oh my god. What an afternoon I had. I went to pick up my laptop at my contracting company and decided to bring Sydney (my 5 mo old) with me because I had thought it would be a quick visit, it was a Friday afternoon, and I had previous requests to bring her by for people to meet her. big mistake. BIG mistake.
I knew we were in trouble the moment I got to the parking lot as she started to cry. So we get inside and the person I'm meeting is on the phone. Sydney is losing her patience. Meanwhile one of my favorite colleagues (& a big wig with the company) spots Syd and wants to hold her. I let her but tell her that I'm not sure it's going to go well. Did I tell you that Sydney is the world's biggest mommy's girl and daddy's girl EVER? I thought separation anxiety is supposed to start at like 9 mo? Well, it kicked in for this girl at 4 mo. And it never fails, whenever I react with hesitation for people to hold her (only because I know dang well we are about to see some serious tears) I get some sort of comment about how she'll be fine and then no more than 2 minutes later they are returning a screaming baby to me. *sigh* My own best friend said, "Oh Tricia, it can't be that bad." I told her she could give it a try then and within 5 minutes my friend said, "Yeah, I don't know what you are going to do. Good luck with that." I continue to let people try though (with me close at hand) because I'm certain that keeping her all to myself will only perpetuate things.
So, there I was, at work, with a screaming baby. I could feel sweat beads on my forehead while I tried my darndest to listen to the info they needed to pass along to me and keep my cool at the same time. I felt like I was shoving pacifiers in Syd's mouth left & right (poor girl!). I looked like a complete side-show... Syd keeps spitting out her paci to the floor and as I'm reaching down to get it things start falling out of my bag. Oh, and did I mention I had spit-up on my shirt? So much for professionalism.
Don't get me wrong, I LOVE my baby girl and I LOVE when people meet her. But I learned one thing for sure today: I will never ever bring a baby to an office again. I don't care how busy I am, and I don't care who wants to see her, it's not going to happen. I just don't handle things well when my separate worlds collide like that.
Luckily my colleagues were cool about it - at least they pretended to be anyway. And since it was a Friday afternoon and so many people were out sick the office was pretty dead. Thankfully. Should a colleague ever stumble on this little blog... apologies for taking over your office today. Hopefully you didn't have any explaining to do to any clients.
Sydney, on the other hand, was not cool about it. She was a mess the rest of the night. I swear every time a stranger looked at her she gave a look like "don't you dare pick me up!". Poor thing! I just sincerely hope that this stage will not prevent other people from bonding with her. I'm SO not used to this because our son is extremely independent and such a social butterfly. But when Syd is just with us, our little fam of 4 (5 with the dog), she is SUCH a sweet, fun, HAPPY and SMILEY baby. I feel like we have a completely different baby behind closed doors.
So, wish me luck as Sydney will need to have childcare very soon. How on Earth will we do it? Thankfully my job does not require a lot of hours and is quite flexible in terms of when I complete them. So I may need to help our sitter (who has not been hired yet! Ahhh! So much to do!) a bit until Sydney gets accustomed to her.
Tricia
1 comment:
I'm sorry it didn't work out well Tricia. It will pass, I promise. Some get kids who go through it very young often past it in a couple months. People are usually understanding of a baby, happy or not!
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