No use crying over spilled milk...I say, SCREW THAT...Maybe sometimes you should...

Scene: After spending the morning at the park and running errands, my son and I were now home for the afternoon. The expectation was that he would sit and watch his show (he’s currently obsessed with watching my 13-year-old stepson’s old Ben 10 TV show dvds) and eventually take a nap while I got laundry done and did my work for the day (I currently work from home part time). My son was sitting on the couch watching the show and I had logged in to work. After maybe 7 minutes of quiet, my son starts laughing hysterically and then yelling “Haha, Mommy, it’s all wet. Liam all wet. Hahahahahaha. Clean it up, Mommy. Liam’s pants all wet.” I look over to find that he has removed the top from his cup and purposely dumped the milk all over himself and the couch and his blankets and thought it was the funniest thing in the world until he realized that he didn’t like having wet pants and now wanted me to fix it.

My reaction: “Oh Liam, No. No no no no no.” Not yelling, not screaming, just kind of defeated. I set work aside and started cleaning up the mess. I put clean, dry clothes on him and got the wet clothes and blankets in the laundry. I cleaned the couch. I got him a new cup of milk (because of course once he was all dry he now wanted that milk that he hilariously spilled all over himself to actually drink) and got him resituated to watch his show and again maybe doze off for a nap. All of this took about 15 minutes when it was all said and done. Not a big deal and realistically what was I going to do? Let the kid sit there in wet pants and not clean up the mess? But inside I felt like breaking down and crying.

The whole time I was cleaning up the mess I just kept thinking “No use crying over spilled milk, Sandy. No use. Crying. Spilled Milk. No. Milk. Crying. Spilled. No. No. No.” It was rattling around my head like some crazy mantra and the more I thought about it, the more annoyed I go. Why am I not allowed to cry over spilled milk? What a stupid expression. If I want to cry over spilled milk, isn’t that my damn right as a grown ass woman?

Don’t get me wrong. I get what the phrase means and why it might be useful. I get that I shouldn’t dwell over past events because there’s no way to change them. I get that I shouldn’t sweat the little stuff in life. Those are all really good concepts to live by and as a general rule, I try to do those things. But seriously, if my kid dumps milk all over himself purposely and I want to cry about it, why am I not allowed to do that? No use crying over spilled milk, my ass!

So this got me thinking about spilling milk. I present to you 5 scenarios in the past couple years when I did (or at least felt like I was going to) cry over spilled milk...and feel completely justified in doing so.

Scenario 1: I had just finished putting groceries away and washed my hands and I guess I hadn’t dried them completely. I picked up an almost completely full gallon of milk from the top shelf of the refrigerator and it slipped out of my hand and fell. That particular gallon had a pop top, not a screw top, which of course came off immediately upon impact with the door of the fridge and the rest is history. Milk all over every shelf of the refrigerator, all over me, all over the floor, the kitchen counter, the oven, the dishwasher. There was milk on the other side of the room on the wall in a place that I don’t even know how it could have gotten there. Yep, totally felt like crying over spilled milk that day.

Scenario 2: My son is a huge milk drinker. As in he will pick milk over anything else and we go through a lot of milk. I had forgotten to pick up a new gallon that afternoon. My husband even asked on his way home whether or not we needed milk and I said “No, we should be good til the morning and I’ll just get it when I’m out.” We got to bedtime and SHOULD have had enough milk for him to have before bed. That is, until I was going to fill a cup for him and set the open container down on the counter and then got distracted and ended up knocking it over. Another time that I felt like crying over spilled milk. Admittedly, this time my wanting to cry was more about feeling like a failure in that I had forgotten the milk AND told my husband not to pick milk up AND then knocked all of it over.

Scenario 3: The scenario I presented above with my son on the couch purposely dumping milk all over the place. I did not actually cry in this scenario but I sure as hell felt like it. Just like in scenario 2, the actual milk spilling probably had less to do with how I felt than some other things that were going on...like I felt a little under the weather, had a headache, was bloated, and had just gotten my period and realized that for what felt like the millionth month in a row that I wasn’t pregnant again and felt like a total fucking failure in life. So yea, again, it’s possible that some of the other things that I had going on in my head were why I got so upset about the spilled milk but I was handling those things just fine until that damn milk spilled all over the place. So I blame the milk for my (almost) meltdown.

