Daycare

Annabella went to daycare yesterday. Jason and I each spent some time with her there before leaving her there for a few hours. Not that this is a big surprise, but leaving your child in daycare is not easy.

Annabella seemed to handle it well though. She's still young enough that strangers don't scare her, and she's pretty used to being passed off to new people after meeting so many relatives over Thanksgiving.

I'm not sure I handled it quite so well. But the daycare workers were really sweet to me, and they sent me an email of pictures of Annabella to make it easier.

Here she is, smiling away, not missing Mommy at all. Mommy was probably sobbing away in her office when this was taken. (Yes, I now refer to myself in the 3rd person all the time. It just started happening as soon as she was born. Apparently there's a valid reason parents do this though...young kids have problems with pronouns. So it's easier for them to understand "Mommy" than "I" or "me".)

Having her in daycare is actually a little easier for me than having her at home with Jason for the full day because at least the daycare is close by and I know I can visit her over lunch. And while I'd much rather have Jason watching her than some random daycare worker, I just can't stand to be away from her that many hours straight.

The daycare workers all seem to be really nice, and I'm not really too worried about the quality of care she'll be receiving. The daycare is rated really well, I've heard glowing reviews, and my daughter's room is adjacent to another infant room with a half-wall, meaning the workers on the other side can see into Annabella's room...so there's really a lot of eyes around to make sure everything is ok.

I think there will be a bit of a learning curve for them though with Annabella. You see, my sweet darling daughter is not one of those babies who only cry when they're hungry, poopy, wet, or sleepy. Her cry might start because of those reasons, but it quickly escalates into an "I'm very angry with you" cry. And Annabella fights sleep really badly, and when she's overtired she's just altogether cranky. So I think they're confusing her crankiness for hunger cries and feeding her when she's not really that hungry. Feeding her does tend to calm her down most the time; so I can't really blame them. Plus infants don't tend to overeat; so it's not really a problem. Figuring how many bottles to send and how much breastmilk to put in them is a bit of a challenge though...especially since there's not really an endless supply of milk and they have to throw away whatever milk is left in the bottle 1 hour after it's taken from the fridge. And because I'm a neurotic mother, I spend a ridiculous amount of my time thinking about all of this.

One more picture, just for good measure.