Matei has lost interest in my bosoms. They appear to fill him with frustration and rage and he spurns my attempts at feeding him by using his wee baby muscles to thrash and throw himself back. I would be insulted by this behaviour, were I not quite enjoying having my bosoms to myself again.

This is a natural development of the fact that my milk supplies have been diminishing since month 4, and upping the child's formula intake (which he LOOOOOOOOVES, it's like crack to him) seemed less frustrating and angst-making than taking the advice for increasing milk supplies which was to basically have the baby hanging off my bosoms in a manner of a nipple tassel at every available opportunity throughout the day and night. Which no. Just no. I have worked too hard on a feeding-sleeping routine to throw it to the winds. When deprived of routine my child develops irritability that increases until his head is practically spinning around like something out of the exorcist and it's a terrible terrible way for both of us to spend our day.

So it's goodbye to all that I guess (pretty bras with underwire here I come! Spicy food! Pickled food! I will reunite with them all, and take fistfuls of non-wimpy paracetamol medication washed down with coctails! I will wear whichever frocks I choose without once having to pause to consider the logistics of Bosom Accessibility!)

I am so heady with freedom that I want to shout with the delight of it and burn my breastpump like a bra.

Yesterday was a horrible day. Matei screamed for about 5 hours solid (I think it's teeth again) and refused to sleep unless I was holding him and WOULD NOT BE PUT DOWN. I currently have a sprained muscle in my shoulder from catering to that demand, so you can imagine how much I'm looking forward to carrying him around today.

It was awful. I haven't had a day that bad in months. I held my shit together, more or less, until 6 o'clock when Z was due home and when I learned that Z was stuck in a traffic jam my shit fell apart in a rather spectacular way. With jazz hands! And fireworks! (The highlight may have been putting my child down and leaving him to scream while I walked away to engage in such soothing activites as deep breathing and banging my head against the wall.) I ended up walking vacant eyed in aimless circles holding my baby and sobbing in big gushy sobs which strangely enough made Matei quiet and contemplative. I think I may try it again. It was quite soothing.

And then a bad night followed a bad day and the sight of a grinning cooing baby at 3am made my head full of #####&^&*(###'s and thank god there are two parents in this household is all I will say because I was ready to give him up for adoption.

Nothing hits to the core of me quite like the sleep thing, because you know, I thought we'd got over that. He has pretty much been sleeping solidly through the night, and while the fact that babies his age are meant to sleep from 7pm until 7am is a concept he scoffs at, sleep from 9pm until 5:30is am is actually pretty ok by me. And I get slightly hysterical when he doesn't sleep because I am transported into the Bad Old Days commonly known as months 0-3 whose broken nights still make me break out in PTSD symptoms.

And then there's today, when the child is engaged in his number 2 nap with minimal assistance from me. Babies! They are weird! And unpredictable! I think it's a design flaw.

( Things Which Irritate Me About Breastfeeding and Its Promotional Materials )

In the last 48 hours, while breastfeeding I have:

*Watched television

*Read a book

*Pacified my mother's pathologically jealous dog with some face stroking

*Fallen asleep

*Practiced meditative breathing and states of mind

*Contemplated the alternating blond and black hairs sprouting from the crown of my baby's head

*Compiled in my head a list of breastfeeding commandments beginning with Thou Shalt Not Bite

*Wrote poetry in my mind

*Sang along to Serbian rock songs on the radio (of which my favourite goes (Don't worry, I have no evil intentions/ You're just a shoulder to cry on; which is a fairly apt description of every relationship I had between the ages of 16 and 23)

*Read my friends list

*Sat in a cafe

*Made small talk with people who stared fixedly into my eyes

*Answered the door

*Greeted the postman (I thought he was my mother)

*Walked down a flight of stairs, taken the elevator, wrangled open the door, given Z his watch, kissed him goodbye as he left for the airport, walked to the elevator, walked up a flight of stairs, succesfully inserted keys and opened door of the apartment and gratefully sank down onto the sofa (a testament to my biceps and my child's determination to feed).

*Thought longingly of the time when my child's nourishment would come from pots.

There's all kinds of financial stress and intense family dramah going on, but I'm not here to write about that! No, instead I'm going to write about the baby because that's what I do nowadays on this blog when I'm not cataloguing the fall in the quality of life of my cats.

I have to say that having my mother here has completely salvaged my mental health. That and my child growing older and transforming himself from an unhappy little blob into a proper little baby you can interact and play with on a more meaningful level than "Want boob? Here's boob!" I know this because my conversations with him have shifted from: "You're a bloody demanding little boy who is doing my head in, but it's okay because I love you and you're mine" to "You're such a good, good boy and I love you and I'm looking forward to when you wake up because I want to play."

Research has shown that:

1) My breasts and the child have a complex psychic thing going on. No matter how many rooms apart they are, regardless of how long the child has been sleeping (whether one hour or four), about five minutes before he is due to wake up my previously placid bosoms suddenly spring into action and fill up with milk.

2) The first time the baby smiled purposefully at me not because I was attempting to amuse it but simply because it spotted me and was all "Hello! I know you and I love you!" this generated even more happiness than a season's worth of American Princess episodes being played back to back.

3)The next best thing is that at five weeks my child is finally becoming more self-sufficient and interesting and that this is so intensely gratifying I want to do a dance.

4) When I realised that my baby had managed to entertain himself yesterday for 25 GLORIOUS BLESSED MINUTES by gazing at the sofa cushions and flailing his arms and legs and most importantly requiring no input from me whatsoever, I did do a dance.

5) Breastfeeding on demand broke my mind but using my mother's help to train the child to sleep through the night with some soothing and a drink of water is healing it.

