Busy as a Bee

The past week and a half has challenged me. Baby J finally got out of the Wonder Week, hit his 6 month birthday, and then turned right around to be a crazy little man who refuses to sleep on his own and screams in the car. We had maybe 2 days of peace. I got food poisoning, worked 2 10-14 hour days away from the baby, and lost a lot of sleep.

Here I am at almost 11pm with a sleeping baby on my chest with no reason to still be awake and yet, I’m writing here. Because I feel like I finally have a moment to breathe. I’m at my mom’s house tonight for another work meeting in the morning. Baby J will be going to daycare for the first time ever in his life. And this mama, well, she’s not doing so well with it.

Those good days that I had a week or 2 ago feel like a lifetime ago. The past few days have felt like I’m juggling giraffes (by the way, did that mama have her baby?) on top of a 23+ pound 6-month-old who hates the car and the crib and anything other than my arms. I am running on an average of 6 hours of broken sleep (because he is a growing boy who still eats every 2-3 hours overnight but I really can’t confirm because I stopped watching the clock months ago to keep my sanity) for the past week. I had crazy long work meetings where little man spent 1 day with grandma and 1 day with dad. Then I came home to puke up my breakfast/lunch/dinner only to top off my weekend with more sleep deprivation and a husband who needed to catch up on other stuff and couldn’t take the baby. Which brought me to Monday where life started all over again including, but not limited to, a 20 minute screaming session from my child because he was upset/could not soothe that I had put him in the walker RIGHT NEXT TO ME while I washed the carrots off his high chair.

Now it’s Wednesday and I spent 2 hours on the road today with a screaming/crying/only sleeping a little bit baby. And tomorrow, I get to drop him off at a daycare that I have never seen in person because I was desperate because all my usual caregivers are otherwise engaged. The daycare won’t let this bedsharing baby sleep with a blanket and they have 3 other babies to tend to at a time so really, will my child even be watched? What if he screams the entire time I’m gone? What if he won’t take a bottle?

See I’d say these are irrational and a result of sleep deprivation/postpartum anxiety/thyroid/whatever the moon did this month. But Baby J refused to sleep in the crib for the nanny today and woke up crying every time she tried to put him down. And at about 4 hours, he started wailing for me and wouldn’t stop until I picked him up. Not to mention that he refused to take more than an ounce from the bottle and that was after refusing it the first time because room temp is just not warm like mommy’s boobs. Can a 6-month-old be spoiled? Or is he really just a baby? I’m starting to wonder.

The plan is that I drop off the dude at 8am to be at a meeting at 9am- I guess I will try to nurse him right before we get in the car. At 10:30am, I will break to pump and also call the daycare. If they say he isn’t sleeping/won’t stop screaming, I’ll either go get him or call the husband who is on emergency standby to drive 2 hours one way to get the kid. If he’s okay, I will go about my meetings and call at noon. I may go nurse him if he is doing okay at that point because I’m not 100% sure that the milk I’m leaving will be enough. If not, I’ll pick him up. I don’t know.

How does a work-from-home 90% of the time, exclusively breastfeeding, bedsharing, babywearing mom leave her 6-month-old high needs baby at a daycare with 3 other children for a teacher to care for?

Let me go puke and I’ll tell you later.