first week back

We were all stressed.  Tolga was leaving in the morning for Kayseri.  It was my first week back and first week leaving Teoman.  It was my mother-in-law's first week with her grandson, alone.

I kept telling myself: It's only two weeks.  It's a good trial run.  It's only two weeks.  Just two weeks.  Two weeks two weeks two weeks.

The night before I tried to explain to Tolga directions for his mom about what to do for Teoman - but the translation didn't go very well.

I tried to explain about the life-span of breast milk: you can only warm it once, it can be out for 6 hours maximum, it shouldn't be put back in the fridge.  Try to warm up 4 oz at most and you can use the leftover for the next feeding if you don't put it back in the fridge.  Thaw the frozen milk in the fridge, not on the counter - unless you're going to use it . . . We had been working on it all week - but the night before my work started I made the directions as simple as possible.  I pumped what I guessed would be a days worth of milk and showed her the frozen milk as back up.  I only asked that she write down the time and amount of milk that he drank.  We'd deal with the rest as it came up.

I mean, she raised three boys . . . She's not going to do anything absolutely crazy . . . So she'll hold him too much, not be able to nap him, struggle with the milk, put the diaper on wrong, leave a trail of wipes/dirty diapers/dirty clothes in the changing room - but she'll learn, right . . . She's his grandma, and loves him as much as anybody in this family, so what was there to worry about?

She offered to write down his naps, and to call me during the day - but I said no to both.  I knew it was going to be harder than she thought, and when she called me - the only thing I'll assume she is saying is "Come home now!" - because I've found that when it comes to Teoman, I don't understand any of her Turkish.  She uses more difficult Turkish and speaks in an indirect way - so I've temporarily given up on communicating with her about Teoman because it makes me crazy.

So the first day, around noontime, Tolga called her to see how things were going.  Then he called me to say she didn't answer because the home phone wasn't working but he was sure everything was fine.

I was on my way to a taxi.

Tolga called his friend at work, and she stopped by the house then called me before I had even left - to say everything was fine.  She also fixed the phone problem.  When I got home, my MIL showed me he had drank 4 grams.  She kept calling it 4 grams because she doesn't know the word ounce even when we say it to her or look at it on the bottle.  There's milliliters there too, which she does know, but she kept preferring to count by "grams".

He had eaten okay, but not slept at all.  We both went to bed as soon as I got home.

The second day, Teoman didn't eat all day long.  My MIL called Tolga, but Tolga didn't call me because of my rule - only if I need to come home - to which I was really upset when I got home and found out he hadn't eaten.  (No one could win with me this week).  Tolga hadn't called me because Teoman hadn't cried.  When he fussed, my MIL offered (or more likely shoved) the bottle into his mouth and he gagged on it.  When I came home, I tested the milk and found it cold.  I warmed it some and then offered the bottle to him and he took it, but intermittently gagged.

I left out three bottle options - two different brands, two different nipple sizes.

I didn't want her to boil water to heat up the milk because it kills the nutrients.

She complained that it takes too long.  She had been warming the big bottle in a tiny bowl so I pulled out a big bowl for her to put it in trying to explain that it would work 

She used the big bowl as storage for the bottles all week long and I kept finding a pot of boiled water still hot on the stove when I got home. 

Goodbye nutrients.  

The third day, he eventually took the bottle and got a good nap in.  But we still both needed one when I got home.  

If I were to recap the week as to what I accomplished at work, it would solely be in terms of how many ounces of milk I pumped each day and how long it took.  

only two weeks - only two weeks - only two weeks