Husband is scheduled to return to work on Monday the 15th. He has two remaining weeks of family parental leave that he could use, though we have a whole year to do that. He wanted to save them for “in case” — in case I get the flu, or something major comes up that requires his daily 24\/7 presence.<\/p>\n
And I’m resisting this, clinging to him. My back is still injured — some days are better than others, some movements are riskier than others. I can’t imagine being on my own with this child all day, five days a week. I’m up alone with her until noon-ish as it is, and the relief I feel when he wakes up (he’s not a slacker, he doesn’t get to sleep until 5 a.m.) is huge. When he returns to work, I’ll still be up with her at 5:30 a.m. He’ll go to work around 9:30 a.m., but he won’t get home until 7:00 p.m.<\/em>. Holy hell! How am I going to entertain her\/get a shower\/coordinate an evening meal\/get out of the house\/do laundry without someone else around at least part of the day (during daylight hours)? She’s more alert now, awake for longer periods, but her attention span is short, and this means changing up our play every few minutes: a crinkly toy, followed by the baby gym, then a book read, then a rattle, then some holding and rocking. She lets me know when she wants a change or has had enough by crying. Keeping a baby occupied is more challenging than one would think.<\/p>\n In a fundamental way my life hasn’t changed. I can still sit on the sofa with the laptop while Pixie sleeps in the swing (a preferred place for napping). I tended to be a homebody before she was born, and I wasn’t much of a housekeeper or chef. Yet now I have this idea that I should<\/em> be doing tasks I formerly let slide. Moreover, it’s the idea<\/em> that I can no longer go anywhere (in the house or outside) without considering someone else’s safety and well-being that daunts me.<\/p>\n We need to discuss and decide before Friday. I know he needs to return to work, and that he wants to. Last night I went out with her alone and drove to the local yarn store to visit. (I was nervous about going out by myself and while successful, I felt a little stressed when I returned home.) You know, I had this idea that because I’m in my mid-40s, I’d be a confident, mellow mother, all centered and Mother Earth, yadayadayada — y’know, a grown-up<\/em>. That<\/em> has proved to be completely false.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Husband is scheduled to return to work on Monday the 15th. He has two remaining weeks of family parental leave that he could use, though we have a whole year to do that. He wanted to save them for “in case” — in case I get the flu, or something major comes up that requires […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2071","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"post_mailing_queue_ids":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kathrynpetroharper.com\/mindfullife\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2071","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kathrynpetroharper.com\/mindfullife\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kathrynpetroharper.com\/mindfullife\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kathrynpetroharper.com\/mindfullife\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kathrynpetroharper.com\/mindfullife\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2071"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.kathrynpetroharper.com\/mindfullife\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2071\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4101,"href":"https:\/\/www.kathrynpetroharper.com\/mindfullife\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2071\/revisions\/4101"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kathrynpetroharper.com\/mindfullife\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2071"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kathrynpetroharper.com\/mindfullife\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2071"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kathrynpetroharper.com\/mindfullife\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2071"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}