When the f*ck did I become an attachment parent?

So yeah, the reason I haven't posted in a million years is because I went back to work. I thought I had no time before, but holy shit. This is serious business. And it's haaaaaard. I work all day, I pump all day, I come home at night and drop everything and breastfeed, then I soothe him to sleep until it's time for us all to lie down. Somewhere in there, my husband cooks dinner and I scarf it down my pie hole in the few peaceful minutes that I don't have a boob in my son's mouth. Then I wake up at six the next morning, feed my son, get myself ready without any help because my husband leaves for work at 5:00 a.m., scarf down cereal while my son plays, and try to be ready to walk out the door by 8:00.

Work is going good, though. And we finally resolved our childcare sitch, albeit expensively. I sucked it up and got a nanny. We were going to do a share, but we broke it off when the female-to-male transexual father of the child my son was going to share with ended up being too closed-minded about the nanny I wanted to hire (you read all that right. It's a hilarious topic for another posting. Also, my life is a sitcom, as a friend pointed out).

Anyway, I was all scared of hiring a nanny because of the idea of leaving my baby alone with a stranger all day, and one terrible thing that happened in NYC last year that I can't even bring myself to mention fully. But as it happened, some good friends of ours announced they have to leave the city for a work opportunity, and lo and behold, they needed a new home for their beloved nanny. So we met her, loved her and crunched some numbers. And because my husband gets home at 4:00 PM and I don't leave for work until 8:00, we found we could make it work financially, albeit just barely.

She's great, though. And it's such a load off my mind not to have to load him up every morning and take him on the subway, then drop him off, then get back on the subway and go back to work (which had been my only option before, because there aren't really any daycares in my neighborhood who take infants and have open spots).

Meanwhile, I am a gross attachment parent now, apparently. My son sleeps in the bed with us all night now. It was going to be a temporary move to get us through the 19 week sleep regression, but we never stopped. Truth: I kind of love it. I think it's partly because I miss him so much during the day that I love snuggling with him all night. And the nursing is still going strong, though I'm supplementing now. I expect I will keep doing it for at least the next 7 months. It's such a sure-fire way to calm him down that I'm not sure I want to take it out of my arsenal just yet. So yeah, I'm hoping I'm not still doing it when he's 2. Of course I can say now, "I would never do that!" But that's exactly what I said about him sleeping in the bed with us. Sigh.

Also, I bought a recipe book to make his baby food, and I ordered him these special non-toxic diapers, because I care about whether he has chemicals up in his butt. As I said to a friend, "What happened to me? I used to be sort of cool."

Google "four month sleep regression" if you want to understand what fresh hell I am living through right now.

S., a formerly champion sleeper, is now waking up a gajillion times a night to eat. He slept soooooooo gooooooood when we went to Texas (oh, and he did fucking awesome on the flights--thank you, breastfeeding, even though you are a pain in the ass). He slept eight hours a night for like three nights in a row.

And now? He will. not. sleep. Unless we co-sleep.

I know, I know, I knowiknowiknow. It's dangerous, I'm setting a bad precedent, blah blah blah. But I feel like it's more dangerous to breastfeed sitting up, then put him back in his sleeper, because a) I fall asleep while feeding him, and I'm afraid he could roll out of my arms and onto the floor; and b) because he wakes up and cries the instant I set him down in the sleeper and we need to fucking sleep some time.  Also, when we do co-sleep and my boob happens to fall out of his mouth, he wakes up and cries.

So that's what we've been doing the last several nights. I feel awful about it. (But I admit I also really enjoy the snuggling. Especially since I've gone back to work this week. Yeah, I buried the lead. More on that later.)

My boy

Have I mentioned that my baby boy is dreeeeeeeeeamy? He's all downy cheeks and pouty pink lips and huge, saucer-like blue eyes framed by lush, curly eyelashes. When I wake up in the morning, I stand over his sleeper and give him the cheeriest smile I can muster, and the smile he gives back sends a bolt of pure, electric joy rushing through me. It is the best possible way to start my day. As Holly Hunter said in Raising Arizona, "I love him so mu-hu-huch!"