Coming to a Close
I have, like, 75 half-written posts in my head. One is about sleep; I feel like I should update you on my totally schizophrenic attitudes about it. Another is about EC (elimination communication, aka infant potty training, or potty learning or whatever the PC term du jour is), which we don't really do, but we a little bit sort of do. Another is about the hellish time we're having trying to organise childcare and how I've called 20 daycares and only 1 has a potential spot and how no one is responding to my ads about nanny-sharing and how we're going to be totally broke if we hire a nanny solo but we may just end up doing it because I cannot leave him in a place that I am not 110% comfortable in, and crap, why didn't Paul Martin and his nationalised daycare plan get voted in?
But right now I can't write any of those posts - I'm too sad... I was just nursing LM down from his first wake-up; we had such a gorgeous day today hanging out in the park for about 5 hours chasing dogs and other babies and then having (me, not him) cold chai at this breastfeeding-friendly café near my new 'hood. When he woke up tonight he reached for me and melted into my arms and fell back asleep so quickly. As I was holding him, it hit me that soon I will be spending the majority of my waking hours (and his) away from him. I am going to miss him so very, very much. I've never been away from my little buddy for more than a few hours at a time, and it's going to be unbearably hard.
In a week or so we are headed to the Big City for a week of work training during which I'll be doing the 9-to-5. Then I have a few more weeks off before going back full-time. We decided that both he and D would come with me. D will work a bit from there and we'll have a nanny the rest of the time, and it will be a trial run of being away from LM for the whole day. It's sort of an expensive thing to do, but I felt like flying three thousand miles away for an entire week would be far too much of a shock for us both. Also, it turns out all of D's siblings will be in the City that week (his parents live nearby) , so we'll be having a big family reunion too. (Weirdly, D's parents have not offered to help us out with taking care of LM during that time - but that's probably yet another post - add it to the list.)
I just feel so lucky and blessed that I had this year with him. In planning my career trajectory, I think that I'll only take six months the second time we have a child and D will take the balance of the time. And in my head, I feel like that will be easier for some reason, with that second child, that I won't have the same powerful physical need to be close to him. But I'm probably fooling myself and it will be just as hard to leave that baby.
I really wish there was some other way to do it - some way to go part-time or to put it off just a little longer. But I'm not willing to make the huge trade-offs that doing that would require, at least not now. I really want to get to the end of the road I started on four years ago when I started law school - for a whole variety of reasons. And yet I am completely fulfilled by what I do being home and would happily do it for several more years if my work world didn't stigmatise people who take multi-year breaks from it. I just wish I could have both - be at home full-time and work. Clearly there need to be more hours in the day.
But right now I can't write any of those posts - I'm too sad... I was just nursing LM down from his first wake-up; we had such a gorgeous day today hanging out in the park for about 5 hours chasing dogs and other babies and then having (me, not him) cold chai at this breastfeeding-friendly café near my new 'hood. When he woke up tonight he reached for me and melted into my arms and fell back asleep so quickly. As I was holding him, it hit me that soon I will be spending the majority of my waking hours (and his) away from him. I am going to miss him so very, very much. I've never been away from my little buddy for more than a few hours at a time, and it's going to be unbearably hard.
In a week or so we are headed to the Big City for a week of work training during which I'll be doing the 9-to-5. Then I have a few more weeks off before going back full-time. We decided that both he and D would come with me. D will work a bit from there and we'll have a nanny the rest of the time, and it will be a trial run of being away from LM for the whole day. It's sort of an expensive thing to do, but I felt like flying three thousand miles away for an entire week would be far too much of a shock for us both. Also, it turns out all of D's siblings will be in the City that week (his parents live nearby) , so we'll be having a big family reunion too. (Weirdly, D's parents have not offered to help us out with taking care of LM during that time - but that's probably yet another post - add it to the list.)
I just feel so lucky and blessed that I had this year with him. In planning my career trajectory, I think that I'll only take six months the second time we have a child and D will take the balance of the time. And in my head, I feel like that will be easier for some reason, with that second child, that I won't have the same powerful physical need to be close to him. But I'm probably fooling myself and it will be just as hard to leave that baby.
I really wish there was some other way to do it - some way to go part-time or to put it off just a little longer. But I'm not willing to make the huge trade-offs that doing that would require, at least not now. I really want to get to the end of the road I started on four years ago when I started law school - for a whole variety of reasons. And yet I am completely fulfilled by what I do being home and would happily do it for several more years if my work world didn't stigmatise people who take multi-year breaks from it. I just wish I could have both - be at home full-time and work. Clearly there need to be more hours in the day.
posted by grass @ 10:31 PM
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