6) The only thing more gratifying than sleeping when the baby sleeps is using that time to resume Seshual Relashuns.

Here is a dizzying array of things I have accomplished today, while my mother was helping look after the baby for a few hours:

* Had breakfast
* Had a bath
* Washed and conditioned my hair
* Brushed my teeth
* Washed and moisturised my face
* Read a chapter of a book
* Felt happy
* Felt emancipated

(  This contains nipple, but really too amusing not to share with the internet )

To add to my list of things which suck about feeding from the bosoms: mastitis. I developed a raging fever on Thursday night and a bosom that was both rock hard and so painful that even Z breathing near it would cause me to wince and restrain the urge to hit him.

And so I cried because I was too weak with fever to hold the baby and could hardly feed him, and Z cried because he realised just how stressful it is to be the person looking after a baby all day and night and then I cried when I went to the GP with my rockhard bosom and my fever of 39C and my inconsolable baby and the receptionist was all "You are 8 minutes late and you will have to rebook" and I think I said things along the lines of "I have a newborn baby and a bosom of doom and I can barely walk and do you have a soul" which I guess was effective because we did get seen and antibioticised and they kicked in and now I feel human again.

Having to break up bosomal blockages the size of quails eggs through the medium of massage was about as much as the mastitis itself, but hey! everyone is all better now and the child has developed two new tricks:

1) Enjoying having an immense poo literally seconds after I've finished changing him or seconds before I put on his nappy

2) On a good day going up to 5 blessed hours between feedings.

My new trick is to remain remarkably chilled out about the baby's screamings when it's Z's turn to entertain him.

On a non-afflicted note, today Z bounced the baby and suggested I might like to make lunch through the subtle medium of song:

Please make us food if you could
For food is good
And if you make food
It will be not rude
And we can cut some wood*

* (Because taking out the christmas tree and doing the dishes doesn't rhyme)

The baby is lovely and I am in love with him (except between the hours of 3-7am when my feelings can be significantly more colourful and interwoven with things like anger/irritation/resentment) because you know, the fact that he doesn't sleep on command is clearly a sign of a malign intelligence working to persecute me.

Breastfeeding Pros and Cons

The Good Stuff

* The baby is developing beautifully and is becoming ever more chubby.

* It's nice knowing I am giving him tailor-made nutriotion and my immunity.

* The weight loss is nothing short of remarkable. Each day when I wake up I can practically see where a section of my thigh has been transplanted onto his.

* Jiggled right breastfeeding still allows me to do other things - like read a novel (my top parenting tip: baby's body makes a useful bookrest)

*Z who famously used to think that eating three meals a day is a sign of spiritual weakness and female caprice can now be heard saying things like: "Here! Have another slice of cheese pie!" or "Would you like more clotted cream with your scones my dear?"

The Bad Stuff

*My Breasts Before were a lovely, manageable C-Cup. I liked it that way. Now since their indenturement to a greedy infant they have shot up to an F cup. F! I have industrial-strength breasts.

* Which are much heavier and more painful that I am used to and require industrial strength scaffolding and bras to be tamed and restrained. Pretty lacy underthings how I miss you!

*Sleeping on my front is impossible. Sleeping on my side is fairly tricky too.

* Engorgement bloody hurts. Sometimes it hurts so much that I like to reverse roles and wake up the baby to feed.

*You know what else hurts? Blocked milk ducts and sore, cracked nipples.

* Being called upon way too many times a day (often in the middle of particularly delicious REM sleep) to offer up sustenance. Listening to the ear-piercing screaming when sustenance not immediately available. Worse, being the only one who can provide this service. In fact counting down (25!) like a condemened woman the number of nights until people who are not me can start taking on some of the feeding responsibilities and plugging up the child with bottles.

* Being the slave of someone the size of a breadbin. This is not edifying. Particularly in the early hours of the night. TO illustrate, here is a sample of things I could be heard saying in the past week somewhere in the region of 5am:

"You can't be hungry AGAIN."
"Oww, easy you little piranha."
"Why do you hate me, why?"
"No! No more food for you! Enough with the tallness and the rapid development! Someone will love you even if you stay small."
"How much immunity do you really need?"
"Why, why, why?"
"I am almost certain you will be my only child."

Thanks to a heady emotional cocktail of grief and sleep deprivation most days melancholy is not far behind. Occasionally even when the baby is sleeping I feel too emotionally and physically worn down to sleep myself (it feels pointless if the baby is only going to wake me up half an hour later; of course this is nearly always the time when baby chooses to sleep for a several-hour stretch).

The wanting of the feeds an hour apart was completely killing me, and so after three nights of that malarkey Z and I took the advice of paediatricians (favourite quote: "Breasts are not toys for children!") and have stopped giving in to the baby's demands in order to push feeding times at least two hours apart. Predictably there was a lot of screaming from the milk junky, but it worked, and that nervous breakdown I was having has been postponed.

It is gruelling stuff and I spend most of my days feeling like a gang of hostile individuals has given me a kicking. But I hold on to the thought that it will get better. And that we are unimaginably lucky to have this healthy, thriving child whose inheritance of my appetite is probably some sort of karmic payback. Or a black magic spell cast by my mother, incidentally whose chortling over the phone I did not feel contained the right notes of sympathy.

On that note Matei's father is an easygoing, cheerful, amiable sort of person. The person most likely to say: "Whatever you want to do is fine!" and "What do you think?" and "Sure, let's do that!" On the other hand Matei's mother is an intense and wilfull woman often motivated by irrational pride and defiance. Now, let us make an educated guess which of them it looks like their child takes after more, in the soul?