Yesterday was a rough day for Oliver (and for Brian, my mother, and me). After two days of sleeping a lot Oliver decided that yesterday was the day to eat all day long. He would eat, sleep for 45 minutes and then wake up to start all over again. I felt like I was breastfeeding all day which made me tired. And, because he wasn’t sleeping much at all, Oliver was overtired and a little cranky. Despite his grumpy and hungry demeanor, though, my mother and I headed out to lunch at Torchy’s Tacos after finally getting Oliver settled into the car seat (it took us over an hour to accomplish that feat). I ordered a green chili chicken taco and a bowl of their pretty spicy queso and really enjoyed my lunch (it seemed innocuous enough at the time).
After lunch we went over to Special Addition, a maternity and nursing boutique, since our friends Laurie and Robin had given us a gift certificate and I needed more nursing bras. Of course, I had forgotten my gift certificate at home but it was great to go in and check out what all they have for when I can come back. It’s an awesome place - they have everything a nursing mother could ever need, including onsite lactation consultants. Oliver had been calm the whole time we were out but about thirty seconds before we were set to leave he started crying. My initial reaction was to throw him in the car and drive home as fast as hell so we could take care of whatever was bothering him but the salesperson kindly pointed out that they had everything we needed in the store - a changing table and a nursing room. I changed Oliver’s dirty diaper (which did nothing to abate the screaming, which at this point was at earsplitting level) and then sat down to feed him for a few minutes. At that point, he dirtied another diaper which set off a whole new round of screaming. I changed his diaper again but he was still hungry (and so loud) so we went back to the nursing room to continue the meal. I felt like we were going to have to move into the store it took so long for us to get out of there. But it was so considerate of Oliver to save his first public out of control crying fit for a place that was so well-equipped to help me deal with it. Gotta say, I love Special Addition now. They’ve got one very happy customer now.
We got back to the house and Oliver continued his eating binge for the rest of the afternoon. Around six o’clock my mom left to go back to San Antonio (more on that later) and Brian and I were suddenly on our own. At this point, Oliver was not only insatiably hungry but starting to get a little fussy as well. Two of our friends, Kester and Rachel, and their son, Harry, were kind enough to bring us dinner last night and it quickly became obvious that they were not going to meet our angelically calm little boy but this possessed child who couldn’t stop pooping, eating and screaming his head off. Luckily, Kester and Rachel are parents and handled the freakout beautifully. They scooped Oliver up, rocked him and sang to him while Brian and I were able to sit down to dinner (which also provided my body the time to recharge for another feeding). About halfway through the dinner I realized what was probably behind the upset stomach Oliver was obviously experiencing - the green chili taco. Spicy does not agree with Oliver’s system. I started chugging water to try and flush the food out of my system and prepared myself for a long hard night.
Luckily, I was only right on half of that. It was a hard night but turned out it wasn’t very long. After Kester and Rachel left Oliver started screaming like I’ve never heard him scream before and Brian and I did our best to soothe him and keep our cool in face of the fact that we were grandmother-less and exhausted. Miraculously, after over five hours of screaming and crying and more dirty diapers than I care to recount, Oliver finally settled down to sleep around midnight and stayed out for three hours until it was time to eat again. He ate and fell asleep again and slept until I woke him up around six to eat again and then fell asleep once more after that feeding. All told I was able to get over eight hours of sleep last night. I think we were helped in keeping this food inspired crisis short because Oliver was so overtired yesterday anyway and because I ate the offending food so early in the day and he had so much time to flush it out of his system. It definitely could have been worse (and I’m so grateful it wasn’t) but it was a hard lesson learned - no more spicy food for me.
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