Oh Wood, this made me teary.
I'm currently looking for work as my mat leave runs out in a month. Although part of me is excited about what I might be able to do, I am so heavy hearted thinking about having to leave my son nine hours a day, five days a week.
Somehow, it makes me feel better knowing it will never get easy to say goodbye.
Wood - I love reading about Juniper. My own daughter is three, and when I read about Juniper talking to her blueberries, I can totally relate. It is never easy leaving, but for me it HAS gotten easier. I hope it does for you, too.
We too, have a similar situation where my husband stays at home and I leave for work every day. It breaks my heart when she is holding on to my neck won't let go.
I just try to remember how lucky we are to be in the position where only one of us works, and how lucky Margot is to have such an amazing Dad to take care of her.
Have a great day!
Sending you good thoughts about speeding home tonight, so you can be there while she chats with her dinner food before bed. I hope the work cycle quiets soon, so you can get up with her again. That sounds like a wonderful routine.
When it's time for me to leave in the morning, TwoBert flattens his body against the front door and wails, "No no nooooo!" Moving him out of the way is just. plain. awful.
I think maybe you should just make yourself less loving and fun. Then she'll be like, "Later lady."
I am full of good ideas!
I am a freelancer so am constantly going between staying at home more and working more. I start a new job in about two weeks and anticipating the difficulty leaving in the morning is killing me. You've articulated exactly how I feel as you always do. I really look forward to reading your posts. Thanks.
But the end of the day is the BEST PART! Seeing your child after eight or nine hours and a drastic change of setting is amazing. There is nothing for me like catching that first glimpse of Petunia when I sneak into her room at preschool at the end of each day. The way she cries, 'Mama!' and hurries to show me the pictures she's colored...well, it's the reason that I always insist on being the one to take her to and from school each day. Just so I can have those fifteen seconds at 5:20 pm.
ps-Reading the beginning of these posts in Bloglines is kind of an adventure these days. It's like a game, "Did Wood write this today or seven months ago? Oh, wait, she said 'left San Francisco' it must be new!"
i was just telling a friend of mine how nice it is to have pnut finally sleep well enough that i don't mind her waking me up with "mom-mie, mom-mie, mom-mie!" with a huge smile in the morning. we had a rough first year as well.
last night i was proofreading a paper her daddy had to do on family- and he wrote about the best part of his day being phone calls from her when he answers the phone and hears "dad-dy? dad-dy? dad-dy?" god it about near killed me last night and it's killing me now. sometimes i wish we could all just work from home or have unlimited flextime or more understanding employers. til then, we just get through it i guess. thanks for this.
You are so awesome though for being able to work at the job and be an awesome mom to Juniper. I'm sorry it hurts to leave her. The good news is, she won't remember being sad; she'll just remember how much you love her.
6:40 am!!! Good lord. I hope the trial is going well. xoxo
Oh God bless you, dear woman, for the sleep timeline. I know in my head that my child can't possibly continue this whole business of up-every-two-hours, ready-to-get-this-par-tay-stahhhhed at 5:30 a.m. forever, but it surely helps to hear from people who are past it.
I am the stay at homer for the moment. The guilt kills me...both the guilt of getting to stay home and of not always loving it.
Ah, guilt--it truly is my mostly companion ever since I started this mama gig. Guilt for staying home, as sarah says, and not loving it, guilt for leaving every day, guilt for not getting home earlier each night. *sigh* It actually makes me look forward to the guilt I'm sure to get because I won't let him stay up until 4 AM playing video games and make him wear dorky clothes. THAT kind of guilt, I can handle.
It's awful, but I leave before D gets up most mornings. Honestly, his wailing in the morning as I leave is so heartbreaking that I take the chicken way out and just listen to him babbling on the baby monitor for 10 minutes and feed myself on that all day. I'm a bad mother.
It's so strange to feel those spaces between ourselves and our little babies, the way they widen and close during the course of a week, and then again when the schedule changes. Everytime I have to work late and miss our daughter's dinner and bedtime, I get a desperate, claustrophobic feeling.
