You'll Be So Proud of Me

I go back to work tomorrow (boo-hoo), so we began taking Miss A to day care on Thursday in order to ease me into it.

We started with just 4 hours on that day, and I handled it with a relatively small amount of tears. We left her there for 6 hours on Friday and 8 yesterday, with no tears at all from me. (See, I told you you'd be proud of me! :-) ).

Overall, I know it's a good thing for her. They have many more toys and activities for her than we do at home. Plus, the center where we're taking her is a day care center at an organization that works with people who have developmental disabilities, so they have early intervention specialists on site to do evaluations if the need should arise.

(We don't have any reason to think there's an issue with her, and most of the children in the center do not have disabilities. We wound up going there because several years ago when two of my friends had their kids in a day care center at the company my husband worked for, when the company offshored the jobs, they closed the day care center. The employees at that day care center recommended this one, and my friends ended up loving it even more than they loved the day care that closed. Plus, it's on the way to work for R, less than a mile from his office.)

Our grand plan is for me to get up early and work East Coast hours (3 hours ahead of me) since that's where my boss is. R and Miss A will sleep for about 2 hours longer than me, and then I'll take a break to nurse her when she gets up. Then R will drop her off at day care around 7:30, I'll pump 2-3 times a day while eating snacks/lunch, and then I'll pick her up between 2:30-3:30, depending on if there are any errands I need to do before I go get her.

Of course, that is a plan based on a house of cards - if the timing of one thing collapses, it all kind of collapses around us.

We've been practicing since Thursday. So far, we have not managed to get out of the house before 8 a.m., and since the plan is to have R and Miss A be at the day care between 7:30-7:45, clearly we have some work to do.

We'll see how all of this goes. I'm a little bit nervous about it, which I know is understandable. And thankfully I have a very flexible boss, and the ability to work from home most days, which helps a lot.

I just wish we had a money tree so that I could stay home with her. I hinted to R about that in some text messages a couple of weeks ago, with no luck. The reality is that in order to even start to make that feasible, we would need to downsize into a much smaller house (probably not a good idea, since a generous amount of square footage is what keeps me and my mom from teenage-girl-style cat fights) and not have any more major medical expenses (i.e. no attempts at a sibiling).

I'd like to try for a sibiling for Miss A in about a year, and R and my mom keep saying that if I want to sell the house, the buyer gets them included as part of the deal because they're not moving. And now that Miss A is here, they're outvoting me in saying that she would stay with the house too, so I guess there are no moving boxes in my immediate future... :-)

Trying to Reason With an Infant

I'm trying to reason with Miss A. It is not working.

Rejection is not fun for anyone, I get that. But some people cope with it better than others. People who have Borderline Personality Disorder tend not to be among those who cope well with it.

Out of all the people who Miss A encounters, guess who she seems to have developed an aversion to?

Yep, my mother.

Those of you who have been reading for a while know that this is not a good thing. To her credit, she seems to be coping with it better than I would have expected. (Keeping in mind that "better than I would have expected" and "well" are still two very different things.)

I don't know what the problem is.

I've been trying to give Miss A to her to hold at least once a day so that they can have some bonding time. It had been going fine, until two or three weeks ago. Then, suddenly, the rejection began.

I would feed Miss A and change her, then play with her for a little while. When she started to get sleepy, I would take her to my mom.

It goes well for about the first 15-20 seconds. Then, whether I walk away or stay there, the screaming begins. My mom gently bounces her and pats her, to no avail. So then my mom starts to say "no, no, no" increasingly loudly, which only serves to have them see who can increase the volume more. Then my mom starts to mimic Miss A's cries, apparently out of some false belief that that will soothe her, which of course has just the opposite effect.

After a few minutes, my mom concedes, and I pick up Miss A. The crying stops immediately. I calm her down, gently place her back in my mom's arms, and the crying and screaming resumes. Same thing if R takes her from my mom instead of me.

Like I said, so far, my mother is handling it better than expected. But she already has a bit of resentment/jealously that Miss A stops crying for us, and that resentment/jealously is only likely to grow. Plus, she is getting frustrated and hurt at Miss A for rejecting her.

She is trying to comfort herself by pointing out that when I was a baby, I would cry if anyone other than my mom held me.

Either she hasn't noticed or isn't allowing herself to acknowledge that Miss A does not do this with either of R's parents. In fact, whenever we see R's parents, Miss A lays in R's dad's arm, and the two of them usually take a nap together like that for a couple of hours. Last weekend, R's mom was holding Miss A while sitting on the couch, and R's dad was sitting next to them. He was holding his hand up so that Miss A could hold his finger, and the two of them fell asleep like that - it was so cute!

I keep trying to explain to Miss A that the phrase "If momma ain't happy, ain't nobody happy" has nothing on the phrase "If grandma ain't happy, ain't nobody happy".

I can't figure out what is causing Miss A to be unhappy when my mom holds her, or how to fix it. Any ideas??