Things I Need To Say Before Deathly Hallows II Stuff Gets Leaked

Tags

Harry Potter, literature, movies

I’m bitter and angry right now, because I just had another if-you-want-milk-then-stop-worrying-at-my-nipple-with-your-razor-sharp-teeth-and-why-don’t-you-love-your-mother? session, which involved more screaming and crying and bleeding on both of our parts.

My right booba was enormous and overflowing with milk, but he didn’t get any because every time I put it in his mouth he pulled back, clamped his teeth down on my nipple, and then tried to PULL IT OFF.

I’ve just pumped a couple of ounces of milk. I’m scared I’m going to lose my milk entirely if this keeps up. Or lose a nipple. Not sure which would upset me more, honestly.

In any case, I know that DH II comes out today and that I probably won’t get to see it for quite a while, so some stuff will leak out to me. Before that happens, I want to set down my criteria for what counts as a “good” movie, before anyone starts telling me how great this one is. I was disappointed with the “great” part I, which was just terrible.

DISCLAIMER:

I enjoy seeing movies that have been made out of books. I don’t hate all of the Harry Potter movies, just the most recent two which diverged heavily from the books for no apparent reason.

I actively love the movie versions of The Princess Bride, Bridget Jones’ Diary, Watership Down, The Last Unicorn, About A Boy, Bridge To Terebithia, Pride and Prejudice, Sense and Sensibility,  and other great books. Some of these movies changed some major plot points – Bridget Jones’ Diary and About A Boy have drastically different climaxes from the books.

That’s ok.

I don’t require that a movie be a book in movie form. That’s impossible, and stupid. Even Pride and Prejudice (the Colin Firth one, obviously), which is practically word-for-word from Austen, embellishes from time to time. Books use words, while movies use sound and imagery. You have to tell the story differently, and some things just don’t translate well.

That’s fine.

If the spirit of the story remains, I am happy. You can change the plot, but don’t change the MEANING.

I also require that the movie stand alone from the book. You should be able to watch the movie, and enjoy it, and understand everything that happened, without having read the books.

Therefore, when I watch the movie of a book, I ask myself “would I have understood what was going on if I had not read this book?”

If the answer is “no”, I deem it a bad movie.

That being said, here are my criteria for enjoying Deathly Hallows Part II (warning, spoilers):

No more Nazis. Nazis do not belong in the wizarding world of the 1990s. Just no. Muggle haters do not wear Muggle army uniforms. You might as well make a movie about Hitler’s Germany and dress the Nazis up like Hasidic Jews, or make a movie about Harriet Tubman and put the slave owners in black face. It makes NO SENSE.

I would actually like to see the invisibility cloak. You know, the Deathly Hallow that they cut out of Deathly Hallows Part I.

They need to explain why Harry keeps looking longingly into a shard of glass, because they haven’t done that yet, and that would confuse the hell out of me if I hadn’t read the books.

Ron and Hermione need to make out. Preferably with Harry asking if they can’t “just hold it in a moment”, but that’s not necessary.

Snape’s story needs to be told, because if they don’t explain how he loved Harry’s mother, it all makes no sense.

Mrs. Weasley needs to say “Not my daughter, you bitch!” because that is a classic, classic line. Leaving that out would be like redoing Gone With The Wind and leaving out the “I don’t give a damn” speech.

They need to explain that Harry is a Horcrux. I mean, come on. That’s a big deal.

They need to portray the strength of Harry’s sacrifice, and they can’t mess around with that plot point. If Harry doesn’t offer himself up to Voldemort, and die willingly, and if that then doesn’t create a charm which protects EVERYONE the way that Harry’s mother’s sacrifice protected Harry… then they might as well have not made the movie, because that is the point of the whole series. Everything in Harry Potter leads up to predicting that single moment, and that single moment is what makes Harry Potter excellent literature, and not sensational faddy trash.

I promise, if they keep to this basic basic stuff, I promise I won’t moan too much about anything else.

