the “let down” and other painful goods: A Haines Home Companion

I woke at 5:00 this morning to feed Titus, my 4 week old. I’ve forgotten so much about being the mother of a tiny baby – so many moments in which I’m thinking, “Oh. I forgot about that.”

After re-remembering, I can now (again) predict the “let down” of milk and hold my arms accordingly. I brace my face in a delighted posture instead of screaming in distorted anguish. I still can’t remember how long it takes to regulate.

I can now change a diaper in the dark, which is what I did this morning to wake Titus because of the earlier mentioned “let down.” His blackbrown eyes still meet mine in the window light. I love the round of his diapered bottom, his folding into the soft place he used to be. Though pain comes with all this, I love having a baby. It must be my very most favorite thing (besides the man who helps me make them).

Now I’m in the living room writing after dealing with two more boys awake too early. My heart beats with a creativity that’s been missing a while, but right now – before 5:30 AM – Popeye cartoons are entertaining in the next room, and my boys gut-laugh. And my house has never been dirtier this early in the day. Coffee has never tasted better. I’ve never felt braver.

Autumn is coming, things changing. The drought here may switch sudden into stony winter, but right now Summer looms, all in beating shine. Grasshoppers land on shoulders and fly zinging wide back to the dusty grass. Hot as we’ve ever been, the days are slowly leaning toward pumpkin (at least canned), thoughts of soon-coming hayrides as on matchsticks.

I miss the Rock House, the Rock Home Companion, but for now, this is where we are – in an apartment loving our cloth, counting down the days until we resume home-school, wondering when I’ll ever get the dishwasher loaded and the mountainous piles put away.

I feel Seth’s eyes, the healing process coming to an end. Sex and Zumba are on the September page.

I look forward to so many good things while today is its own slow hot good, the smell of baby under the musky smell of flip-flop dirt, the way I hold a child in one arm (or between my chin and shoulder like a phone) and direct symphonies of bath-times with the other.

Tagged as: breastfeeding, home, living in the moment, motherhood, seasons