Heartbroken

I did something bad today. Something that all daycare parents know NOT to do. It is a cardinal rule of sorts: Don’t look back. Just go.

Today is Day 2 of LouLou’s fulltime daycare experience, and both mornings have been sad. She cries and grasps, but because I have done it before, with W, I feel stronger. 

I was feeling so strong today that I thought I would pop in and take a peep, since I was already in the building returning W from midday gymnastics. I crept up to the Baby Room and then I saw it, the sight that I can’t unsee. My baby girl, lying face down on a mat, whimpering, with giant tears rolling down her face. She wasn’t even wailing or bawling; that I could handle. It was just a sad, submissive, lonely cry. To me her face looked defeated. There was a daycare worker right beside her, holding another baby and talking softly to them both, so she wasn’t completely alone. Regardless, she looked miserable. They told me she had just woken up, but I didn’t really hear them because I flew to her, I scooped her up, and she sighed heavier than any baby should. She just silently laid against me for what felt like four hours, and then I nursed her. Which is yet another daycare sin. They should never really have the forbidden fruit within those walls because it is a tease. Daycare is for milk from cattle and snot.

A lot of the other babies were napping and the women in the room know me pretty well, so they let me stay for a while. LouLou was completely silent the entire time I was there, and then suddenly it was diaper-change time and someone was scooping her from me. I had intruded long enough; they had to get on with the day. And so did I, I guess. But I didn’t want to. So, even though there are no more bitchy lions around, I still went to work and cried. I cried for her loneliness and for mine. That pudgy little squirmer has just had her heart broken for the first time, by me. Her face, I can’t unsee it. I hurt her feelings. I feel like shit.

Tightrope Mama

[image: flower heart by Lydia Coventry]