The Toddler Years

With the encouragement of others against my gut I placed my little guy in a local government funded (I paid, but some parents got to use the daycare services free paid by the government) daycare. The thought of doing so made me so nervous and out of sorts. But wasn’t this normal to ship your kids off to daycare? For me it didn’t feel natural, but my toddler loved it. He made friends, did arts and crafts, brought home things he made for mom and dad, was taking naps, which reaffirmed that everyone else was right and I was wrong.  This perceived thought led me to making my next big mistake.

Welcome to the Big City

 picture courtesy of: en.wikipedia.org

My baby was doing so well and he had started nursing less and less at a year and half old I got an infection which forced me to stop nursing and I felt a need to help my hubby pay the bills. Under the false reality that my child was in the best place he could be I took a big city job. I never realized how miserable this would make our family. I felt like I lost the connection with my son the moment I made that terrible decision. I stopped nursing and at the same time took a job that required that I had to take him to his grandparents, still asleep to his grandparents house at 5 am, I would carpool with the hubby to the city to work all day and fight traffic to and from, not getting home usually till 8 or 9 pm in the evening.

While we were at work my parents got to wake up with my little boy, dress him, feed him, play with him. Then they would take him to daycare where he would spend 4-7 hours of his day. Then my parents had the pleasure of picking him up, getting him a snack, asking him how his day was, watching him grow, feeding him dinner, playing with him, bathing him, changing his clothes and putting him to bed. By the time we got home usually my baby was asleep. This was our schedule pretty much 6 days a week, except my hubby got to be off with our son on Saturday. My child withdrew from me. He barely spoke to me. He wouldn’t come to me, he would barely look at me. He expressed in his own way that he was angry with me.  I was heartbroken, but still unclear what do and was advised it was just an adjustment and it would straighten itself out. As weeks of this turned into months this pain in my heart became unbearable. It had destroyed the connection I had with my baby, to the point I wondered if he would ever forgive me and/or reconnect with me. In addition, the strain started to affect my marriage as well. We barely spoke to and from work and I usually cried to and from because I missed my baby. My husband told asked me one day: “why are you doing this?”  I confessed that I would rather live in a tent in the woods then spend another week away from my child. He said: “Let’s get you out of the city”.  Almost overnight I was presented with a business offer in our local town and I accepted and put my notice in. Finally I was out, finally I could reconnect. I hoped it wasn’t too late.