Helpless

There are many things that make me feel like a failure as a mother. Ok, maybe not a complete FAILURE, but make me feel like I am severely inadequete. Like the fact that I can sweep my floor 20 times a day, but Isaac still finds the ONE teeny piece of old cheerio or something and starts to gag on it.

I had a 2 day class this past weekend, Friday and Saturday, (that I LOVED, but that's another story) so Ben stayed with Isaac and had serious Daddy-Son bonding time. They played ball and watch football and burped and all that boy stuff. Boy stuff that Isaac knows how to work. He's at that stage where he doesn't cry for food. He knows when meal time is, and he hates bottles because solid food is way more fun. So unless he is repeatedly given the bottle before his meals and inbetween, he doesn't drink. That involves him having to stop playing and he hates that. So he plays his Daddy like a fiddle.

This should be seeming fine, except that Isaac is also a kid that hates sleeping. Seriously. HATES SLEEPING. He fights sleep something fierce. I literally have to hold him tight to me to get him to stop squirming and moving around before he will fall asleep. He screams, he hates it. Otherwise he doesn't sleep. It's a necessary evil in the stage we are in right now. And once he relaxes, the kid is out.

However, if he hasn't eaten enough during the day, he doesn't stay asleep. And Isaac is one of those babies that gets too comfy while nursing and falls asleep before he's full sometimes, especially now because he is so damn tired from not sleeping much during the day. When he was teeny we used to have to strip him down sometimes to prevent him from getting all warm and cozy so he'd eat and get full and not throw a wrench into his milk supply.

This was the case on Saturday night. He hadn't eaten properly during the day. And he was exhausted. So he was up once an hour, almost every hour from 9 to 12. At 12:30 I was dry. And Isaac was not satiated. I tried bottle after bottle, but he is not a bottle baby. This is something we have to work on. I tried for an hour+. He didn't want to be rocked, or bounced. He didn't want his back rubbed. He wanted to nurse.

I had to put him in the crib. Zip him up (cat tent). Close the door.

And let him scream.

Oh and he did.

I laid in bed and cried.

Cried because my baby was crying and I couldn't soothe him.

Cried because I couldn't give him what he needed.

Cried because I felt...helpless.

Ben wrapped his arms around me. I cried myself to sleep.

Ben didn't sleep. He informed me the next morning that Isaac screamed for the majority of 3 and a half hours before he finally fell asleep. When Isaac woke up at his normal time of 7am, his little eyes were all red and puffy.

It broke my heart. I hated that feeling. I hate feeling helpless in terms of my own child.