What's Been Going On

(Is that even proper English?)

It seems I just haven't had the time to get on here and update lately. After getting home from work, we still have to feed Maggie twice, play with her, make dinner, do the dishes (or at least, wash the bottles), do laundry...and then, I'll have run out of time because it's time for bed. The cycle starts all over again the next day. It's not a cycle of which I'm fond, however, it's the cycle with which I am stuck currently.

My father called on Wednesday to say he was thinking about us. He asked me once again if it was really worth it for me to work. And, as I told him many times before, I had to explain to him that we cannot afford for me to NOT work. I told him that I had just applied for another night job, this one at St. Francis Hospital in Hartford. However, it's about an hour's drive from our house. He didn't seem to think it was worth the drive. But it's not like you can raise a family on minimum wage, which is all that's available around here for night jobs.

We did have a pleasant surprise on Wednesday, though. A co-worker in the City Clerk's Office called me down to let me know her daughter-in-law and grandson were there visiting. I had spoken with her DIL a few times while I was pregnant as she was due only a few months before I was. I really liked her, although she was "different" (some would use the terms "granola" or "crunchy" to describe her). Once she found out that Maggie was in daycare while I was at work, she immediately volunteered to watch her a few days a week. They have an elderly dog that needs to be put down, so she would have to do that first. But she was very willing, mentioning her offer several times in our conversation. She used to be a nanny and is very much into attachment parenting (her 5-month-old son was in a sling during our entire conversation, if that's any indication), so I have no doubt she would be an excellent child care provider for Margaret. However, she did mention that she used to earn $14/hr as a nanny, so I have no idea if we can afford her help. We were discussing the part-time rate at the daycare center ($50/day) and that's how her previous wages came into the conversation, but she did say she wouldn't charge that much. In any case, I plan on calling her this week to set up a time to sit down together and talk this through seriously, as well as to have her meet Margaret and have Margaret meet her son. It won't save us any money, most likely, but at least she'd get more one-on-one care for a few days a week. Depending on the days she's willing to take, I may also be able to have my aunt watch her on Mondays, leaving me with only 1 or 2 days a week that I'd have to send Margaret to daycare. I felt so much better after talking with her, but I'm trying not to get my hopes up since we haven't discussed any details yet.

Last night was my father-in-law's "Thanksgiving in August" dinner at the Avon Old Farms Inn. He always spends Thanksgivings with his brother in the Adirondacks, so it's not totally out of the question that he would do something like this. It's also not the first time he's thrown a party just to throw a party. But he felt that there were so many wonderful things that happened in our family during the last year that it was worth celebrating. So we got together, celebrating new jobs, new additions to the family, and new relationships. Maggie was passed among us as we had forgotten to bring her infant carrier since she now rides in her infant-toddler convertible carseat. Brian and I do not have fancy palates, so celebrations like this are usually challenging for us since there is usually little on the menu that appeals to us. As expected, the only thing appealing was the prime rib, something I don't usually eat because of how fatty the meat is. It was delicious, however somewhat humiliating since my mother-in-law ended up cutting up my meat for me so I could eat while holding a sleeping Margaret. I'm sure the people working there thought it was strange that we would bring a baby along to a fancy restaurant, but she was invited and a guest of honor. There was no way we could have left her behind! And I'm glad I didn't have to!

Here I sit, dreading Monday's arrival. Once again, I will have to kiss my baby goodbye and spend my day as a prisoner of the office. I'll spend the day wondering if she's doing well, if they left her in the swing all day (we've found her in the swing several more times when visiting or picking Margaret up, which is really getting on my nerves!) or if she's screaming in discomfort or unhappiness. But the thing that I hate most is that, when I really settle in and get into the groove at work, it becomes too easy to almost forget that I even have a baby. Does that make sense? Has this happened to anyone else? It's too much like "business as usual" and so much of a reflex when I'm at work that, in her absense, as well as the lack of the home routine, it's too easy to fall back into my "old" life in which I was not a mom. And I HATE that. I don't want to "forget" that she exists, I want her with me during every moment of my day. I don't want to be conversing with adults, I want to talk babytalk with her. And I certainly don't want to deal with unhappy taxpayers. I'll take Maggie's screaming fits and poopy diapers any day over that! But I have to... Otherwise, there will be no food for Maggie or us...no roof over our heads...no clothes on our backs...no heat or air conditioning...no electricity. I take in half of our income and we need every penny of it. Until I can find something at night at which I can take home at least as much as I'm left with now after paying for daycare, I'm stuck being a reluctant secretary working full-time both in and out of the home. I feel like whining "It's not fair!!!" but then I remember the response my mom always gave me..."Life isn't fair." How true.

