Tuesday, August 23, 2005

The Best is Yet to Come When I was an organizer, there was a common understanding about your first event (press conference, rally, protest, whatever). If it went badly (as it almost always did), it was a relief, beause now you knew that every event that followed would go better. If it went well, on the other hand, you were fucked. If it went especially well - if your turnout was over predictions, or the speakers were perfect - then you were really doomed, because your expectations for events were now set so high that every subsequent event would look like a failure. I had a good day yesterday, by that accounting. It was my complete nightmare of the first day. Mrs. B went to work, and she was beside herself with pain and sadness. She went uncontrollably. I was in tears - I have never seen my wife as upset as she was yesterday. The only one who managed to keep his composure was Oliver - at one point, R started crying while holding him, and he started laughing. So she went to work. Oliver and I hung out and played for a little bit, and then I realized it had been about two hours since he last fed. Time to try the first bottle of the day. He started shrieking. He didn't want it. We struggled for a while, he screamed some more, and finally he fell asleep out of frustration and exhaustion. For the next three and a half hours, we tried the same dance - try to feed the baby, baby refuses, with louder and louder screaming and crying, he falls asleep for a few minutes, he wakes up, try to feed the baby... Nothing. He didn't eat for five and a half hours. The real tears that I noticed before are really coming down now. His eyelashes and his cheeks were soaked with tears. It was all too much for him. Mom wasn't home during the day, I was trying - badly - to push a bottle on him. Mom called around 10:30, and I was nearly in tears as I told her the news. She came home for lunch to feed our emaciated baby. He ate ravenously, like a starving man at a buffet. I sat on the couch and wept, convinced I was a complete failure. R tried to console me (nice role reversal there) that it wasn't my fault he wasn't eating. He was reverse cycling. He was too shaken up by the new circumstances. It wasn't my fault. (By the way, I'm not serious about the starving. Babies often don't eat much during the day, and they know when they really need to eat. So I wouldn't really starve unless it went on for a day or two. That doesn't make it feel any better, though.) We decided I would try to feed him earlier. Again, never wait until a baby's too hungry to feed him. (I think I waited too early in the morning. He moved beyond hunger into total freak-out.) Thank goodness - he fed once at 2:30 and again at 4:00. I felt like I knew what I was doing again. We even played a little. (That's how badly the morning went - I didn't even try to play with him because I was so freaked about him not eating.) Mom came home and fed him for the rest of the night. I felt like I had been on a roller coaster without a seat belt. It could not go like this every day - I refuse to allow it. I'll watch him more, feed him earlier and more often. But day 1 is in the books. It's over. It's history. This was my big learning day. Hopefully today goes better. P.S. My boss apparently thinks that even though they gave me a contract for 120 hours over six weeks - 20 hours per week - I only should really have eight hours of work to do this week. I received a fairly obnoxious email that said that I should notify her if I was going to work significantly more than 8 hours this week.  I don't know if she's trying to save hours for later projects, or if she's trying to micromanage my workload, or if she's trying to save money. But I don't like it. We'll see how this goes, but I hope it's not going to be a recurring issue. 7:11:18 AM     Speak up!  []