This cannot be a good sign. After 3 days back at work, I'm completely stressed out and exhausted. And I'm not even teaching! If it's this hard now, what is life going to be like when classes resume??
OK, let me back up. I know I'm being melodramatic/way too hard on myself, here. I know that we'll all get used to the schedule and figure out what works and what doesn't by the time classes start again, and it will be (mostly) fine. And for pete's sake, I've been "off" work for over half a year, so of course adjusting from "work in half-hour snatches of time once or twice a day" to "work full time" is going to be difficult.
But it's been a hard week.
Baby Jane *loves* daycare (yay!), but is having some eating issues. For some reason, she is getting major, painful gas after her first bottle, which makes her not too crazy about eating at all after that. We're sort of baffled by this; the obvious place to look is the bottles, but we've been using these same bottles with no problems since the beginning. So now we get to do some trial and error to try and alleviate the gas problem so that she'll eat normally again. Yippie. (But at least this means I'm not falling behind on the pumping....)
Work-wise, even though the theme this week has been "easing back into things", things have been stressful. I'm held up on one project because I need our IT folks to do something relatively straightforward, but there's apparently only one person who can do this (???) and s/he is backed up. So I'm working on other things, which are not going so well and stressing me out further, and everything is taking me about six times longer than it needs to. And yesterday I really, really missed Baby Jane and almost started crying in my office, thinking I was the Worst Mother Ever for wanting to work and leave her in day care. (Of course I don't feel this way normally; it's just the stress of everything coming to a head.)
And to top it all off, Mr. Jane has had The Week From Hell, and so I've been doing most of the baby care. Today was the worst, because I had both pre- and post-work baby duty, by myself. My god, I don't know what I would do if I had to do this all the time----I am so glad to have an enlightened spouse who, at least during non-hell weeks, believes in sharing kid and household duties equally.
So I'm exhausted and cranky and Mr. Jane and I are picking fights with each other because he's exhausted and cranky from his hell week. What a fun household.
Deep breaths. I know that things will get better. Mr. Jane's hell week is over, so he'll be picking up some of the slack now. I'm going to take part of tomorrow off to preserve my mental health, maybe even go for a walk in the middle of the day. And every day, something about the new routine gets a bit easier, and I know this will continue to be the case. We just have to hang in there and keep plugging away.
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5 comments:
Hugs to the Jane family!
It will get easier--I promise. Maybe even so easy that you'll do something silly like have a second kid. ;-)
Hang in there! The first few weeks that I was back at work was the first time my husband and I ever really fought real fights. Ever. But after a few weeks we fell into a reasonable routine, and it got a lot better. But the transition was very difficult.
And the feeling that you are the worst mom ever for working and taking Baby Jane to daycare is (as you know) completely unfounded. But it will probably pop up whenever you are stressed or missing her. But I honestly believe that my Bean has seen some real benefits from being in daycare. The "being away from mom" is balanced by the "being stimulated by new people and toys and other babies." She LOVES being with the other babies.
So, trust that it will get better. Know that there will be good days and bad (emotionally), but that Baby Jane is doing just peachy.
And don't expect to "accomplish" things during these first few weeks back. All you can really expect to accomplish is get your schedule established and work out all the kinks of your routine.
Hope you feel better soon!
As you said: Deep breaths. Remember that things will get better as each of you adjusts to the new schedules. There will still be really awful weeks, but they'll be tempered by the better ones. It sounds like a confluence of factors made this week a particularly difficult one, so remember that next week will be easier.
As for the gas, can you figure out if the daycare is doing something different after meals than you usually do? Are they lying her down for example? You could ask that Baby Jane sit up for a half-hour after eating to help get the gas out before it gets painful. Also, we've had good luck with Dr. Brown's bottles, but it sounds like you've already got bottles you're happy with.
Deep breaths. Savor the weekend.
With our baby bottles, if they are over-tightened, they don't let in air from the outside like they should, maybe that's happening here too?
Thanks for the kind words, everyone! As far as the bottles go, we tried different nipples (much slower flow), and that seems to be doing the trick. So far, anyway (fingers crossed!). But if it doesn't work, we now have a few more things to try---thanks, ScienceWoman and anon!
And you know, things did get a bit easier at the end of the week, so I know that there is a light at the end of the tunnel. :)
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