It's Complicated

H2O and I have what you might call a love/hate relationship.

As I mentioned before, I am a huge fan of showers. The deciding factor for me when choosing an apartment complex in college was whether or not I had to pay the water bill. When I was pregnant, I probably took an average of two showers and two baths every day to ease the pain in my back, hips and knees, and now, having gotten in the habit, it's hard not to just jump in the shower every few hours when I'm bored, or stressed, or covered in baby puke.

But when it comes to actually ingesting the substance, I am a pansy. I have never been a huge drinker of anything, and it wouldn't surprise me to find that I've spent the majority of my life dehydrated. When I was a kid, I drank a lot of milk, but when I finally came to terms with the fact that that extra calcium just wasn't adding to my puny 5'2'' frame and I would spend the rest of my life vertically challenged, I gave that up and moved on to Kool-Aid.

By the time I got to high school and Kool-Aid was no longer Kool, I just didn't drink much of anything, and if I did, it was probably caffeinated. So when I had my baby and I was told to drink at least 64 ounces of water a day, the conversation looked something like this:

Doctor: You need to be drinking a lot of water.

Me: ...Water?

Doctor: You know, that stuff that comes out of the faucet in your sink?

Me: Riiiight....

Doctor: You have been drinking plenty of fluids, right?

Me: Ha ha, of course!
         >.>
         <.<

I'm a pretty bad liar. So they gave me a 28 ounce bottle and made sure I drained it at least a few times a day while I was in the hospital. And you know what I discovered?

Water is gross. There are people out there who say water has a flavor, and there are even a few of them that actually believe that flavor is good. Well, let me tell you, my friends, those people are purveyors of trickery and lies. Water is disgusting for the pure fact that it has no flavor at all. Why would any sane person want to drink anything that has no flavor? You wouldn't eat anything that has no flavor. It'd be like eating styrofoam.  Imagine you and your friends are going camping, or to the beach, and you buy one of those styrofoam coolers to keep your beer or Coke or whatever you drink nice and cold. And you say "Hey, we should grab some snacks too," to which one of your friends replies "Nah dude, we can just eat the cooler when we're done with our beers!" Would you ever invite that friend to go anywhere with you ever again?

I didn't think so.

But, despite water's obvious flaws we were recently forced to form a truce of sorts, because Olivia is a picky eater. To be precise, she refuses to eat anything that does not look like a boob. She may be less than three months old, but I still can't seem to outsmart her. So I am stuck at home feeding her for twenty to thirty plus minutes, sometimes every hour, and this will probably go on for quite a while since I am, as I mentioned before, a pansy. Understandably, this requires a ****-ton of milk. Unfortunately, the production of such obscene quantities of milk requires an equally obscene amount of a certain deplorable substance.

I really thought I could get by without it, but last night, I was backed into a dark, panicky corner. My baby was hungry. She'd been hungry all day, way more than usual, and more often. And I just didn't have it. After she drained me in the morning, I remained almost on empty for most of the day. I'd read that your body will adjust milk production for your baby's needs, producing more if they try to eat more often, so I knew that the problem was with me, and my understandable distrust of water.

I had to give in. Water and I have not quite put aside our differences, but I will drink it, at least until Olivia's stubborn picky streak subsides. Because there comes a time in life when you have to stand up and be the better state of matter.