Valentine's Day, Postpartum

Two days after I gave birth to Anders, Pete told me he had made plans for Valentine's Day. We would drive into Chicago for the weekend, leave Anders with Pete's parents, and go to Lake Geneva, Wisconsin for a romantic getaway.

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My initial response (which I had the presence of mind not to voice) was, "Are you crazy?" I was in the same robe I had put on minutes after Anders was born and I was sitting on packs of crushed ice. Valentine's Day was a little far from my mind. But I sensed my husband's fragile concern that our son, whom he already loved more than life itself, had stolen me, and that our our marriage would never be the same. So I said that it sounded like a fabulous plan, that I was already looking forward to it, and that six weeks would give me enough time to get nursing established, introduce a bottle, and store up enough milk for 24 hours away. Then I spent five weeks quietly stewing over the fact that six weeks wasn't long enough to do any of those things.

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Long story short, everything came to a head the day before Valentine's Day, but we put our problem-solving experience to good use. Pete's parents agreed to come to Grand Rapids (saving us the trip into Chicago), and we went on an abbreviated version of our overnight getaway in town. To my surprise, I had a wonderful time and Anders did just fine. So when Pete and I moved to Chicago last month we decided that we should make it a point to go on an overnight date once a month.

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The only problem is that our easy-breezy six week old who sucked any nipple you put in front of him (or any nose or pillow or hairbrush handle, for that matter) is now a six month old with awareness and preferences. And he prefers mommy's breasts over bottles. "Prefers" is perhaps too flexible a word. Anders prefers breastfeeding to bottles the way that Cookie Monster favors cookies over, say, poison-soaked cabbage. At least that must be what Anders thinks that I'm trying to feed him through Dr. Brown's nipple.

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I think it happened when we moved. We moved from Grand Rapids to Chicago, unpacked our belongings, put Anders in a rental car, drove for four days to Idaho, settled into a new apartment, then left him with a baby-sitter he had never met. It was a lot of change for a four month old--I don't blame him for wanting some consistency and mommy-time.

The first day that we left Anders with the baby-sitter I left a full bottle and gave her instructions on when to feed him. Four hours later we came home. The first thing I noticed when we walked in the door was the bottle sitting on the floor, full. Then I saw Anders sitting on the sitter's lap, grunting, with his hands clasped together and a very intense frown on his face. She told me that he refused to eat the bottle and that he had been sitting on her lap for a half hour. I took him to the other room to nurse him immediately, knowing he was a couple hours overdue.

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As soon as he latched on, he gripped my breast as if to say, "If you want this back, you're going to have to pry it from my chubby, dimpled little hands." His eyes were crossed and serious for those first few moments when he didn't get anything. When the milk came in, he raised his eyebrows like an orchestra fan listening to a particularly celestial strain of music. He smiled at me, milk dribbling out the corner of his mouth, then contentedly went back to work, happy as Cookie Monster with a mouth full of chocolate chips. He hasn't taken a bottle since.

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I gave him a month to get adjusted to his new home here in Illinois, and just recently we've tried the bottle again. We've read a few things and have gotten lots of advice, but so far he's just not buying it. And honestly, I'm okay with it. Because moving is a lot of change for a twenty-four year old. No matter how hectic my day, no matter how many class or work deadlines I'm stressed about, no matter how much I'm missing friends or my house, no matter how many questions I have about what the next few years hold, whenever my little boy looks up at me with that deeply content "I'm-at-home" look, I feel the same way.