You just gotta laugh

This morning I had plans to visit a friend of mine and introduce her to M.

Some background to set the stage...

My friend, "L", is in her 60s in a long-term lesbian relationship. She is a professor too and retired a few years ago. She is recovering from pretty awful breast cancer but somehow manages to be really upbeat and caring. I haven't seen her since December when she came to my 40th birthday party.

In my world in academia women don't often have kids because they are career killers. I am odd because I had my baby so late in life, so I am kind of a bizarre anomaly. It is hard to put me in a category of how this is going to work out -- I am a bit too far along career-wise to assume it will hurt my career, but there aren't any models for showing how it'll work out. I think it freaks some people out, and L is one of them.

L and I have a connection because of the intense career focus and the recent disgruntlement with the University and our respective departments. L retired in disgust. I had a baby.

I had a bad feeling as I was driving over because I knew that M would wake up and be starving soon after we got there. M doesn't calmly wake up and think to herself, "hmmm, I am feeling a little hungry." She wakes up and instantaneously freaks out because she thinks she is starving. I decide to head this off by nursing her before she was fully awake. Good idea, yes?

Unfortunately it was the left breast's turn to go first. This one is quite productive, obnoxiously so. If M doesn't latch on well and quickly Milk goes everywhere, and quickly.

You guessed it, M is all weirded out and freaky and squirmy so milk is going everywhere. I am trying to be cool about it, but as M gets more and more worked up she starts flaily around to the point where all the snaps on my shirt come undone and her clothes are staring to fling off of her in that completely inexplicable way that only babies seem to be able to accomplish.

Things keep escalating while I am trying to have a conversation about actin and viruses and evolution (which is hard to do on my lack-of-sleep-brain even under the best of circumstances). I had to just start laughing at one point and take our whole half naked and milky fiasco situation into the other room to try and get organized.

That didn't really work at all though because M is still hungry or gassy or something. And then I realize that I have lost the round pad I use to catch nipple leaks... in the living room... so I have a massively leaking breast and nothing to use save for a washcloth. And equally bad, I don't know where the pad is. It is lost somewhere in a lesbian couple's living room who don't have kids, but do have a little dog that might be choking on it right at that moment. What do you do? of course you pretend like it is no big deal, hoping that maybe you forgot to put it in your bra this morning, knowing that isn't true.

The whole visit was an attempt to carry on adult academic conversation while pretending that my 7 week old wasn't totally losing it and that I didn't have breast milk all over my shirt. It was not pretty. No one in their right mind would believe that mothering a 7 week old is any fun if that was your only window into it. oof. L must think I am insane.

The tea and brownies were delish.

I headed out after about an hour and a half and needed to run by the post office. I was taping up a box while waiting in line with M being kind of fussy. A bossy old lady started lecturing me on how to cut the packing tape -- everyone was now watching to see what I'd do. I politely said thanks. Continued to wrap my way. And I let M totally freak out as payback, laughing on hysterically on the inside.

I love my kid. You just gotta laugh at how real she keeps it.