3/5/23
i think being pregnant is so different than caring for a child. with one there were just some dietary restrictions, but i felt good and ate basically whatever i wanted and grew fat and enjoyed it (the end was hard tho). with the other, you have to be so much more responsible- there’s so many ways babies can hurt themselves. i can’t even leave chopsticks in his reach, and his reach is expanding every day.
3/8/23
the weird smothering move I was doing has stopped working this week – when I’ve tried the last few times, it was fruitless- he kept his jaws clenched so that I was basically stretching and pulling my nipple like taffy every which way. One or two times, it might have worked in that it woke him up just enough to keep him from the hard biting he does when in a deeper sleep state, but overall not working well at all. I got these silicone chopsticks hoping they might work: when he’s asleep and bitten down with no releasing me in sight, I stick the end of one in his mouth and use it to try to pry his teeth open to release myself. But the angles are really awkward and even this doesn’t always work; sometimes it makes him start chomping more and I get caught in it (and it’s more painful because I would have started to pull out, so he’s chomping on the most sensitive tip part). Other times, he’s tired enough to let it go, and the chopstick method lets me get away sooner than if I’d just waited and done nothing.
3/9/23
made me sob a little from happiness and from missing him when I thought of this in the bath this morning: whenever Rodrigo FaceTimes me and Baby, and it’s time to hang up, I try to end it with just the video on baby, because I usually don’t feel ready or dressed up enough to be on video- I’m tired all the time and just trying to get through each day- but when I do that, R always asks, “I want to see mama too.” like he doesn’t want the baby to take up our entire lives. Making sure I literally do not crop myself out of the picture. And I’m grateful for this, for him.
3/10/23
starting to think there is an unseen like spiritual side to the biting. like once or twice in the past week when I’ve been nursing him, I could kind of feel that he wasn’t going to bite, a while before it happened (and he didn’t). And I didn’t know why I knew it then, but now it seems like the closer connection I have with Baby, the more attention I give him before and during, the better understanding we have between us, the less he bites, or the better I can anticipate/deal with it.
Marriage Journal 