Ow, Ow, Fuckety Ow. TMI and I don’t care.

Tags

biting, breastfeeding, milk, nipple pain, parenting, teething

So, Babby’s teething. AGAIN. 

Sure, his top two incisors just came in, but apparently his second two sets of incisors decided that they needed to follow the others, because they are apparently lemmings.

So I had about three or four days free of biting Babby, and now he’s BITING ME AGAIN.

It is difficult to explain to others, men especially, how frigging painful this is.

Let’s just say that biting my tongue hard on the same spot again and again would be about as painful… if I had sharpened my teeth.

Let’s just say I would rather be stung by a bee.

Let’s just say that my nipples and the area below them are bright red, and covered in flaky, peeling skin, like a terrible sunburn, and feel about as bad.

Let’s just say that the underside of my nipples are covered in greenish and reddish scabs in crescent-shaped lines.

Let’s just say that all of my white bras are covered in dark red splotches, and when I try to pump, bright red drops appear in the funnel.

Let’s just say that I have given birth to an angry piranha, and the big eyes and cherubic grin is just a clever mask.

Of course, every time he bites me I cry out involuntarily and remove him from the breast unceremoniously. If I am sitting in the chair, he gets dumped on the floor with “DON’T! BITE! MOMMY!”

(What is it with creatures wanting to bite my boobas? This has been a problem since long before Babby was concieved).

If I’m trying to nurse him to sleep, he ends up wailing disconsolately on the bed while I hunch over next to him, clutching my nipple and studiously ignoring him for a short while. Then I hold him while he screams. What used to be a short interlude between nursing attempts is becoming more and more protracted, while he writhes and signs “Milk!” at me angrily.

Babby went to sleep last night with a big dose of Advil and very little chomping. When he woke up, I went to nurse him back down and he bit me so hard that I not only cried out, but I burst into tears. PH came rushing in and took the baby while I sobbed helplessly in the gliding rocker for several minutes, clutching my poor right booba and wailing.

I’ve never been good at pain tolerance. 

PH then proceeded to rock Babby to sleep without booba while Babby screamed and screamed in what felt like unending rage.

This is what we had intended to do over Easter, but PH was so stressed out by the screaming that we ended up backing out of the plan entirely. He hates listening to his baby cry, and it frustrates him so much that he can’t provide the comfort that Babby craves.

It took an hour.

…and a half.

An hour and a half of tea-kettle screams and vitriolic ah-hah-hah haaaaaaaas. It felt like a long time to me, and I’m sure it felt twice as long to poor PH.

Once he went down, he stayed asleep for about twenty minutes before he woke up and began to wail again. So I went in this time and offered him my other nipple, and he dozed off after about ten minutes of furious nursing. When I set him down, he woke right up again. I picked him up and rocked him to sleep on my shoulder, which only took about forty minutes or so before I was able to successfully put him down and collapse into bed.

All of this started at 10 pm. It was one in the morning when I went to sleep. I don’t know how long Babby slept for, but the next time he woke up I brought him in bed with me to nurse for the rest of the night, and he behaved well.

If any of you have suggestions, I’m happy to hear them, although I’ve trawled KellyMom and similar sites for help as well.

A couple of friends have suggested that I should just wean him if he’s going to make me bleed all over the place and sob with pain. But I love breastfeeding. It doesn’t normally hurt  – it is actually quite satisfying and relaxing, generally speaking. Giving up breastfeeding entirely would be like giving up bubble baths forever, just because my hot water heater is on the fritz right now.

Considering that I have every intention of nursing him until he is ready to stop himself, be that two years old or beyond, and that I would really miss the closeness of nursing, not to mention the basic awesomeness of my superpower, I am not willing to give up the fight.

He isn’t biting for attention, or even out of boredom. In that brief hiatus between incisors, the biting dropped to nil.

So this must be temporary.

In the meantime, we finally have motivation to get him to sleep without booba, and I have discovered a new superpower:

I can make strawberry milk.