Work and Childcare

I've gone back to work full-time this week, and for the first time I spent more than four hours away from Isabella. When she was around 3 -months old I worked a couple of nights a week at the village pub across the street, but she was always within arms reach. This is much different.

The early part of the week was so difficult I wanted to quit, but today was my last day of the workweek and it was much better. Isabella goes to the babysitter, my friend Aneta, four days during the week. Then on Saturday, my last day, Pedro is off so he's home with her. My boss granted me extra time on my lunch break so that I can travel the extra five minutes away to continue breastfeeding (they don't have a suitable place for me to express milk at work). That short drive is repetitive and exhausting and I'm very conscious of potentially annoying my co-workers with my longer lunch privilege. They seem to be really supportive - or maybe they're already sick of my yakking about Isabella all day long. Yes, I am one of those parents I never thought I'd be!

Having two working parents in the home takes an enormous amount of added planning. I managed to be really organized last weekend and I cooked and jarred all of Isabella's meals in advance, plus I prepared a couple of our meals for the week and froze them. Aneta was cool with using the cloth diapers, but we abandoned the idea after the first day (we're still using them at home). Once I get into the routine I may try again.

Aneta has an adorable 10-month old of her own, Sophia, and she's teaching Isabella all kinds of new tricks. In fact, after one day with Sophie, Isabella tried climbing the stairs! And her low-crawl has turned into a proper crawl now that she's seen just how it's done.

In other news, I started to wean Isabella from night-feeding two weeks ago. It was AWFUL for the first week but we've come a very long way because she now sleeps consistently through the night. To me, this is a bigger milestone than crawling because it had been months and months since I had gotten six straight hours of sleep. However, she still wakes up around 4 a.m. and once this week she wouldn't go back to bed...

And finally, we celebrated our first Halloween along with the arrival of some very good friends yesterday. I will put up photos and details in my next post.