Antipathy

I have been reluctant to say this out loud for fear of being told that I made my own bed and I ought to lay in in, quietly, but... I really resent my kids.  Not all the time, but often.  Especially the youngest, which seems the worst kind of resentment. To blame an innocent three year old, really?  I wake up with resentment - dread, really.  He sleeps in our bed, which I desperately want to change, and although he manages to typically stay up later than I do, he also wakes up just when I am snuggling down into that post-pee bliss land of morning sleep.  Upon awakening his first thought seems to be, "Where, oh where, has that God damn nipple gotten to in the night?"  And then begins a resentful, irritated, aggressive search for my breasts which, mind you, must be accessible in exactly the correct way - the angle, the lack of obstruction by blanket or my arms.  Once he has managed to create the perfect nipple touching environment, there comes the actual process of reuniting with his long lost friend.  This is not a gentle thing.  No, it is incessant swirling, shifting, pinching, stroking, a sort of wiggling of fingers and palm.  I cannot begin to tell you how much I detest this self-comforting nipple-love that my youngest, and all three of his siblings before him, seem to have been born with.  I tried to prevent it.  I really did.  It seems though, that it must be genetic, because it is not as though I taught them how to do it - and the neighbor kids certainly didn't pass it on.  They just searched around, while nursing, and found something absolutely wonderful to play with.  I would move their roaming hand, push it, nudge it, but when a four month old reaches out in that ever so innocent, "I am just resting my tired little pudgy hand on your breast for a moment" way, what can a soft-hearted, exhausted breastfeeding momma do?  It is cute and it does seem innocent.  At first.
I am about to put a stop to it - I have managed to end it at bedtime.  Now we just hold hands instead, which I much prefer (although even that is tainted with demands about the angle of our fingers, the order of the interlacing) to being fondled by anyone but my husband.  Any day now, you may see me, with a chastity belt of the breasts and a perfectly happy three year old.