Separation Anxiety

I’ve brought my laptop to school today; hence I can post a quick blog.  Despite the title, I do not have separation anxiety from my laptop (unless I’m teaching and the laptop I’m using decides to freeze every time I move the mouse, which, incidentally, is why I’m bringing my personal laptop in to teach today).

Nope, we’re getting Separation Anxiety when we drop Conor off at school.  I never thought it would bother me (because I’m stupid, apparently).  But it is more than I can stand to have him sobbing when I put him down at daycare.  I know that he stops crying soon enough after I leave.  But his tears and his sobs and his wailing is just more than one little mama can bear.  I even stood in the hallway yesterday listening to him cry.  They had told me that as soon as I leave, he stops.  That’s not quite true.  I did call in from work today and by that time (15 minutes) he was fine.  I’m sure he was fine before then.  But it is just not a fun time. 

Mentally, I know it’s good because it’s a sign that he’s learning object permanence:  he understands that things are still alive even if they are not around.  But emotionally, I’m starting to dread dropping him off at school.  Of course, when I drop him off at school that also means I’m heading to school, which with this semester’s workload, I’m starting to dread, too.  

Thanks for the nighttime suggestions for sleep both in the comments and through email.  Sleep is apparently the dividing line between the attachment parenting folks and the Ferber et al folks.  We’re just trying to figure out how all this works for us as a family unit.  And it completely sucks that last night, sleep was going fantastic until all the neighborhood dogs got into a bark fest at a treed raccoon at 3:30 a.m.  That has to be a uniquely 21^st century suburban experience, although it just sounds really southern, too. 

I ordered the No Cry Sleep solution yesterday, and we’re working with the daycare folks to see if we can get him to eat more at daycare; we sent more milk in today.  The problem really is that 1) he’s hungry and 2) he’s teething.  He shouldn’t be hungry but he is.  Why is he still hungry at night at his age/weight?  He prefers the boob to the bottle.  Or at least he did.  We’re going to be sending in more milk in each bottle this week to see if he will eat more.  I’ll be really focusing on pumping 6 or more ounces per pump session to see if that helps. 

OK.  I must prep for class.  We’ve had some hideous meltdowns of my ingenious statistical demonstrations in class due to a suck egg dog computer.  I’m hoping that today’s stats will cause light bulbs to go off over students’ heads, for the sun to shine from behind the clouds and the angels to sing in the glory of revealed knowledge.  A woman can dream, can’t she??

11:16:53 AM