Guilt.

Surprisingly enough, I worked all six of my 12 hour shifts.  It'll actually end up being the biggest single paycheck of my life to date.  It's taking everything I have to store it away in a maternity leave fund and not shop til I drop for my entire 5-6 days off.  Yikes.  The bleeding completely stopped during my stretch of work ..and I thought ...yayayay.  Then I was home for a single day and it started again.

Baby A2 is going through a really difficult phase right now.  I'm not sure if I should blame it on me being gone for too long during that work stretch or some other quickly approaching milestone that I'm not paying attention to.  He sounds like a broken siren all day.  He literally whines/cries nearly the entire day for umm...no particular reason that I can figure out.  He's always been a super happy mellow little thing.  This is totally throwing me for a loop.  One of his favorite things (besides the zoo and the park) is to go out to eat.  Loves it.  Totally sociable, engages the waitress, gets excited about the food.  We went out twice yesterday because we were out of town and umm.   Holy disaster.  As in ...ohmygod.  How freaking embarrassing??  At the mall, we passed by the pretzel place and he literally threw himself on the ground shrieking "HOT NUMMIES!!  HOT NUMMIES!!"  which um.  Okay.  If I thought it would have helped, I would have bought him a stinking pretzel.  But it clearly was not going to help.  What was helpful, however,  was the lady that walked by and commented that he was a wretched brat.  To which I replied, "Yeah ..well.  We all have our days."  And seriously.  I know he'll be 2 in a few weeks and this is likely the beginning of what's to come .  I think I must have forgotten how truly awful this stage is ...or I'm missing something big going on with the little guy right now. 

Which brings me to a confession of sorts.  So ..it turns out I was still breastfeeding when I got pregnant.  Not often.  We were down to like once every other day ...but the kid would not give it up.  I was over it.  Like ...over it with a capital O.  He was not so much.  At all.  And then, as soon as I got pregnant, nursing was extraordinarily uncomfortable.  Psychologically, physically, the whole bit.  And I sort of cut him off cold turkey.  As cold turkey as you can get when you're already on an every other day schedule.  But this crazy behavior makes me think that he wasn't ready.  He still asks to nurse 3 or 4 times every. single. day.  And mostly, if he's not asking to nurse?  He's got his hand down my shirt feeling me up.  Feeling anyone up, really.  My mom watches him while monk and I are at work, and the two of them have a very close bond.  The other day I was getting ready to leave, and I hear him ask her to nurse him.  She busted out laughing.  The poor little thing.  I think he feels abandoned or something.

Mommy guilt.  Somehow, it's always going to be something I did wrong.