If you have an infant in daycare how do you deal with it?My baby starts daycare in 2 weeks and she will be 12 weeks old. I just feel so guilty leaving her all day everyday 5 days a week. I am dreading it so badly..
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It was so, so hard with my daughter. I left her at 12 weeks; we had a nanny, but I still felt incredibly guilty, almost like I was abandoning her. I missed her a lot when I went back to work, and while it never really became easier to leave her, I did get used to it.
One thing that helped me was to think of her care provider as her teacher, not a substitute mother. Even now, DH and I refer to daycare as "school." In reality, it is a lot like school: she's learning social skills, motor development, language development, and now, she's even working on preschool skills, like color/letter/number identifcation, reading, writing, etc... Her daycare provider is a wonderful, loving person, but she is not my replacement. She only gets to see DD and DS for a few hours twice a week (in my case), but I get the rest of their entire lives. I don't know if this would help you, but thinking about daycare in this way does alleviate some of the mommy guilt. Eventually, I would have to send them off to school, anyway; we're just doing it earlier rather later.
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I felt really guilty. But now I realize how much of a relief it is that I get some adult time. I need this to be a better mom. Our daycare lady (in home just her and her son) is so great. He is treated like family and I can go over anytime. It is fantastic. He now takes 2 naps a day and is really thriving with her. I think a good daycare helps a lot. I miss him but I do get to see him at lunch and it is so nice to see him when I get home.
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Thanks guys.... I guess theres no easy way. Yeah thinking of it as school kinda does help
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It was HARD the first few months, but it does get better. Thinking ofi t as school helps. I know for my daughter, she gets to make friends and play, especially since she is and will be the only child.
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I think once she has been going for a while I will start to feel better, I keep worryin that she wont adjust and will keep crying and crying.. hopefully I am wrong
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My friends say the first day is so hard leaving LO but that it got so much easier each day. Even though it's hard you can feel a little better knowing you are not leaving your LO with some random neighbor/babysitter but a childcare expert - your LO will be taken care of by people who were trained to care for babies. My friend's baby is so happy at her daycare and she is super advanced in her motor skills - at 6 months she was crawling and pulling up and at 9 months she is trying to take her first steps. My LO is nowhere near that.
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LO started daycare when she was a little older than 3 months and it was definitely a rough adjustment period for a few weeks. Thinking of it as school helped and I appreciated LO a lot more when I picked her up!
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First day was hard...not gonna lie, first week was hard, hmmm, by 3rd week we were both adjusted and very comfortable with the whole thing. I started early...sent LO before I go back to work, and it started as part time, and we added more hours each week, now we are up to full days, I go back to work in 1 week.
I also call it school. He has learned so much socially, and physically, he wants to be with other kids, so he immediately started crawling one day. I felt guilty at first, but after realizing it's just something we gotta do...gotta pay the bills, it wasn't so bad, plus nice to have my time to get stuff done and prepare lessons for the school year.
At the end of the day when I see his cute little face...he crawls to the door and he is so happy, I feel so happy too! Best feeling to have him back in my arms after a long day away from him.
It will get better.
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