Scenarios 4 & 5 both have to do with breast milk. Now, if you have ever pumped breast milk, you realize what a special friggin commodity that shit is. I mean, people actually sell it and make good money doing so because it’s such a limited but wonderful resource for babies. Seriously, look it up. They call it “liquid gold” for a reason. If you’ve done it, you know that it’s not comfortable and can be hard work (yes, even with the double breast hands free pumps I am still saying that it is hard work) and very very stressful, especially if you aren’t producing adequate amounts. If you haven’t ever pumped milk, trust me when I tell you that we’re not doing this for our own benefits or because it feels good. So for it to get spilled really is a big deal.

Scenario 4: This was the first time I ever lost a container of breast milk. I had pumped and left bags in the fridge for my husband to feed my son. Honestly, I don’t even remember which one of us did it because it doesn’t even matter. One of us pulled a bag out of the fridge and laid it on the counter (open unfortunately) while getting a bottle and the bag fell over and poof, 6 oz of my magical wonderful liquid gold right down the drain. I did. I cried. I couldn’t believe that the milk that I had worked so hard to produce was just gone and was of no use anymore. My husband even had a look on his face like “oh shit this is really bad” because he seemed to understand how upsetting this was to me. Bare in mind, this was also early on when I was still producing a healthy milk supply and had plenty more in the refrigerator plus I could still pump more milk almost on demand if I needed it. Doesn’t matter. It was still devastated and I cried over the spilled milk. And yes, I feel absolutely totally completely and fully justified in doing so.

Scenario 5: Fast forward a couple months to when my son was having a bad reflux problem and was spitting up basically every time he ate. The pediatrician told me that I had to stop breastfeeding because we needed to “thicken” the milk with little bits of rice cereal for my son to weigh it down in his stomach to help him keep food down. From that point on, I was exclusively pumping. Sounds like it shouldn’t be a big deal, right? Wrong. Pumps aren’t as “efficient” at removing milk from the breast as babies themselves are and the way that the breastmilk supply works in on a supply and demand basis. Drain the boob and it makes more milk. Don’t drain the boob as much and less milk will be made. Over the next few months of exclusively pumping, my milk supply just kept dwindling and dwindling down. We were now supplementing with the frozen milk I’d been fortunate enough to freeze when my supply was still in better shape. But gone were the days of having lots of bags in the fridge just waiting for my son. Then came the night when I needed to make a bottle for him in the middle of the night and half asleep myself and totally exhausted, I went downstairs to get what I needed and ended up dumping an entire bag (which honestly was probably only 3-4 oz if I were lucky) all over the floor. Precious wonderful fucking liquid gold breastmilk gone. Again I cried. Hard. I felt like a failure because my son had reflux. I felt like a failure because I couldn’t probably supply the milk he needed anymore. I felt like a failure because I was stupid and knocked the milk over on the floor. Actually that night I was so upset I’m probably lucky my husband didn’t take me in for a psych eval. And again, I cried over spilled milk. Totally fucking justifiably so.

So there you have it. 5 different scenarios where I have cried or wanted to cry over spilled milk. Maybe you have experienced one of these situations yourself or something like it. Maybe you haven’t and you think I’m a total headcase.

But just in case you have experienced something like this, I’m here to tell you that I absolutely totally believe that you are allowed to and even entitled to cry over spilled milk from time to time in your life...stupid cliches be damned. I know I have. I don’t feel badly about it. I probably will again at some point. And maybe sometimes the crying didn’t exactly have to do with the milk itself but more with other stuff going on in my life. The milk was just the thing that pushed me over the edge. And that’s ok too. Just don’t lose yourself in those moments completely. You’re going to eventually have to pick yourself up and clean that spilled milk...because frankly, your house is going to smell pretty badly if you don’t.

#milk #spilledmilk #parenting #crying #badday