A Different Child

Another thing I came across on FF today that made me teary-eyed:

A Different Child
poem by Pandora MacMillian

People notice
There's a special glow around you.

You grow
Surrounded by love,
Never doubting you are wanted;
Only look at the pride and joy
In your mother and father's eyes.

And if sometimes
Between the smiles
There's a trace of tears,
One day
You'll understand.

You'll understand
There was once another child
A different child
Who was in their hopes and dreams.

That child will never outgrow the baby clothes
That child will never keep them up at night
In fact, that child will never be any trouble at all.

Except sometimes, in a silent moment,
When mother and father miss so much
That different child.

May hope and love wrap you warmly
And may you learn the lesson forever
How infinitely precious
How infinitely fragile
Is this life on earth.

One day, as a young man or woman
You may see another mother's tears
Another father's silent grief
Then you, and you alone
Will understand
And offer the greatest comfort.

When all hope seems lost,
You will tell them
With great compassion,
"I know how you feel.
I'm only here
Because my mother tried again."

Spirit Baby

I saw this on FF (it came from http://babycatcher.net) and it made me cry:

Spirit Baby

Colin, my twelve-year-old son, discovered me late one rainy afternoon sitting at the kitchen table, a damp Kleenex crumpled in my left hand, wiping my eyes as I tried to compose myself for his sake. It was the third week of January, two months after I’d miscarried a pregnancy, but I still found it impossible to get through a day without at least one meltdown into misery.

Stunned when the test came back positive, Rog and I had stared at each other with doubt and ambivalence. At forty-one, my professional life consumed me. I’d just achieved what some had predicted was an impossibility: I’d been granted delivery privileges at Alta Bates, and as a consequence, my midwifery practice burgeoned. Some months I delivered twelve babies, and no one ever knew if or when I’d be home. Rog, too, felt stretched to his limits, keeping his business afloat while picking up the slack for my frequent unscheduled absences. Colin and Jill approached their challenging adolescent years. How could we fit an infant into our lives? But when I lost the pregnancy and all hope for resolution dissolved with my tears, I fell in love with the baby that was not to be.

Colin asked, "Are you crying about the baby?" and when I nodded tearfully, he said, "Well, you just have to have another one, Mom, because it’s a Spirit Baby, and you should be its mother."

I must have looked puzzled because he said, "Don’t you know about Spirit Babies? How could I know about them if you don’t? I mean, you’re my mom!" But he could see my perplexity.

So my first child, this not-yet-teenaged boy, pulled a wooden chair to my side and draped his thin arm across my shoulders, saying, "Well, Mom, here’s how it is. See, I was one myself, so that must be how I know. Anyway, every woman has a circle of babies that goes around and around above her head, and those are all the possible babies she could have in her whole life. Every month, one of those babies is first in line. If she gets pregnant, then that’s the baby that’s born. If she doesn’t get pregnant, the baby goes back into the circle and keeps going around with all the others. If she gets pregnant but something bad happens before the baby’s born…now listen, Mom, because here’s the really cool part. It goes back into the circle, but it becomes a Spirit Baby, and all the other babies give it cuts. Each month, it’s always first in line. Isn’t that great?

"So you just have to get pregnant again, and you’ll have the same Spirit Baby. If you don’t, though, then the baby circle will just beam that little Spirit Baby over to some other woman’s circle, and it’ll be first in line for her. It keeps being first in line somewhere until it finally gets born.

"But it’d be a shame for you not to have it yourself, because I know how much you want it. So you just have to try again. Mom, remember that baby you lost before I was born?" I nodded wordlessly. "Well, that was me. Really. I’ve always known I was a Spirit Baby. I mean, I know what I’m talking about here, Mom."

In spite of Colin’s certainty that our household, so often bordering on chaos, lacked only an infant to make things perfect, Rog and I demurred. But Colin didn’t give up and even enlisted his sister’s support. Driving with them in the car one evening, I looked at my son in the passenger seat beside me. He stared out the side window and tried to hide his tears, but I saw the flush on his face, the shaking of his shoulders, and the surreptitious swipe of hand across cheek.

