Tuesday 29 May 2012

Working mumma blues

I know a lot of working mums have it a WHOLE lot harder than me, so please don't think from this post that I believe I'm hard done by.  This is just a space for me to vent - my online therapy, if you will.

Today was a bad day.  My amazing sister-in-law looks after my daughter on the two days I work day shift, but today one of her own little ones wasn't well, and while still offering to look after mine, I thought it best to A) keep the sickness quarantined as much as possible, and B) give her a break by having one less child to muster into a doctor's office (PS:  my girl HATES the doctor and freaks out any time she sees the little ear thermometer, or light they use to look at your throat.  My sister-in-law didn't need to add 'freaking-out niece' on to her list of things to juggle today!).

So after some early morning phone juggling, the final plan was to take her to her grandmother's house until 1pm, when darling husband would collect her, take her to a friend's house for the afternoon, until he could come and pick her up again at 4.30pm.  She had a pretty good time at both grandma's house, and at my friend's house (who has two children under two already - superwoman!), but I was sad the whole day.  Why?

The fact that my daughter was a problem to be solved.  That my job took precedence over caring for her.  That I felt like she was being shuffled from pillar to post just to get through her parent's work day.  That any normalcy was thrown out the window.  That she might have felt abandoned by us.  That kills me!  If I wasn't so worried about losing my job, I would have taken a carer's day to look after her, but I'm so worried about losing my job that I don't even want to take my own sick days!

There are no words my tired, mushy brain is capable of stringing together in a coherent form that would even come CLOSE to describing how much and how deeply and unceasingly I love my daughter.  I hate leaving her at the best of times, but to have to "solve" her today made me feel like a bloody horrible mother.  I can only say thank God we have my mum living 20 minutes away, and a friend willing to take a last-minute babysitting job on top of her own two little ones.  Not many people are that fortunate, and we certainly are.

But tomorrow and Thursday are my days off, and I am so glad I get to be with her again for the whole of those two days!  I'm even staying up late tonight putting loads of washing on so tomorrow I can spend more time with her doing fun things, like crawling around the loop in our house, or drawing, or playing outside.  The sleep deprivation will be totally worth it.  Might even go for a run and blow the cobwebs off this funky mood.

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