The First Day Back

Today marked my wife’s first day back to work from her maternity leave. It goes without saying that I had a good deal of anxiety heading into today.

I stayed up late last night due to the anxiety, plus I was compulsively refreshing the Pepsi website to see how CureJM would fare in the August Refresh Everything contest. (Big congrats to them for their win and to Kevin @ Always Home and Uncool for his tireless efforts promoting this worthy cause).

Nervous energy had me up and showered before six in the morning, which is so not like me. With both kids still sleeping away I managed to get a number of things done like refill the diaper bag for our days adventures and field strip some baby bottles in 9.8 seconds. As my friend Eric would point out, R. Lee Ermey would be proud.

Little man got up a little after seven and I had to stave off a few meltdowns when he was informed that Mama was not home. I successfully bribed him with oatmeal and grapes, then redirected him with talk of his weekly Gymboree class.

Baby girl announced her presence just before nine and thus began the toughest part of the day. Unsurprisingly she woke up hungry, but I could not get her to feed for the life of me. While she is primarily nursed, we did introduce her to bottles occasionally so it wouldn’t be new to her when I’d have to take over some of her feedings.

The most troubling part of the whole thing is that she had taken to the bottles without issue and was protesting now that I didn’t have the appropriate backup supplies. Fortunately, my wife happened to call in the middle of this episode and offered up a suggestion that turned out to work like a charm.

As a stay at home dad I’ve never once felt emasculated. Call me “Mr. Mom”, a “househusband” or a “beta male” if you want, I don’t care. I’d say what I’m really thinking, but I try to keep this a family show.

However, I reached a new low today when the only way I could get my daughter to take her bottle was to wear my wife’s fuzzy pink nursing pillow. It made perfect sense in that that is how she has been feeding her short life thus far and I’m sure there was the comfort factor in that it carries the scent of her mother.

The actual act of wearing it wasn’t the low. No, it was when I answered the door for FedEx still wearing it.

Undeterred I brought that thing with me when we left for my son’s class in the event she decided she wanted to make another pass at the bottle. I didn’t need it then, but I would need it again this afternoon at what constituted our third attempt at a feeding. Apparently third time really is the charm and she took the bottle down like a freshman at a rush event.

While the feeding itself went well for the first time today, it wasn’t all wine and roses. If my wife had gotten home five minutes before she actually did, she would have encountered quite the scene.

I was sitting on our couch with the nursing pillow around my waist and the baby resting comfortable while munching away on the bottle. My son was doing everything he could to get the bottle’s cap from me, including reaching under the pillow between my legs and nailing me in the family jewels – repeatedly.

To fend him off I was pushing him away from me with my leg, which did absolutely nothing to deter his resolve. Frustrated by the balancing act of trying to keep him away while feeding our daughter, I finally sternly asked him to “Stop hitting me in the nuts”.

Armed with his new vocabulary term, the parrot that he is, he proceeded to straddle the leg I was using to corral him and asked for a “horsey ride” while screaming “nuts!”. All the while baby girl was drinking away, oblivious to her brother’s antics.

The day went much better than expected and while the living room looks like a scene from Platoon, I survived the day.  In even better news my wife is off from work tomorrow.