the first two weeks have been hard. everyone knows that being a first time parent is hard. everyone knows that newborns are hard. everyone says that you’ll be sleep deprived, and worn out. but I just don’t feel like the experience is adequately conveyed. maybe, like childbirth, the memory dims with time. we probably would never have sustained enough births for population growth if the memory stayed clear.

the first two days aren’t so bad. granted, I was exhausted from being up for 48 hours, in labor for 36, and having lost lots of blood. but Daphne was tired too. and there was no milk for her to get, just enough colostrum to give her the energy to practice feeding. and so Jason and I could sleep. maybe not long stretches, since we had to wake her evey two to three hours, but sleep none the less. sure, both is us learning to breastfeeding was hard, and it took less than a day to start getting thrashed nipples that had a lovely, nasty, bruise line righ along the top. sure, working with the doula for three hours to try to improve the latch from a little girl who doesn’t like openin her mouth terribly wide was frustrating beyond belief. (if I can’t get this to work, how am I going to feed my baby?!) and sure, not everyone has this instant “all the love in the world” attachment to their baby. but it was doable. and, at this point, stuck in bed as I was, thanking the doula for having suggested to swallow modesty and wear depends for a few days, Jason had the harder task of the two if us – make food, clean dishes, clean clothing, keep shoving food at me, takig the baby between feedings so I could sleep, and so on.

the midwives came over on day four for her checkup, weighing her and doing the PKU test. she was down 10oz, but that wasn’t worrying. my milk was in as of the night before, and she seemed to be feeding relatively well, outside if the difficulty of her trying to sleep through her feedings. so, keep her awake as much as possible during a feeding, they said. hah! we already worked on this one withthe doula. at some point, usually 5-10 min into a feeding, Daphne just didn’t care if you jostled her (gently), tickled her feet, flapped her hands, pinched her back, stroke her neck, blow in her face, or just about anything. keep her awake indeed. after the battle that was just getting her to open her mouth wide enough, instead of squirming her rather strong head and neck everywhere away from the nipple, this was another feeding fight I didn’t want. add to that the worry about her not pooping for the 36hours after my milk came in as her digestive system got working.

but with Jason helping to latch her on while laying on me side, and Jasons parents coming to help out around the house, things were a little easier. her ten day appointment showed she had only regained half of what she lost, so we needed to keep trying to make sure she didn’t go more than three hours between feedings. and by herself, she didn’t go longer than that. then she started cluster feeding. and wouldn’t go more than two hours between feeds. was she getting enough? we thougt so because it seemed like my firehose supply (which only makes feeding harder when she rips herself off the breast after her first incredibly powerful suck unleashes a waterfall in her mouth) was plenty. but we weren’t sure. and I was getting less and less sleep as she woke every two hours at night, leaving me at most an hour and a half of napping in between, and did the same during the day, when it was even harder to nap, despite adding curtains in front of the blinds to make the bedroom even darker.

but then came real cluster feedings. three instances of five to seven hours, over the course of three days, where she ditched her “feed me every two hours” and wouldn’t go longer than 15minutes between nursings. the sleep deprivation from too-short naps escalated, and I became clear that the sleep deprivation, coupled with the continued paid of feeding – particularly the hour of burning breast pain after feeding her from an unrelieved letdown – was leading to my nearly nightly meltdowns of just crying without any particular reason. clearly, the hormone shift contributes to this problem, but somehow, getting just enough sleep is what I need to not actually have hot tears suddenly streaming down my eyes.

the days like these make me wonder how I can last until “it gets better at six weeks”. or how parents can survive if it lasts six months. sleep cycles require at least an hour and a half just to get to the first cycle of REM sleep, and getting at least some nonREM sleep after that is important to avoid sleep deprivation. without it, you become nonfunctional. I couldn’t answer Jasons questions about having chicken or steak for dinner. I couldn’t answe if we should swaddled her one way or another. I couldn’t form the thoughts to make a decision.

maybe all babies aren’t like this, but we still seem to have q relatively easy baby. and it’s hard to fight over keeping her awake, hard to fight through the pain – the searing, toe-curling pain – of learning breastfeeding and getting it well established and dealing with the first few ungodly powerful sucks that feel like your nipples are being ripped off with a pair of clamps, hard to deal with the unrelentless demands for your food, and really hard to deal with trying to function under physiologically nonfunctionable situations.

don’t get me wrong; I know that it will be worth it in the end. but every strain-you-to-your-limits experience will make you wonder just how much you can endure, and how you can possibly endure it.