Withdrawal

For the past two days it's been dreary and rainy here in Japan, which makes my Saipan withdrawal that much more intense. I miss the warm sunshine and blue skies of Saipan. Because of the weather, Grace and I have been cooped up inside. I've discovered that she loves being in her pack'n'play. I put a few of her toys in there and she has a blast entertaining herself. I actually got to read a couple of chapters in my book because of it. She even tired herself out and took her afternoon nap in there- all without fuss!


Here's an embarrassing story that I'm sharing in the interest of recording all my motherhood experiences- good and bad. Although Grace is not quite sleeping through the night yet, she's getting close. I usually get up only once during the night to nurse her and she'll sleep in until 8 or so in the morning.

But the past couple nights were different. Two nights ago, she was running a temperature because of her immunizations so although she slept well, I was restless because I wanted to make sure her fever didn't spike too high. Last night, she was restless for some reason so I was getting up every couple hours. And this morning when she wanted to be up at 5:30am, I had to resort to my emergency parenting plan of bringing her into bed with me and nursing her while we were both lying down.

This has always worked like a charm before and she'd fall asleep and give me another two to three hours of sleep. But this time she continued to be super fussy and cried. I was exhausted and couldn't understand why my emergency plan was not working. Thankfully, she eventually fell asleep and I immediately followed.

When I woke up, I understood why my baby was crying and complaining earlier- she had dried up milk all in her hair and face! Apparently, in my sleep-deprived stupor, I didn't realize that my milk was not actually making it in her mouth. I was squirting my child in the face with milk! I'm obviously not going to get the Mother of the Year award. Oh well, maybe next year....