Before my return to work, I was worried about how I would cope with leaving Breacrumb to a stranger. Funnily enough - it was easy. I identified with a lot of Leah's post, plus it probably helped that I am not the one dropping him off - I leave him home with his dad.
So far I've been enjoying work a lot - even if teaching is an ungrateful job to do*. I remember one of my first days back, I caught myself in the middle of a lesson thinking: "Oh, I've missed this so much!". Even the worst groups did not make me regret going back to work (not that I had a choice). But then Wednesday happened.
After I got home, we gave Breadcrumb some baby paracetamol following doctor’s orders, and he spent a couple of hours clinging to me and snoozing a bit. Then it was bed time. He had a hard time settling and falling asleep, then he woke up half an hour later and needed soothing again. I rocked him and sang to him, all the way thinking about the books I had to mark for the next day waiting for me in the car and wondering if I would be able to do it with a baby in my arms.
Later on his dad and I talked about the following day. Would Breadcrumb go to the childminder’s as usual? What if he isn’t well enough? And I knew the only thing I should and wanted to do was to stay home with him and do all I can to make him feel better. But I couldn’t. Because I had to mark more books so that I did not get in trouble during upcoming work scrutiny. Because last week I was off on a Wednesday and my employer would think there’s a pattern and accuse me of choosing not to come in on Wednesdays (which happens to be my hardest day at work).
So on Wednesday morning Breadcrumb went to the childminder’s and I drove to work in tears, praying for God to take care of my little boy instead of me and to take away my anger at how wrong this situation was. Because even if we have an amazing childminder, it should be me, I should be there for my son when he needs me instead of putting all of my energy into teaching a bunch of ungrateful teenagers who don’t want to know and don’t care either way. I should be able to drop everything and think only about making Breadcrumb feel better instead of getting paranoid about keeping my job.
And then, somewhere in the middle of a tearful lunch break after a particularly vile group, I realised that what I really should have done was what was right for Breadcrumb and pray for God to take care of everything else… Next time.
*Please admire my self-restraint and effort put into abstaining from moaning about pressure, workload etc.