I'm So Cranky

It's the lack of sleep getting to me. I can't wait to give these girls their last feeding tonight and go to bed.

Yesterday was the WORST day. It ended with me crying on the floor at midnight, which woke L up (who had only gone to bed the hour before).

The girls were fussy all day. Actually, fussy is putting it lightly, they cried, no, N SHRIEKED the entire day. I was at my wits end.

My work BFF (we no longer work together but this is how I identify her) has given us tons of her frozen breastmilk that she saved for us from when she was pumping last year. It's been great, and the girls have been gaining a ton on it. We used the Months 2-6 (age of her daughter at the time she pumped this milk) no problem, in fact the girls loved it. But it ran out and we recently got Months 7-9 from her, and the girls, N in particular, are just so much more fussy on it. I don't know why. They say that any breast milk, even if it's later in age than your actual baby can be considered better than formula (in terms of immunities - it's the same in terms of nutrition). But something in this milk was really bugging them. M was doing ok, but N seemed to be getting more and more fussy by the day, culminating in yesterday. So I dealt with her all day screaming, then L comes home from work and of course helps out a bit,  but he has to go to bed early (it wasn't even early yesterday because he was helping me so much because I was so frustrated even before he went to bed) so I'm up with them till the early morning hours.

He's in bed and N again is screaming, and the thought of having to deal with her for the next few hours AND doing it all again in the morning just put me over the edge and I went into meltdown mode. It's at times like these that I get so so negative and start thinking about certain people (ahem, my MIL) who never offered help (not like she'd ever be there at midnight anyway even if she did so heaven knows why I go there in my thoughts) ...and I just started crying. L wakes up and finds me crying on the couch with Natalie who is still screaming and then I just felt so guilty on top of it, the boy needs to be up by 5am to do the morning shift with the girls while I sleep till he leaves for work and he's up at midnight. He can't get her to stop crying so he tells me to get M and we'll put them in the car and go for a ride (supposedly the best thing to do for a colicky baby). But of course, it's almost time for M's feeding so I can't go so he takes N by himself. I feed M the breast milk and she's fine with it (for being the smaller baby at birth her stomach seems to be able to handle a lot more than N's) and then put her bed and she falls asleep no problem.

At that point I say screw it in terms of the milk. I make up a pitcher of formula because it's at least consistent and I just have this feeling there's something in the breast milk bothering her.

L comes back about a half hour later with a quiet N, thank God! He goes back to bed. But she's totally awake and she soon starts crying again - I figure she's hungry I feed her the bottle of formula. For the first time all day she's totally quiet after I finish feeding her. I put her to bed and she's still quiet. OMG!

We had a bunch of breastmilk still thawing in the fridge so I gave it to M all day who tolerated it just fine and kept N on the formula. Today was a totally different day! Happy babies, babies who napped, I got stuff done (including starting cloth diapering again, I guess that's another post) ...it was wonderful! I totally felt like I could handle the world! I think N was fussy for about 1 hour and I felt my mood drop so much for that one hour - it's crazy how much it goes up and down! Then she was "good" again and I felt I could do this for weeks on end with no break if it kept up like this. Craziness.

We still have some more 9 month milk in the freezer downstairs but I think we're going to keep it there until they're closer to 9 months. I don't know what could have changed in my work BFF's diet in those few months but obviously something was different. It can't be a dairy intolerance because the formula is cow-based...it's so weird.

Now poor L ends up getting about 3 hours of sleep because M woke up at 3:30am and he's morning shift (I had just gone to bed the hour before) so I feel horrible. So today I made him go to bed as early as possible - seriously, he still hung on until 10pm. I really hope they will both stay asleep until 5am tomorrow (today)!

The lack of sleep is catching up with me as well and as I already said, I can't wait to finish up the feedings and go to bed.

But today I've:

• done laundry
• taken a shower
• given the girls a bath
• organized cloth diapering stuff
• cleaned out dresser drawer (it had turned into a "junk drawer" where we kept piling papers)
• paid bills
• wrote out a few more thank you cards/given a donation online/sympathy card
• done 16 feedings
• changed 20 diapers
• ordered stay dry liners for cloth diapers
• washed I don't know how many bottles
• requested birth certificates (just realized I had to send in a form and payment!)

I am sure to the uninitiated (i.e. person who works who doesn't have newborns/kids) this sounds like a very easy day - but this is a rock star day for me now!

I hope tomorrow is a good day too. I could use a few in a row.