Separation anxiety

Since Peanut was born, nearly eight months ago now, i have been at home with him every day - i have not returned to work. Actually when i say i have been at home with him i don't mean that we have been in the house all day every day. As you will all know from previous 'baby daze' post, we rarely spend all day at home doing nothing.

But this can not go on forever, i do need to get back into the work place sooner or later and to this we need to find alternate care for Peanut.

There was the option of leaving him at a lost and found counter and picking him up a the end of the day, but then i thought that might work for the first couple days and then i would have to find another option.

So the other option, which has now become the first option is to put Peanut into day care.

Before i had him i visited about half a dozen child care centres in the area and i chose one that is not too far from where we live. The way i made my chose was pretty much based on the 'vibe' i got from the places, how friendly the workers there are, how happy the children looked, the amount of cool toys the centre had...

Once i had made my choice i filled in an enrollment form and payed a deposit and played the waiting game. This was about 6 weeks before Peanut was born! I wanted to be prepared (:

I had been planning to go back to work about six months after leaving, but then there was that whole being made redundant thingy so i have been able to take my time getting used to the idea of Peanut going into day care.

And this has been a good thing, because just the thought of being away from him has been more traumatic than i imagined. Up until just a couple of weeks ago the longest that both myself and M34tb4LL had been away from him was for just under an hour when we went out for lunch and M34tb4LL's mother came to our house to watch the boy.

The day care centre has an introduction process available for all new comers, and i think it is just as much for the parents as the children - in fact come to think about it, it is probably more so for the parents.

They call it day care introduction and they invite a or both parents to come to the centre and stay in the room with their child for an hour or so, let the child play with the other children and the carers, give the parents a chance to chat to (grill) the carers, and basically see how the day to day routine works. And this is free of charge to the parents and can be done as often as is needed

I did this for a couple of weeks, just once a week, we sat in the room together, he played with other children and stole their toys and made sure that i was not too far away at any given time.

The third week it was suggested that i leave Peanut in the room and go to the staff room for a coffee. So after a short goodbye, about 15 minutes, i went to the staff room and made myself a cup of tea. About 5 minutes after i got to the staff room the owner of the centre arrived and we got talking. It ended up that i was in the staff room for about 1 1/2 hours, the owner was very good at keeping my mind off what Peanut was up to (she had done this before). I went back to the baby room, picked up the boy and went home.

The next week M34tb4LL took the morning off work and we dropped Peanut off at the centre together. We then LEFT the centre and went to the local Starbucks for a nice relaxing cup of coffee. After a rather distracted cuppa we went home and kept ourselves busy doing a bit of house work. After about 3 hours we went back to the centre to collect Peanut. He seemed to have had a good time. They told us that he had eaten all his breakfast, taken a nap, but refused to drink his bottle. Two out of three not bad.

So as the weeks go on, we will be leaving our boy for more time, till he is spending a whole day there. And i am not feeling as anxious about that thought as i had been. He seems to be liking it, and i am feeling better about the idea of going back to work and leaving him in the care of others. Now all i need to do is find a job!

(: Reggie