My 24-day-old daughter regularly develops hiccups, and I don't care what the child development books say -- they DO bother her. She may be sleeping, excuse the expression, like a baby when they start, and they wake her up, crying. Mind you, my daughter cries very little, so her crying over hiccups tells me a lot about how they affect her.

I have tried everything I know to quiet the hiccups -- burping her, feeding her, rubbing her tummy. The only thing that works is nothing. They simply have to work their way out on their own.

The significant thing about hiccups and my daughter is that while I can do nothing to help them go away, I can still help. She cries, fusses, and generally is upset when she has the hiccups. But when I pick her up and hold her in my arms, she calms down and just lets the hiccups come. Sometimes a really big one will blast out, and the sound and fury of it will frighten her enough to cry again, but she can always calm down in my arms.

And it isn't enough to put my hand in her bassinet and lay it on her forehead. She must be picked up and enveloped in the arms of someone who loves her.

It reminds me of a movie, the name of which eludes my attempts to find it, in which a man who loses his children to a terrible car accident, then loses his wife to suicide. In the next life, he goes looking for her, and finds her in the most stark and frightening depiction of hell I can imagine. His attempts to save her, bring her out of the depression that became her pathway to this miserable place, utterly failed. He sends his children back to the beautiful part of the afterlife, but chooses to stay in hell with his wife. He cannot save her, so he chooses to suffer with her.

So many events in life can't be fixed, they must be experienced. How beautiful when someone loves us enough to experience these with us, the good and the ugly.

Breastfeeding trauma. Nobody talks about it until you are pregnant, and then it's too late. You see all these loving mothers who smile as they painlessly breastfeed their infant, and the message is clear -- breast is best! Even the formula companies know that. They forgot the first part of the slogan -- breast is pain.

I am supposed to be writing my dissertation, but I am not really sure I can. It's funny, I started so many things not thinking I could actually finish them. Strangely, I did. Now I am staring at the front end of a dissertation wondering if I can really do it. Part of me says yes, part of me says no. I don't have multiple personality disorder, I just have multiple parts. Non-mutually-exclusive parts.
I keep saying I am going to do it, but I don't. I always find some excuse. But the truth is, I have no idea what to do or how to do it. How did I get so far when I am really so stupid? Or, am I just frozen in fear, and if I thawed a little I would get into it and actually make progress? My advisor probably hates me. She says she doesn't, but how could she not? I drive her absolutely crazy. I don't mean to, I just honestly don't think I can do it.
But, I want to. I really want to be able to do it, and that part of me says that if I want to do it then I can figure out a way. I often think about that quote by the South African politican whose name eludes me right now. He basically says that people fear success much more than they fear failure, and that it is this fear of success that keeps us in failure mode. That is my rendition of his point, anyway.