Laughing Out Loud

by Dora Lattish

I call this story my "sometimes it gets so bad you have to laugh" story. It reminds me of the "I Love Lucy" shows where everything Lucy did went wrong somehow and turned into a total mess...

It was 2 a.m. and my 2-month-old son Steven had been sick with a cold for over seven days. Because of the terrible coughing, he was gagging a lot and quite often would bathe me in sour milk after a feeding. I was washing all of my nursing bras every day.

At this late (or should I say early) hour, we were sitting on the couch barely awake after nursing, when he once again spit up, this time only on the front of his pajamas. I groggily (It had been a long week...) carried him towards his room to change his jammies.

About three feet from his door, he launched the rest of his feeding all over me, soaking my robe, (which was still open), and my nursing bra. I set him on the changing table, where he began cooing, happy as can be, while I stripped the robe and bra off, dropped them on the floor, and wiped off with baby wipes, of course! I proceeded to change Steven's PJ's, including, for good measure, a clean diaper. As I buttoned up the last button, I heard it - you know the sound - a poop explosion, followed by a huge smile from Steven.

No, no...don't laugh yet, it gets better. At this point I believe tears of frustration were clouding my eyes, as I began the entire process over again. As I struggled with yet another clean diaper, I felt something wet on my stomach (yes, it still sticks out that far), and looked down to see that I had apparently had let-down, and both breasts were streaming a steady dripping flow of milk down my now almost naked front.

This is the point where I decided it was not only the most frustrating 15 minutes of my life thus far, but that it was so bad, it was funny. I started to laugh out loud through my exhausted tears, finished the rest of the changing process trying to hold a burp cloth over my breast with my elbows, then picked up my beautiful son, kissed him, and rocked him back to sleep.

What a night, and what a blessing that the saying "Someday you'll look back on this and laugh!" is soooo true. Hang in there!