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The new baby hasn’t been gaining weight as fast as she’s supposed to and it’s been kind of terrible.  The pediatrician, who is also my doctor, keeps telling me that it is OK.  That it’s nothing to be too concerned about. But there is something about the way she says it which is the opposite of soothing.  Which is too reminiscent of the overly careful way my OB/GYN talked to me before my miscarriage, saying “There is nothing to be concerned about yet …”  And, intellectually, I know this is very different.  We started supplementing with some formula when she was about three weeks old, which seemed like its own kind of failure in the media blitz of Breast is Best, even if, again, intellectually, I know the data’s all observational and not as strong as people think it is.

But the last thing I tried before the formula was waking the baby (who, through some miracle, had figured out that humans sleep at night) every couple of hours at night to breastfeed her.  Which left me hysterical with sleep deprivation, everything confused into a kind of teary dread, upset every time I looked at the too-skinny baby.  Testing how I was feeling, and scared by the results.  Not enough self-preservation left, and feeling unmoored.  Begging my husband not to be disappointed that I needed to go to sleep, even though he wanted to sit at the dinner table a little longer, to spend some time together.  I am too attuned to his stoic disappointment, and he is not as good at hiding it as he thinks.

And I started yelling and crying, pounding my thighs with my fists, saying that I was scared and tired and COULD NOT DO IT ANYMORE.  That maybe I should kill myself, because I really didn’t know what to do.  I was failing.  Taking a plastic knife off the table and scratching red welts into my arm, too high on adrenalin to feel it.  And Tobias, looking at me, furious, trying not to yell when he said, “Why do you do that?”

And me, trying to pull it back together, saying that I was sorry, telling him he could leave if he had to, and collapsing on the floor sobbing, “She’s going to die! She’s going to die!”

So, formula. And no more setting alarms to wake up the baby in the middle of the night.  And A&D ointment for my arm.  And maybe upping my dose of Zoloft.