Ambivalent

Today's title reflects how I'm feeling about returning to teaching next week. I have been off since April 10th or so when the Winter term ended (yes, in CU-speak, the terms are Fall, Winter, and Summer; there's no Spring term here). In that time I defended, revised, and filed my dissertation. I spent lots of time with C and Wild Man. I gave birth to Bear. I graduated. I helped C redo the kitchen (which is still a work in progress). And I've done remarkably little in terms of work. I have managed to plan my Fall courses and start revising a chapter to submit for publication. I have also pulled all of my job materials together and started thinking about how to revise.

Usually the beginning of the semester brings a certain level of excitement to our house. But this semester C will be staying home with Bear while I go back to teaching. C is appropriately excited not to be teaching for the first fall in about 7 years, but he is, admittedly, uncertain how he will handle being the primary caregiver to our 10-week-old (it seems unreal that Bear is already 10 weeks old). He has a list of things he wants to get done around the house before the weather turns cold as well as some writing and research he wants to get done. I keep telling him to be prepared to get nothing done some days and very little on others. I'm not sure he is listening, though. As for me, I want to stay home. I am experiencing a lot of the same feelings I experienced when we put Wild Man in day care. I said this to C, and he was a bit hurt, I think. After all, Bear isn't going to day care. He is staying home with his dad. But I will still be leaving him for a significant amount of time each day. I will still have to return to the daily task of getting work done at home while caring for him. I will still have to figure out how to find time to pump during my office hours. I will still be away from Bear.

I've spent a lot of time the last few days thinking about why this bothers me so much, and I think I've finally pinpointed the primary source of my anxiety. Aside from feeling all the "normal" going-back-to-work-and-leaving-my-infant feelings, I also feel like I'm leaving Bear just as we've really started to bond. If I'm being 100% honest, I've found it harder to bond with Bear than I did with Wild Man. I predicted this a few months ago, but I didn't anticipate how guilty it would make me feel. I've found it hard, almost brutally hard, to balance the needs of both my children, and in the first few weeks of Bear's life, I found myself passing Bear off to C quite a lot to attend to Wild Man's needs. I rationalized this to myself by saying, "Bear is an easy infant. He nurses, and he sleeps. He is rarely fussy, and he needs to bond with C as much with me." In contrast, Wild Man is so vocal and verbal. He can express his needs, and he struggled a bit with Bear's arrival. He seemed to love his brother instantly, but he didn't like sharing me. Thus, I found myself feeling a bit disconnected from Bear. That began to change when Bear had his stint in the hospital. I stayed with him in the hospital, and I was the one holding him as he got poked and prodded. I was the one asking the doctors the hard questions, and I was the one talking to the nurses. C took care of Wild Man and things at home (with some help from Pita and my sister, who needs an equally descriptive nickname), and I took care of Bear. I figured out lots of little things about my youngest son, and I really started to get to know him then. Since then I've made a conscious effort to spend more time alone with Bear as well as encouraging Wild Man to get more involved with Bear's daily care. I'm amazed how different they are, yet they are similar in so many ways. I'm also loving seeing them interact, although that is a little heartbreaking as well (I need to write a separate post on the love a younger sibling has for an older sibling). Suffice to say, I don't want to go back to work. Right now, I'd love nothing more than to stay home for foreseeable future, but that isn't in the cards for a variety of reasons. So I will enjoy my final full week at home with my littlest guy.