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I'm away from my baby for the first time since she was born. She's 14 months old, weaned, toddling, and signing, so it's not as if she NEEDS ME. Her father, the nanny, and others can take care of her at this point. And I'm not afraid that something will happen because I'm gone. I've learned that even if I'm there, I can't necessarily prevent things from happening.
What I fear is that something will happen to her, and unlike my other daughter, I won't be around to say goodbye. I know of other parents who've experienced that. I know that for me, losing my other daughter is the only thing that could be worse than what's already happened.
In the book Survivor's Club (which I just started reading), it seems many of the people survived incredible situations because they had someone to survive for. My baby girl is my reason. But when I think that she doesn't need me, I guess it gets that much harder to hold on. My daughter died and the world didn't stop. It kept right on moving. And because of my baby, I decided to keep moving with it, to keep her moving. Without her, it's really tough.
My husband suggested I bring her and the nanny, but I didn't want to do that to either of them. I know now it probably would have given me some peace. Someday though, I have to let go. I might as well start now.
Sounds like the anxiety you are feeling is perfectly natural. Sometimes the easiest way to manage anxiety is to *moderate* it rather than to try to *eliminate* it. For example, if your fears of leaving your baby feel like an 8 on a scale of 1-10, maybe that seems too high--but expecting yourself to be at at a 1 wouldn't be reasonable either, would it? Instead, try thinking about what you might need to reduce the anxiety just a bit, say down to a 6. That might seem more doable (and once you reach that goal, then you can work towards moving even lower).
ReplyDeleteHi Shakti, Thank you for another lovely post. What an hard wisdom we live with, to know that we can be right there with our children and sometimes tragedy strikes and they die anyway! For myself, I have found this has had a huge knock-on effect on the rest of my life. I am slowly increasing the length of time i can be seperated from our 2 older daughters, and that is hard work. This week-end, my little family is going on a holiday. The others are getting excited, but I am very concious that we will be about 600 km away from our deceased daughter's grave. It's do-able but it's not easy.
ReplyDeleteI am not sure if you are comfortable with someone you don't know being listed as a follower of your blog. If you'd rather reserve your follower list for people you know, please just let me know by emailing me at sophiawo@hotmail.com . Thanks for the post, Sophia.
Sophia, I started the blog for people like you. I did share it with people I know and some of them subscribed, but my hope really is to attract other strangers who need to know they're not alone. So please, keep following!
ReplyDeleteYou know, I did try to do that. I wanted to be gone overnight first and kind of test myself, but never got the opportunity.
Being out of my routine makes it tough--my mind wanders a lot. Toaster, I'm finding that keeping busy and sticking to some sort of routine helps. I actually slept better last night, inasmuch as anyone can in a strange place.
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ReplyDeleteThanks Shakti! Great to have you as a follower.
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