Today was my first day back to work after 12 gloriously long weeks of maternity leave.
It was rough.
First of all, I work in customer service in a call center. If you've ever worked in a similar environment you know that policies and procedures change on a daily basis. So, I spent the first part of my morning trying to catch up on e-mails that I had received when I was gone. My company has a habit of sending out an e-mail update and then sending out a correction to the previous e-mail and then sending a final corrected copy. And then your manager and peers all forward you the same e-mail just to make sure you received it...anyone seen Office Space? "Did you get the memo?" That was my morning. Every e-mail I received was resent at least three times by different people.
If that wasn't tedious and boring enough, I kept thinking about Lily.
Today was her first day of daycare. I was going to try taking her a little bit at a time starting at about 8 weeks, but they won't take a baby until she's 12 weeks old. She did awesome when I dropped her off. She was talking and smiling and cooing. And when I called at noon they said she had eaten for them and had been a great baby all morning.
Mommy, on the other hand, was not doing so hot.
I was in the bathroom crying at least three times. Not because I don't trust the daycare, because I do. Nathan has been there since he was 18 months old (going on 2 years now) and I have never had any reason to think that they mistreated or neglected him. I just missed her so much. (Yes, I missed Nathan, too, but he's a big kid. He likes playing with his friends so school is no big deal to him!) All I wanted to do all day was scoop her up and snuggle her and smell her hair.
I'm sure it's just normal Mommy guilt. Nathan was with my mom the first time I went back to work after he was born. And I handed in my two week notice that day and stayed home until he was 10 months old. When I did go back to work, my mom watched him until he was 18 months old. She sent me a text at least once an hour telling me what he was doing and sending me pictures...
I felt so disconnected from my baby today. She's not old enough to be independent. She still needs me. The last time I sat in that chair at work I had her safe and secure all snuggly inside of me. It just felt wrong not being with her today.
People keep telling me that it gets easier. I sure hope so. I can't imagine it getting any worse. My heart was literally aching today. I just hope tomorrow goes by faster that today did. I can't handle another torturous 8 hours like that again...
