We’ve had our son in daycare for a month now and I must admit things have been much better than we could have imagined. Our fears of leaving the care of our son in someone else’s hands has not completely gone away but we are quite comfortable and confident in the staff at our daycare (even if we still think we’d be doing a better job ourselves). That said, the experience has been a positive one for both our son and his parents. This marks the one month reflection of a difficult decision.
One month ago we were worried about how our son might change. He’d only been around Mom and Dad and family for his entire life. He’d only been away from Mom for (at most) two hours prior to his arrival at daycare. How, we wondered, could he spend 4-5 hours without Mom? We have been fortunate that the daycare is on campus next to my wife. This gives her the ability to visit him in the middle of the day. Not only did this increase our comfort with the situation but it also helped our son immensely.
In some ways the daycare has made us value our evening time together as a family more than we had previously. We have the gift of knowing that our time together is limited. If we don’t play tonight we won’t have the opportunity tomorrow. He’s a very happy boy (I’m watching him try to crawl right now) and this has benefited him greatly. Do we still wish we could have our son with us all day? Yes. Are we still wondering if he’ll be permanently and irreparably damaged by the experience? No. Everyone’s doing just fine. Mom, Dad, and Baby. Hopefully he’ll be back with family full-time starting this summer. We’re looking forward to having him back!