I have been agonising over what February will bring for our family for a few weeks now. I am very good at stressing myself out - I would say I would win the stressy olympics but I know one person who beats even me (and that's pretty impressive).
It's difficult to really explain how hard it is to think about leaving your baby. I don't quite know why it is, but nights are the worst. Everytime I manage to get him to settle him back to sleep I just want to pick him back up out of his cot, squeeze him tight and never let go. I am worried about an incredible amount of things: His eating, his naptimes, his routine. I am worried that he will like our childminder better than me; worried she'll be better at looking after him than I am. I worry that it makes me a bad Mum for leaving him with someone else. I worry that it was the wrong thing to go back to uni at all and I should have stayed at my job in the bank where I would have been able to choose how many hours a week I left my baby. In the back of my mind I worry that I won't manage going back to uni at all - that I'll fail and it'll all be for nothing.
I don't worry about the standard of care he'll get. I am so confident he'll be well looked after. And I'm confident he'll love it too. He is such a happy, friendly baby and he just loves being around big and small people. He'll have a great time. I am heartbroken thinking about how much I'll miss him. Completely heartbroken.
But today Isaac went for a trial run at the childminders and I had a few hours to myself. After an hour of housework and pottering around the house thinking how empty and quiet it was I dusted the cobwebs off my textbooks from last year and had a bash at putting the old grey matter into gear. And I remembered how much I love studying, how much I love my course, how long I've waited to be well enough to go back to uni. I want my baby boy to be proud of me when he grows up. To know that I've really grabbed life with both hands and lived it to the full. I want him to learn from my example that you can achieve anything with hard work and determination. I know again that this is the right thing for our family. And today I felt so much better. I feel like I'm on the right path, feel confident in our decisions again. Confident that I can be a good Mum just the way I am, doing what I want to do and not what I feel I should do.
And then tonight, again, I had a nagging doubt that maybe I'm a bad Mum for feeling better about it.
Sometimes I wish I could turn my brain off.
