Who moved my cheese?

And milk? And all the rest of the gloriously lactose-laden foods? Becca's pediatrician has recommended I go lactose free to see if it will improve Becca's fussy periods--given the fact that they should have naturally subsided now that she's almost four months old.

The good news? She seems to have improved somewhat. The bad news? There are so many items off my diet, it's ridiculous. Back before children (B.C.), I could subsist on wine, cheese, and bread alone. Now that two of those have been taken away, I've begun to grow a bit grouchy.

But then you look at this and think, "Yeah, I could do this for a few months more."

Then again...

So I'm going to follow Trudi's advice on this one. I don't know who Trudi is, but maybe she's right. I need to vent. I need to confess. And I need to forgive myself. Because last night, a decision I made left Becca terribly ill.

I'm having a tough time balancing two of the requirements of my body: a source of food for Becca and the need to regain my old figure and get into shape for the upcoming hike up to Machu Picchu that The Banker and I are planning to take (again). If I work out too vigorously and consume too little (which is easy to do given how dang hectic my days seem to be), I don't produce enough milk for Becca. To boot, she currently suffers from a nasty case of acid reflux--the cause for our earlier emergency room visit and the reason she's now on Prilosec--so in general our evenings can be very rough. Read: much crying, achy tummies, and the rest.

Last night Becca was fussing during a feeding and crying while I tried to burp her--an indication she hadn't enough to eat. Since I had no milk thawed and seemed to be spent myself, I gave her two ounces of ready-made formula, which she'd had during her first couple of weeks to supplement her diet until my milk came in.

Within two hours she was vomiting up the formula. Once those two ounces had been expelled, angry yellow bile bubbled up, even while she slept, racking her poor little frame. We telephoned the on-call doctor and were told to freeze a teaspoon of regular Coca-Cola and give her a teaspoon. Apparently, it has anti-nausea qualities. After that stays down we were to try giving her an ounce or two of Pedialite.

I was less than thrilled to give a three-month-old soda, but the Coke came right back up, along with more bile than you could imagine an infant's stomach could hold. She was limp, exhausted. And it was my fault.

The Banker decided to go with his gut and gave Becca a little syringe worth of Pedialite slowly, slowly over an hour. It stayed down. Then we mixed some of the liquid with breast milk and let her sip on it a little at a time. Finally, success!

We've had three good feedings since last night, but the guilt lingers. This parenting gig is so damn hard. No one ever tells you that your best intentions can have the most disastrous implications. I feel totally out of my league time and time again. How did my parents make this look so easy?

On the fence...

So I'd high hopes that I could chronicle the ups and downs of this new phase in my life: the challenge of switching a cubicle for a burp rag, the oddities of breastfeeding, the new-found empathy for my mom...in other words, the joys and headaches of parenting. But I haven't really accomplished any of that. I rarely manage to post anymore and am wondering if there's a point to continuing with this blog. I was crappy at keeping a diary as a child and am not faring any better now.

That emergency trip to the hospital? Nope, failed to share that. The trauma of our first night away from Becca? Nothing on that, either. Maybe it's because I'm worn to the bone most days. Or perhaps it's because there are countless blogs that capture this chaotic lifestyle better than I ever could. I dunno. Whatever it is, I think I need to find some more energy and a drive to keep typing, because otherwise the dust and cobwebs will soon take over this tiny spot on the web.