Six months had passed since my miscarriage, and I had just finished yet another discussion in which I’d told my pleading son that having a third baby at my age was out of the question. I reached over the space between us and squeezed his fingers. "Colin, I don’t understand this passion you have for a baby. Why do you want one so much?"

He tore his gaze from the distant hills and looked at me with swimming eyes and trembling lips. In a choking voice, he put all of his twelve-year-old passion into his reply.

"Oh, Mom! Oh. Just for the joy of it!"

Jill stretched forward from the back seat and placed a hand on each of our shoulders. "Yeah, Mom, just for the joy of it."

It was my turn to look out the side window and struggle with misty vision.
So, at a time when most women eye the empty nest at the end of their branch on the family tree with something approaching relief, I gave consideration to laying just one more egg. Several months of discussions peppered with doubt and disbelief followed. Although Rog and I made the final decision, there’s no denying that a big part of our decision to have a third child began with the insistence of our adolescent children that we "needed a baby in the house." Rog and I took a deep breath, looked at each other across the blond heads of those two wishful children, swallowed – and made a giant leap of faith.

I conceived my Spirit Baby a week later. Just for the joy of it.

It's not exactly my view on the topic, but it's beautiful nonetheless...

I'm Miserable Without Her

Today was worse for me than yesterday was. I hate having to do this. All I want to do is be home with my baby...

I emailed the YMCA daycare about any openings, since they're about 1 minute from where I work and between my house and work. No openings. She said she could put me on the waiting list, but what good does that do me? I want her closer NOW.

Or better yet, I want to stay home with her. :( I hate myself for getting into this situation... We should have paid off our debt enough for me to stay home before TTC. Or even better, I never should have used those credit cards in the first place. The price I have to pay is too high...

It Went Well

...for Maggie, anyway. She didn't even seem to notice that I had left her. When I dropped her off this morning, there were two little boys playing on the floor and she was far more interested in them than me. She didn't even look at me when I kissed her goodbye and left. I cried the whole way to work. Am I that easily replaced that she didn't even care that I left?

They tried to be helpful at work. I had tons of mommies telling me about the first time they left their little ones. They survived and they knew I would, too. My coworkers even gave me a welcome back card. Well, it actually said "Hugs" on it. They totally understood. They tried to keep me positive, making me laugh when they asked if I had brought in a picture of Maggie, and decided that I had set up a shrine when they saw all the pictures I had with me.

I wasn't going to call. I didn't want to be one of "those" mommies. But I did. At 10:20, nearly 2.5 hours after dropping her off, I called. They said she was doing well. She had taken a whole bottle and a little nap. No crying.

When lunch time rolled around, I wasn't sure what I was going to do. On the one hand, visiting her could disrupt her. I didn't want her to be upset by mommy coming and leaving if she was doing well. On the other hand, I didn't know what to do with myself for an hour. Unbelievable, right? Me, an adult woman, could not figure out what to do with herself when totally alone for the first time in nearly 10 weeks. And I couldn't bear the thought of being alone when I knew I could see her. So I dropped by. She was in the swing (you know, the thing she can't stand at home). They had on a CD of children's songs and she was looking around the room. content as could be. I kneeled down to get on her level and was rewarded with a smile. Apparently, she had been happy and smiley all day (it was nearly 1:30 at this point). The head teacher did say it took her about 45 minutes to get Maggie to drink all of her bottle, but that's pretty normal. She also said they had a hard time getting her to nap in the crib. As soon as she'd be put down in the crib, she'd wake right up. She does that at home for naps, too. So the head teacher had rocked her in the glider for a bit and she smiled away until she fell asleep. She said that Maggie was doing so well for a first-timer. I left her again after 15 minutes.

Once again, I was plagued with thoughts about how easily I was replaced... how she didn't seem to miss me at all. That's great for her that she's adjusting so well, but it broke my heart that she didn't cry at all. Am I insane? I certainly sound it... Who would want their child to cry?

Brian called me later and tried to reassure me that I was not replaced and that she did in fact miss me. That she does know who I am as I am pretty much the only person she's been with for all of her life. It was nice to hear it, but I wasn't convinced.

