The Final Week

Today marks the beginning of my last week of maternity leave, and I am starting to wallow. I knew before I delivered Ivy that I would have a hard time, and my few episodes of tears already this morning have confirmed it. Every time she smiles at me or makes a cute little noise, I realize she's going to be doing it to someone else next week and it slays me. I am not ready to share her!

I'm spending the day working out the things that she'll need, and starting to label the frozen breast milk (even though she's the only infant) and get pump supplies together and stuff. In a weird way it kind of distracts from the reality of it all. I also need to put together a meal plan for us and get a grocery list going, so that we can get out of the house quickly in the morning and so that I can spend my lunch breaks at the day care with Ivy. And every once in awhile I get distracted with internal rants about feminism and the decline of the one-income family and high rent prices and all the other things that mean that I can't stay at home in babymoon bliss for the rest of my days. :)

The thing that's getting me through is constantly reminding myself that it's going to be so good for Ivy. She's going to have other kids to play with and fight with and share with. She's going to have a teacher that will be way better at coaxing more tummy time out of her. She'll have a whole group of people who dote on her all day long. This is going to be way harder for me than for her.