This is my last week of maternity leave. It's already Wednesday. I woke up this morning at 5:05, and felt pretty certain that I will now be awake until next Monday when I go back to work. Forget about turning off my brain long enough to get any rest before then. I am leaving my three month old daughter in the care of OTHER PEOPLE 40 hours per week. How many freaking hours are in a week anyways? Please hold while I consult my calculator because I am mathematically challenged. ::pleasant hold music::
168. 168 hours in a week. 40 of which will be in daycare. Approximately 63 hours spent sleeping, because my baby is an awesome sleeper, and sleeps more than I did during years 13 through 18. Which leaves me with 65 hours with my baby each week. Does this seem unfair, ridiculous, cruel, impractical, and any millions of other possible negative adjectives which fit this scenario, to anyone else? She's a baby. I'm a baby. We need each other.
I joke, but I'm seriously about to have a nervous breakdown. I don't know if I can do this. I can't even think about it for more than 5 minutes without getting tightness in my chest and racing thoughts, and a horrible lump in my throat. What am I going to do? I think it's horrible that mothers have to leave their tiny babies so early in this country to go back to work. And I'm extremely resentful about it right now. But I suppose that is for another post.
It is breaking my heart. For three months I have been at her side nearly every moment. I'm watching her grow and learn new things and get smarter and funnier and more affectionate and coordinated every day. How the hell am I supposed to just leave all of that to someone else all day long now? She's going to do so many things for the first time under someone else's care. I'm jealous. I'm hurt. I'm guilty. I'm completely unprepared. I think this might kill me. Is she going to feel completely abandoned all day and miss me terribly? Is she going to not miss me at all eventually? Which one will hurt worse? I don't even know. But what I do know is that out of my entire life, these last three months have been the most important, and the most meaningful, and now I feel like I'm going to voluntarily fail at my job as a mother, which I think is the most important job in the entire world. How can I not, when I'm only getting one more day a week with my child than someone else is, when all the hours are totaled up? I don't know if I've ever felt so low about anything in my life.
I know that eventually I'm going to adjust and this is going to become my normal routine. But I want to go on record that I hate that. I don't think it's natural, and I don't think it's even remotely right. All it means is that I'm going to adapt to being a little bit colder and harder, and allow this switching off of my emotional need for constant contact with my baby to become automatic. It sucks. And a world which requires me to do that sucks.
I admit that there are times during the day when my very demanding and high maintenance daughter will scream and cry no matter what I do, because she needs constant stimulation, and I have the thought, "I'm going back to work next week!!!!" rather joyously. But that only lasts about 10 minutes. I will admit that there is a part of me that is looking forward to getting back into the working game. I have friends there, and I enjoy my job. But it's just that all of these other emotions are outweighing those things. It doesn't mean they aren't there, but they're being trumped by motherhood. I will find enjoyment in going to work again eventually, but I just don't think I'll ever feel completely at ease with it again. Everything has changed. Everything. I'm so different than I was three months ago. And in a couple of years I'm going to get to do this all over again!
Hopefully. :)
