to live with our good friend. she is going through a break-up with another friend of ours, so again, the small town made the situation very easy - she wanted to chat about lost love, and jeff didn't want to drink alone on his birthday. i headed out and server friend moved into my spot at the table.

in the lobby elie latched on with comfort and ease. i grabbed a newspaper and we settled into some comfort nursing. ten minutes later or so, when i was sure she was settled, i gently lifted her, still clutching my breast with her sweet little fishy lips, and we walked back inside. from here she performed beautifully. i had explained to her in the lobby that it was dad's birthday and that we really wanted to enjoy a nice dinner. i told her that if she could just hold it together for an hour or so, we would be ever so grateful. i promised her we'd go right home after we ate. she seemed to listen. she nursed calmly for the duration of the dinner. through the bison sopes with almond mole, through the crabcakes with potato mash, the little bucket dreamily sucked. just as we were finishing up, bucket came off and decided she was tired of the red and black room. she was done tripping on the lights. she was ready to get back outside.

we walked back over the bridge to our car talking about how fantastic little baby bucket was. how we really do have the very best baby on the block. and can you believe she is sleeping in seven hour stretches? and we don't want to tell any of our other friends with baby's how splendid she is, we don't want to instill envy because she is just so darn perfect.

we decided to push our luck and go by jeff's parents place on the way home. they had pie to share. we headed up the hill to their place. and bucket, as aware as ever, changed her tune. enough with this good behavior, enough with being calm. hadn't i promised her we would go home after the red bird? i had. she started to scream. not just sort of whimper, not sort of whine, scream. almost hyperventilate style scream. screaming with little, tiny baby tears forming at the bottom of her perfect little eyes. i told jeff to drop us off at home and continue with his birthday solo.

he happily fled the scene, leaving me alone with an inconsolable elsinore. of course, i knew she was overtired, overstimulated. she had been up for nearly five hours, way too long for my baby bucket. so i pulled out my bag of tricks. i started with the 'sure bet', the boob, the chair and her showtunes. i sang loudly. i sang with all the passion and fervor i put into trying out for the lead in my high school musicals (i never did get the part...). i rocked furiously in the chair. she continued to cry, to bite at my nipple, to spit milk all over us, all over the boppy, all over my pretty 'out to dinner' blouse. i tried other songs (she particularly loves 'rent' and 'wicked') to no avail. i watched the clock. another 20 minutes went by. then an hour. tears of exhaustion, of worry, streamed down my cheeks. was she sick? did she have a fever? no. she was just done. she was just being a baby.

i then realized that i was really hot and there was no reason to keep getting my shirt milky. i took the boppy pillow off my middle, placed it on the footrest, and put her head at the center of the 'u' shape so that i could have my hands free to take off my shirt and pull my hair back into a bun. the second her head hit that pillow, her screams stopped. her eyes suddenly popped open, bright and alert, and she stared, happy as a clam, at the ceiling. i didn't really know what to do. where was the noise? the screams, so suddenly stopped, made the silence almost uncomfortable. just the pure love of her cd filled the room. of all the things. i had put her down, mid scream, on a milk stained pillow, and she shut up. after an hour of rocking and singing, swaddling and shushing, dancing around the house, holding her tight, talking her through it, her head on the boppy seemed to be the ticket. she tripped out on the ceiling in a blissed out silence. i shook my head at the arbitrary nature of the whole scene. in no book does it say, 'lay your child's head on your milk stained, nasty, stinky, boppy pillow as a last resort to soothe crying.' yet last night, in that moment, it worked wonders.

after a few minutes, i gently lifted her back to my breast. she nursed blissfully. when her dad came home, he popped his head in the room and gave me the thumbs up sign. i wiped the tears from my face and shook my head as if to say, 'if you only knew.' she nursed for the next hour or so and i slept, exhausted, worked, in the glider. these pics are of the aftermath....