Daycare Woes

"How lucky I am to have something that makes saying goodbye so hard." 

- A.A. Milne. 

Before we ever talked about having our own kids, my husband told me that his dream job was a stay-at-home father. I was vehemently against having kids until the exact moment that I wasn't (and then I was obsessed - I don't do things by halves), so I just kind of cringed, wondered why, and led the conversation elsewhere. 

Now that we have two children and I'm a medical resident, I am so unbelievably grateful that my husband wants to stay at home. 

I'm a worrier. I worry about how to parent, whether I'm doing things right, what foods to feed my kiddies, how I could be doing things better, and whether, despite my best efforts, they will turn out okay. I'm sure most parents are like this. I also worry, when my daughter walks along the top floor of the village mall, that she'll somehow squeeze through the impossibly small space between bars and plummet downward (she won't); I worry, when she steps one toe out on the lawn, that I'll have a spontaneous seizure and she'll run into traffic (I'm perfectly healthy); I worry that in the two seconds it takes me to let the dog out, she'll drop a huge book on her brother, give him internal bleeding, and then move all evidence before I can even suspect a thing (seriously, what?); and I worry that the minute I leave them with someone who isn't a family member any number of horrible things will happen. 

It makes me feel happy (and safe and sane) knowing that our kids are being looked after by one of the two people who love them most in the world. 

Because my husband stays at home, it has taken until today, nearly 18 months after J was born, for me to be forced into working through that anxiety. 

Since my husband and I have been embarrassingly sedentary since my first pregnancy, we decided to join a gym near our house. The gym is lovely, and has a drop-in day care program, which is brilliant and convenient. Today was our first work out, so after breakfast this morning we dropped the kids off with the childcare attendant, and...walked away. 

It was painful. Painful and horrible and anxiety-provoking. But I stayed at the gym for nearly an hour, and my husband stopped me (citing, correctly, that J would just get upset if she caught me peeping in) from doing unnecessary check-ups. 

When we went to get them at the end of our hour, they were completely immersed. Well, the baby was napping, but he was napping while surrounded by other children, so there's that. 

J, of course, was sitting next to a little girl her age, "reading" her a book. Really, I shouldn't have expected anything different.