Never in a Million Years.....

Never in a million years would I ever have thought I would find myself saying this but.......and I quote....."I want to stay home with my Peanut." I cannot bear the thought of my defenseless Peanut being shipped off to a stranger for 8 hours per day. My heart breaks and my anxiety increases at just the thought of this. Now, don't get me wrong, I do see the value in daycare for socialization reasons at an older age when the child can defend him/herself and can tell me what happened. It just does not seem prudent to send my 4 month old infant to daycare. I'm sure some of you are shaking your heads smiling and/or laughing because you all knew me before I was "with child" and a working mom was always in the cards for me. I think the daycare shortage, closing and shut downs that have been happening in my area have heightened my thoughts on this subject as well. Everybody says that having a child changes you, I was unaware that the changing happens before you have met your perfect Peanut. Each time this is brought up, Ty just shakes his head and laughs, "Man, you sure have changed your tune, haven't you." He does not disagree with me but he finds the humor in my strong change of heart!

I have witnessed a co-worker return this fall from having her baby boy last April (sound familiar?) and be stressed out because her son refused to eat from a bottle. The kicker here is her husband is a stay at home dad with her 2 children. She was always calling home to see how he was doing, contemplating going home to feed him daily and definitely not concentrating on work, and this is her second child!! Peanut isn't even here yet and I picture myself a mess come next August, yearning to be with my baby, but stuck at work feeling like I'm in jail.

I just want to reiterate that this is J writing this, not some J impostor because this most definitely does not sound like the "before child" J.

"The individual has always had to struggle to keep from being overwhelmed by the tribe." -Nietzsche