So I recently had a baby about three months ago, and my partner and I are obviously learning a lot about being parents and figuring out what works for us, what doesn’t work for us.
And this week is my second week back to work after maternity leave. I had the opportunity to travel to a city about two hours away from home for a conference. And the request was that I come overnight because the conference started really early. So it was only my second week back to work, so I was kind of saying to my husband like “I don’t need to do this. There is a virtual option. The preference is that I attend in person, but, essentially we have options. So no pressure. You can join me if you think that would make sense. I’m just trying to figure out what we should do.” And he decided that he thought it made sense if I went and he stayed behind with our daughter.
So that was like kind of surprisingly hard for me, not because I had any reservations about him taking care of her. I was mostly worried because we were having some light issues with her taking a bottle for a while there. She was taking a bottle really really well, but right when I started back to work for some reason she started to be a little more resistant to it. So it felt like a gamble of not knowing if she was gonna be an absolute menace the night that I left. And I was really grateful to hear that that was not the case, and even though it was hard to leave, it was good for us because it showed us that we could make — that we could do that. And my partner has a weekend away coming up. He’s gonna be playing in a tournament out of state, I think, and so I’ll be home alone with her. And it’s easier for me because I’m breastfeeding. So that’s sometimes is enough to kind of comfort her but it’s still I don’t know. I feel like it’s building our confidence a little bit. So that was something that started out kind of challenging but was a success. But I did find myself just more anxious about it than I expected and it wasn’t even like a discernible thing I could put my finger on. I think I just had general worries that it was going to be overwhelming for my partner and then of course like distressful — or, sorry, stressful for her, but she’s also a tiny baby who’s not gonna necessarily remember she had one bad night, but my partner might, so. Anyway, yeah turned out okay.