Since Kaia has started really crawling (a few weeks ago, she was “army crawling,” but now she’s REALLY crawling!), she’s definitely accumulated a few scratches here and there on her arms and legs. On top of that, she’s also inevitably managed to bump her head quite a few times. She’s already fallen off the bed once (ugh). While in a sitting position, she occasionally loses balance and falls backwards or sideways and knocks her head. This is fine if she’s on the bed, in her crib, or on the play mat (well, she does cry when she falls on the play mat…), but when it’s on our hardwood floors, it can be painful. Obviously it hurts, and so she usually lets out a cry of terror and shrieks bloody murder for a bit until she is soothed enough.

I always feel so bad whenever I hear her cry like this. I know it’s a normal part of development and growing up; it would be completely unrealistic (and inane) to try to protect her from every scratch or fall). If she never gets hurt, she will never learn and grow. But it still pains me to see her face scrunched up in pain and agony, and all I want to do is hold her to soothe her. But alas, most of the times when these incidents have happened, guess what… I’m tied up to my breast pump. And so I’m usually unable to soothe her, and Chris the savior dad (or what he calls himself, the “ultimate parent”) comes in. It’s another way that Chris gets to build a bond with our daughter that I’m not always able to given pumping. So when I think about mothers who gave up on nursing or pumping early on because they wanted to spend more quality time with their babies, I totally get it. It’s been a huge trade off, but I still stand by my decision to exclusively pump to give the best milk to my baby.