Xander Week 6 – Working Mom’s Guilt…
October 31, 2006
This week is my last full week home with Xander before I return to work. I have wanted to be a stay-at-home mom since well before I started planning a family. Unfortunately, not many middle class families in America can afford to survive on a single income. As much as I would love to stay home with children until they are both established in school, we simply can’t afford it.
As with most working moms, I’m having quite the rollercoaster of feelings about returning to work. Of course I’m feeling guilty about leaving my firstborn. I’m sad about all of the moments I’ll miss with him, and worried that I won’t have enough left at the end of the day to give him what he needs.
On the other hand, I’m excited about returning to the world of adults. My world has mostly been confined to the inside of my house for the past 6 weeks, so it’ll be nice to interact with people outside of my house, and to have things to talk about other than the number of poopie diapers Xander had in a day.
Zach is spending the next several weeks with Xander, so I’m not worried about his care until mid-January when he starts day care. The day care he is going to attend is excellent – highly recommended, and very well staffed. But, no day care will love Xander the way we do, and maybe won’t ware about his needs as well and as lovingly as we do. I’m sure this is going to be something that I’ll struggle with for many months or years to come – hopefully we’ll come up with a routine that satisfies Xander and us…
In typical Sara fashion, I have been doing as much research as possible on parenting. Now I’m not sure if the information was helpful or just stressed me out. You see, when I read through the books I find that I’m not doing half of what they suggest. Then I worry that I’m not stimulating my baby’s development enough, or that I’m fostering bad habits in my kid.
As with pregnancy, it seems that most people have similar comments when they meet Xander. First they say, “oh my look at that hair!” and proceed to admire Xander’s hair, to which I usually make some comment on how challenging it is to style the hair, or that it needs to be cut, but we don’t want to in case his head grows and his hair doesn’t. Then they inevitably ask me if I’m sleeping at all. Xander put himself on a 3-4 hour schedule. In general I sleep sometime between 1 am and 4 or 5 am, then we go back to sleep for 3 hours after that. So, yes, I do sleep, and some days I’m a bit tired, but overall it hasn’t been too bad. I’m guessing I ended up with a pretty easy baby, as I am managing to get some sleep, and sometimes even a nap in the afternoon (if the cats don’t wake us up…). As I’m getting an adequate amount of sleep, I don’t feel the need to sleep when the baby sleeps, so I’ve still managed to get some chores done during the day – laundry, dishes, etc. I know that not all babies are this relaxed, and some days Xander does fuss more than others, making for a much longer day and making me anxiously await Zach’s return so he can take a turn comforting the baby, changing the baby, etc. Everyone has their bad days though, so I really can’t complain too much – life is good!
I imagine that many women get the same question I got when I was pregnant – are you going to breast feed? My answer was “I’m going to try.” So, after Xander was born, we set to work at learning how the whole breast feeding process was supposed to work. The first time the nurse brought Xander in to nurse, he latched on quite easily. That first night, I was encouraged that things were going to go smoothly. For the past month I think that some days, and then other days I wish that we had decided to bottle feed the little guy. One of my nipples was blistered and sore for over 2 weeks. My mom said to keep going and it would get better. It did finally, but it was a long two weeks.
After waiting a long, long time to become one, I am finally a parent. It’s a huge responsibility, scary at times, but also exhilirating. I’m not a fan of trying to get my son to sleep for hours at 4:30 am, and poopie diapers aren’t exactly exciting. But, snuggling on the couch with this tiny, warm person who curls up and snuggles into your shoulder makes up for all the irritating time. I love his size and his age, but I’m also excited to watch him grow and develop. As probably every silly first-time parent does, I get excited when he wiggles his head around, as a sign that his neck is getting stronger and he is starting to develop more control over his muscles. Even though I should limit our interaction at nighttime feedings more, I can’t help but stare into his eyes when he’s awake, to give him more opportunity to look at my face and hopefully recognize it. Being a parent certainly has its ups and downs, and I’m sure I will write about many of the trials and joys here, but every moment it worth it!