Bottle context

I feel I should provide some more context to yesterday's post.

The day started out really well, she napped for a few hours so I moved around the house, from random task to random task (sorted out the medicine cabinet! reordered the crap on the fridge! put my bobby pins in to one section of the drawer and my elastics in the other!) and then after an afternoon feed I did a bit more on my secret father's day project for the husband.

But then she didn't nap again.

And then she became overtired. And whingey. And now that she has real tears, it's all the more dramatic.

I needed to put away the father's day stuff, so I put her in the Baby Bjorn and packed up, then picked some flowers from the front yard because the camellia and the magnolia are blooming and the weather was fantastic and it seemed a fitting way to farewell winter.

So after wandering around the front yard with a pair of scissors, alternating between imitating / mocking / ignoring my crying baby, I headed out the back for more little purple flowers.

Which is when I saw one of the dogs running around with a dead mouse.

Of course (OF COURSE) she knew she had an 'awesome' prize, and wouldn't perform her 'drop it' or 'come', so I had to cram a lot of treats in to the other dog before she realised she was missing out on something. Not before she hid the corpse in one of the garden beds.

So then I am scraping a garden bed with part of the poop scooper, with a screaming baby strapped to me, trying to tell her that we have to find the mouse even though I don't REALLY want to find it, but I didn't want the dead mouse in the house.

After five minutes of scurrying through the dead leaves, I let the dog back out to see if I can see where she put it. And of course, she gets it and starts to bring it towards the house.

I managed to corner her around the side of the house and could hear her burying it again - lo and behold she comes around the corner with a dirty nose, crouching because I am yelling at her to get out of it. And then I repeat my poop scooper routine, with a continual side of screeching baby.

And I can hear the neighbours in their backyard, and I know they can hear me failing to console my miserable baby as I yell at my dog and try not to vomit or cry or both because it makes me so sad to know that my dog killed the mouse, and so anxious to think about having to pick it up, and frustrated at not being able to find it and terrified of actually finding it. And I'm telling my baby 'I know. This isn't how I saw it all going either.'.

We decided it was a job for the husband and locked the dogs out for an hour and a half, to limit the chances of the dead mouse coming in the house.

And then the baby continued to cry, until three minutes before the husband came home from work. And then she kicked off three minutes before he left for sport. And she cried when I got her ready for her bath, and after her bath, and in between gulps as I put a boob in it to try to keep her quiet. And then after the husband came home, and extra hard while I was feeding the dogs, and while I was heating dinner (yay packet soup) and then while I was meant to be eating dinner. I fed her again and she got dozy, then the husband managed to voodoo her to sleep by walking in the other room while patting and singing to the loud music.

I know it's not reasonable of me to go from highs to these lows.

I know they're not really 'lows', just moments of frustration and tiredness that I would be having with something else if I didn't have a baby.

I know it wouldn't necessarily be any easier if the husband didn't have sport three times a week because he is already tired from work and gets frustrated too, and then I feel guilty for having two frustrated people in the house. Or really, three.

I know I wouldn't really want my baby to be 'disadvantaged' with the bottle instead of breast milk.
I know I wouldn't really rather be at work.
I know I will look back at these days one day with a longing for when she was so small and precious and innocent and helpless.

It's just.... you know.