A Dangerous Enigma

37. Routine

"LEAH!" Leo yelled at the top of his lungs.

"I'm coming!" I yelled back as I wiped the bead of sweat that started to trickle from my forehead.

"He's hungry, hurry up!" He shouted, over Luca's crying.

"The bottle is taking ages to sterilise!" I yelled back, glaring at the stupid sterilising machine that was used to sterilise Luca's baby bottles.

A few days ago, Leo, Luca and I had gone back to Baby's R Us to get everything we needed to start bottle feeding Luca. We had even got a breast pumping machine, much to my dismay.
Today was the first day that we had decided to give bottle feeding a go. To say I was worried was an understatement, I was bloody anxious and scared, what if Luca liked being bottle fed more than breastfed? I was worried that I would lose that special connection with my baby.

"He won't stop crying!" Leo said out of breath, as he walked into the kitchen holding a red-faced Luca. The poor baby's fists were clenched tightly as he squirmed and screamed in Leo's arms.

"He has to wait a few more minutes... why didn't we sterilise the bottles earlier when he was sleeping!?" I exclaimed frowning.

"Probably because we had to try and milk you like a cow," Leo replied rolling his eyes.

I tried to hide back the smile that wanted to form on my lips. Let's just say expressing milk for the first time had to be the hardest and funny thing I had ever done. In fact I never thought that I would ever do something like that, with Leo.

I had no idea how to express milk and neither did Leo. We had waited until Luca was asleep so we could give it a try. For some reason, it wasn't as comfortable as I expected, in fact expressing milk felt painful to me.

In fact, the whole experience was just like the woman in Bad Neighbours when she drank too much alcohol and needed her husband to help 'milk' her.

"Oh god, Leo this is hurting me!" I whined as the pump started to express milk. My breast felt really sore and it honestly felt that I had something clamped on my breast.

"Is it too tight?" Leo asked as he skim read the instruction leaflet.

"I don't know, it just feels really uncomfortable, maybe we should just stick to breastfeeding?"

"Just give it a try Leah! Now let me try and loosen this thing," he said coming over to help me.

Believe me, Leo had the wrong idea. As soon as he loosened the pump, breast milk started spraying out.

"Oh what the fuck!" Leo cursed as breast milk somehow ended up on his face.

"What is it with you and any type of milk that always get on my fucking face!" He yelled, I tried so hard to contain my laughter but it was pointless. I almost had deja vu from when I spat milk at Leo when he announced that we were going to Italy.

"Let's not use the pump then, maybe try manually?" I suggested, giving Leo a questioning look.

"By manually, do you mean you want me to milk you like a cow?" The look on Leo's face was priceless, it was as if he had just seen me set fire to one or his cars.

"That's exactly what I mean."

A beeping noise pulled me out of my thoughts. Luca's bottles were now sterilised and I quickly grabbed one and poured some breast milk into it, and then placed the bottle in the specialised bottle warm so that the milk wouldn't be freezing cold.

I still had no idea what I was doing and every method we used was just trial and error. The baby books I had read, hadn't helped me at all as I just wasn't as prepared to bottled feed as I thought I was.