Sometimes I feel like my daughter is trying to kill me.

It’s not true, of course. I don’t think she understands the concept of death and even if she did, I don’t think she would want to kill me, permanently.

At least I hope not.

But confidently, she is winning the battle.

It started with the battle over sleep. She never liked being put in her crib. She cried so painfully that the only way she would stop is if I held her or even better, lay down next to her and nursed her. She would nurse on that nipple so much that it would be sore, but just try pulling it out of her mouth when she wasn’t ready.

Sometimes she would wake up and start crying when I took the nipple out of her mouth, and the process of getting her back to sleep would start all over again.

I contemplated giving her a pacifier, but my thinking was and is that I would be replacing something natural with something artificial and that I would be neglecting my duty as a mother. Ditto for formula. I don’t see mammals in the wild using pacifiers or formulas. So when my nipple hurt, I thought of the above and reminded myself that it would be over, sooner rather than later, I hoped.

For you men out there, I don’t know what it’s like, but I can only imagine sore nipples being like sore balls. Can you imagine several times a day, sometimes at whim, someone pulling on them?

How long could you stand living like that?

For anyone who is a spouse to a breastfeeder, toast your nursing spouses!

My daughter also doesn’t like being unattended when I need to do something, like wash dishes. She cries and cries and cries. But I have to do the dishes!

My husband comes home from work and starts cooking because, well, he knows how. He doesn’t have to try to read a cookbook while a baby is crying in the background. I feel I must do the dishes and clean the kitchen.

It’s the least I can do.

But sometimes my daughter’s cries become too much for me, so I abandon the dishes until Pete comes home. He, of course, wants time for himself, but I ask him to please look after her so that I can do some chores.

Pete would like me to have dinner on the table when he comes home, and frankly I want to have dinner on the table too. But I can’t do it with Polina crying. My conscience tells me I need to attend to her.

Someone suggested that a mother reacts to a baby’s cries differently than a father. I certainly don’t know what it’s like for a father, or for other mothers. For me, it is unbearable to ignore.

The biggest battle, however, where she wounds to kill, is over the aforementioned sleep.

Her sleep is not consistent. At the first sign of tiredness, I put her in our bed. Sometimes she falls asleep, sometimes she doesn’t. Continuing to operate with a cranky child who doesn’t sleep well is torture.

A cranky child is for me the biggest birth control measure. Having sex is the farthest thought from my mind right now. I’m amazed that women can have children less than two years apart. Maybe they handle the situation differently, or get lucky with good sleepers.

Another challenge is going to the grocery store. Polina reaches for things, wants to get down and try to walk, starts crying in the shopping cart if she doesn’t get her way.

Aaaaagh! Is she trying to kill me?

Originally written May 21, 2013.