When I picked her up, she was asleep in the swing. (I hope she didn't spend the bulk of her day in the swing!) Once again, I was told that she did so well. I got her home and guess what? She started crying! So then I started to wonder what was so magical about them that she didn't cry all day, but she cried for me shortly after picking her up. Granted, it didn't last long and she was smiling shortly thereafter. But it still hurt.

Day 1 down...

I'm Leaving Her

Tomorrow.

I feel like such a slime. Worse than that. But I have no choice.

I did look at "just one more" daycare center on Friday. It was $185/week and the same distance from our house as the center we selected in April. I was not pleased. It was utter chaos as soon as I walked through the door. The first thing I noticed: a television set up with an X-box. Yes, we're years away from her using it, but it tells a lot about the focus of the child care provider. The staff were friendly, but it seemed like they couldn't keep up with the children in their care. I knew it wasn't the place for us almost immediately. But I went on with the tour, discovering that they were also not licensed for administering medication of any kind. That's a problem as Maggie must have gas drops with every feeding for her gas issues. The infant room was also rather cramped. They didn't have enough porta-cribs to go around, so there were even a couple plastic cots on the floor in the tiny space. I thanked them and was on my way, resigned to the fact that she would be going to the original center.

One thing stood out in my mind after the tour. There was a baby boy in the infant room that cried the whole time I was there. He was hoarse from having cried all day. It was his first day and it was 11:30AM when I was there. It broke my heart. Then it broke my heart all over again when I thought about how that could be Maggie come Monday. I will miss her fiercely and deep down inside, I want her to miss me, too...but I don't want her to be miserable. She would almost be better off if she didn't even realize I was gone. And how sad is that to come to a realization like that?

So I've packed her things and we're as ready to go as we'll ever be. Over and over again, the administrator assured me that I could call as many times as I wanted to check up on her. I was also reminded that I could come in and check on her. They really are great people over there. But then I wonder if going in to see her will make it worse for me. I originally planned on spending my lunches with her...but leaving her twice in one day may be my undoing. I'm not even sure calling would be good for me. It may make me obsess and worry more than if I just immersed myself in my work and got through the day as quickly as possible.

I'm so miserable...

No Such Luck

The family daycare did NOT work out. I wasn't too fond of the lady from the get-go, but I figured it was only fair to give her a chance. As we went through my questions, I found that she and I differ greatly in our child rearing philosophies. A big difference was the fact that, when the weather is inclement, the children are left in front of the TV all day to amuse themselves. She assured me this was no different than home. When I explained to her that one of our pediatrician's few rules was no TV under the age of 2, she looked at me like I was crazy. She then proceeded to ask who the pediatrician was and when I told her his name, she waved him off, stating she knows some parents who don't like him. And besides, most of the children she watch go to other doctors. I mentioned to her that there are studies out there linking early television watching to ADD and ADHD, but I didn't feel like arguing. I could tell she was not exactly a "hands on" provider. I noticed during our interview that her kitchen TV was on an emergency room show. I asked her if she stayed out with the children when they play (they were all outside during the interview, as were we) and she assured me that she did, but her kitchen TV made me think otherwise. And when I asked about being able to visit my child during the day, she made a face and told me that she didn't think it was a good idea. That it would disrupt the other children. That I could call first and set up a time to come, as long as it wasn't too hectic. ... ... ... That was the biggest problem I had with her. Any provider who requires you to set up an appointment to see your own child sounds like one who has something to hide. It may only be neglect, but that's still something I do not want my child exposed to.

So, with a lack of time to further investigate and essentially nobody left to turn to, I went to the daycare center we signed Maggie up for back in April and handed in her medical paperwork. I give up. The up side is that the director and assistant director were INCREDIBLY friendly and understanding. They reiterated that I can call as many times as I want to check up on her and come in and see her, too. I met with her teacher-to-be and found her reading to a child in the room. 3 others were in their cribs napping, and a few were on the floor playing. The other teacher was on break. None of the children in the room were immobile like Maggie, although I do recall that there is another young baby that's supposed to be starting daycare there around the same time.

It's not ideal money-wise but at least they have a curriculum. I don't have to worry about Maggie being left alone outside at a house on a busy street (there was no fence at that family daycare either, BTW, and they were on a major highway). I don't have to worry about her being babysat by a TV. Or threatened (a whole other story but I got the vibe that those children who were there were threatened to be on their best behavior with the way she kept reminding them of "their little conversation" earlier that morning). I'll just have to get used to being broke, that's all... But at least she'll have excellent care.