And what happens next?--when they go off to school and have friends and don't want cuddles and kisses all the time anymore? It's too fast! Too fast! (Mine's just 2 now, too.)
Most mornings I leave before the Dude is awake -- around 7:30 - 7:45. This means I only see him for a few hours every evening. Last year, during one major project that required me to work late every night, I didn't see him awake for a week. I swore never, ever again. Lately he has been waking up around 4am and I bring him in with me/us. Its my cuddle time with a warm fleecy toddler. I need to be broken of this just as much as he does.
Aside: the morning I flew to MI he was sleeping on me, breathing heavy, totally out. I had to try and get out from underneath him without waking him. Took me about 10 minutes of slow, careful movements as I slid to the floor and grabbed my clothes in the dark. Took me back to college. :- )
Thank you for writing about this! I was curious about how this was going for you. I'm in the same position (the mom and the primary earner, and a lawyer). Along with all of the "rational" rationalizations (e.g., supporting the family is one of the most important parts of being a parent/meaningful life in and out of the house/ he spends so much of the day happy that the morning time is forgotten) that get me through these mornings, is the poetry of it: if it weren't for the sadness in the mornings, we wouldn't have the joy of the evenings. And, larger, the happiness of being such a wonderful thing to someone (a mother!) comes with the hardship of being that same thing. Like someone said above, I wouldn't really WANT the mornings to get easy - that would be more of a loss than a gain.
Melissa's idea was also great - worth exploring...
I hate to break it to everyone, but it never gets any easier.
My twins are 18, and when they come home from college for the weekends I'm guilty of watching them sleep, and sneaking in to nuzzle a warm forehead before I leave for work. I've also been known to stand in their empty bedrooms when they go back to school, and it takes all the strength I can muster to keep the tears to a minimum.
Parenthood provides the most amazing emotions. It's like having a piece of your heart walking around the world in another little body.
I'm contemplating going back to work after I give birth.
I'm not sure how I'm going to feel.
Then I read things like this. And go into another girl's office. She has about a million pictures of her baby up in her office.
"Parenthood provides the most amazing emotions. It's like having a piece of your heart walking around the world in another little body."
Absolutely perfectly said.
I couldn't get the link for the appropriate story to work - Dutch's Holiday Shopping Guide. But I just gotta say it is ironic that you complain about buying stuff made in China from Wal-Mart, then you have a Baby Legs ad on your front page! I have several pairs of these wonderful leggings, but alas, if you read the package, they too, are made in China. Maybe you are being a bit too self-righteous?
maybe.
I can so relate to this post: I am at the end of a month of self-financed paternity leave, justified to ease the transition from one kid to two. Kid #1 is almost exactly Juniper's age, and my role for the last month has mainly been distracting him from new-baby jealousy, which entails the entire morning routine thing you describe while his mom nurses the interloper. We have bonded tighter than ever, and I am seriously asking myself if returning to my dumb job is going to be worth giving this up. Can't we just live in a cardboard box and eat gravel?
Delurking to say how much I loved that post. Not your pain that is, but the way you put it into words. Being a mother, especially a working mother, has to be the hardest gig in the world.
Unfortunately, I'm not sure it ever gets easier.
Love your blog.
angie
I'm sorry but you're right - it never gets easier. Every day that I leave and my son does the "Mommy, noooo, don't go" thing breaks my heart, but every day that he doesn't breaks it a little bit, too. And he's 4 1/2 and I've been working since he was a baby. It's awful to leave and be needed, and it's awful to leave and not be needed. The plight of the working parent, I guess.
WonderBaby waves at me cheerfully when I kiss her head and whisper goodbye on the mornings that I go to teach. BYE BYE she yells, happily. BYE BYE.
This hurts, too.
Juniper sounds a little like my daughter who is 3. When she was a baby, I had to rock her and sing her lullabies to sleep every night. Now, I have to read her a gazillion books before she goes to bed.
I'm glad I stumbled upon this blog. Reading about life with Juniper has been entertaining indeed.
