You may have noticed that I have hardly posted anything lately.  (Or maybe you haven’t.)  Either way, that is because I have been suffering from an affliction called Way Too Many Complex Things Are Sucking Dry My Will To Live.  Or, WTMCTASDMWTL for short.  The last two weeks, they have been ROUGH.

But!  Things appear to be on the upswing now, and I hope to soon have complete control over my mental faculties once again.  When I am so busy and overwhelmed at work, I have a hard time keeping on top of everything else.  Laundry becomes a monumentally challenging task, staying up past 9 p.m. requires herculean effort, and worst of all – the nightly dinner/bath/bedtime routine is almost too much to bear.

And Miss T has not felt the need to make things easier on me.  All this week she has decided to engage in what must surely be one of the most annoying bedtime feeding habits ever practiced. 

After getting bathed and pajama-ed up, we sit in her darkened bedroom for the last bottle of the day.  I rock her while she eats, and normally she quietly and easily takes 6-8 ounces of formula without too much of a fuss.  (I use the term “easily” relatively, of course.  She has never been what one would call a good eater.) 

However, this week she decided to employ what can be best described as the “Scream and Suck” method:  she’ll suck hungrily for about 20 seconds (oh yes, I have timed it.  Using the tried-and-true “one Mississippi, two Mississippi” method), then angrily pull off the bottle and start screaming.  You have to immediately pop a pacifier into her little yelling milk-hole to quell the noise.  She is arching her back and thrashing around all the while, and twists her entire body around in an attempt to lay her head on my shoulder.  I put her in the desired position, and she is temporarily contented.

Then within about 30 seconds (no exaggeration) she is hungry again.  SO HUNGRY, WOMAN, WHY ARE YOU NOT FEEDING ME.  THE HUNGER, IT BUUUUUUUUUURNS!  And she empasizes her point by letting the pacifier drop out of her mouth onto the ground (she is on my shoulder, remember, so I cannot catch it.  And it is dark, so I cannot see it.)  So I turn her around, fumble for the pacifier, and back in the bottle goes for the next 20 seconds.  Lather, rinse, repeat. 

As you can probably imagine, it takes quite a long time to finish up an 8-ounce bottle this way.  Not to mention (OH, TOO LATE) that it has not helped with my abnormally high stress and frustration levels.  I have no idea what the problem is, and therefore no clever solutions.  I have found that letting her hold her beloved stuffed dog seems to help marginally with the screaming, but that makes putting her up on my shoulder more of a challenge.  Maybe I should try letting her drink from a sippy cup at night?  That seems…strange.  Possibly I should try giving her that last bottle before bathtime, when she is not quite so sleepy?  I’m not sure she could stay awake for that, and besides – we worked SO HARD for this routine that I am loathe to mess with it.  Even if it is working less-than-perfectly at the moment.

Any thoughts and/or suggestions will be much appreciated.