Yes, but they are lovingly made in China.
My mother watches our 21-mo-old four days a week (I wangled one work-from-home day, which has its own challenges). My mom's very young and is an energetic wonder with him, nurturing, fun, a great teacher. Like Her Bad Mother's baby, he is very cheerful about me leaving in the morning. "Mama's going to work now angel, see you later." "OK Mama (busy reading on my mom's lap). Bye bye." Naturally I wouldn't have it any other way, but HBM is right. That hurts too.
So nope, it won't be any better if/when she doesn't cry. But I know my son's happy, and you know Juniper is. And you do the best you can and you enjoy the nights and the weekends and the mornings. Hope you get those back soon.
What I found so interesting in this post is that EVERY mother I know who works, feels this way. Especially my sister, who worked until she had her second baby, and then financially it didn't make much sense to pay for childcare for two, given how much money she made. She wouldn't have brought home much. It just about KILLED her, every morning, taking her son to daycare. She'd bawl on the way to work, and be OUT of there the minute she could to go get him after work. Every working mother I know delights in the time she gets to spend with the kids when she gets home.
And then there are working fathers. I'm luckily married to one who adores his time with his daughter and happily hangs out with her whilst I do whatever I need to do in the evenings, including leaving the house. BUT, there are SO many working fathers who somewhat resent having the kids "dumped" on them as soon as they get home, who don't want to "babysit" on the weekends. Who know very little about their kids' routines, because they sweep in and hang out for an hour, kids go to bed (put there in their loving routine by their mothers).
Now all you fathers out there who are reading this, fuming, who are not like that at all, I'M NOT TALKING TO YOU. DON'T GET YOUR SKIVVIES IN A TWIST AND BLAST ME. I'm talking to the ones who DO that. HELLO, they'll be out of the house and grown before you know it. ENJOY the time you have. If you're a parent, it isn't babysitting.
I
I've got a pretty good working situation in that our kids didn't have to do daycare (I started out working part time and hubby has a flexible job, so we tag-teamed). Now they're 7 and 9 and I really do feel like I sometimes get the best of both worlds...I get them in the morning before we all hurl out the door for work and school, and I get the evenings when we're relaxed and having fun. But I miss the afternoons, when they're dragging a$$ and dilly-dallying when they should be doing homework and not putting their coats away and not taking care of their lunchboxes. So I don't have to nag. That's daddy's job. Yay!
Little-E is my favorite alarm clock. She doesn't like to get out of her bed on weekends, so instead just shout "Daaaady! Daddy! I'm awake!" and waits for me to come pick herup.
My little man (who's 2) and I do the morning routine, too -- some mornings we do ok, and getting off to day care is a breeze. Other mornings everything is a battle, from changing his diaper to getting him into the car seat. I hate those mornings.
BUT I'm lucky because I can flex my hours so that I go in to work later, and my husband comes home a little earlier to pick him up. We each get one-on-one time with him every day and he loves it.
I haven't used an alarm clock in three and a half years except for traveling. Hence why I'm blog surfing at 5:27am waiting for my girls to wake up. Your daughter is adorable. And I like you blog. Looking forward to reading more of it, have only skimmed so far.
Take care~mitch
I'm way too teary and post-partum hormonal-y to comment how this beautiful post right now, as my mom tucked me back into bed this morning so I could sleep while she looked after my own brand new Tater. Maybe later. But it's beautiful....
i just started a new job a few months ago after a move from san francisco to new jersey. this is exactly how i feel every single morning.
I relate to your alarm clock situation -- we use the timer on the stove, right outside our bedroom. And we all hate it when someone has to get up "on time."
Even though I work from home and rarely have to leave the boys, the other day I was taking Everett to ballet and Truman stood in the middle of the living room, face in his hands, crying like his heart would break because I was leaving him behind. He also does this when I won't let him play with sharp knives, or eat an entire Snickers bar, but still.
Even in the most perfect of all situations, with work and life all in beautiful harmony, it's still mighty hard to leave a child you love so.
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