Day 343

Well, it's technically day 343.  Four a.m.  I'm making out grocery lists and planning out my day since I'm awake and apparently not sleeping anytime soon.

I have therapy today.  Part of me wants to go and another part doesn't, would prefer to go do the grocery shopping and come home and hit the bed.  To skip the discussion that's supposed to be about me.

I've come to learn over the last few sessions that I'm very good at deflecting conversation away from me and back onto others subconsciously.  We'll start off talking about me and I'll draw a parallel to someone--one of my children, my husband, a friend--and voila! the conversation veers off of me.  Apparently I don't care to talk about myself too much.

I was just reading the ads for nannies and babysitters, because that's the direction I'm planning to go in this summer.  I'm looking to work maybe fifteen or twenty hours a week, leaving enough time for me to go to doctor's appointments and to take my kids to some fun places.  I live in a navy town, and so people out there have some whacky schedules that are no fault of their own.  But there's also lots of people who choose to work eighty or more hours a week, leaving their infants in the care of others.

As a woman who always wanted to conceive a child but never did, it infuriates me that some people are blessed with children (and sometimes many times over) and spend nearly no time with them.  I've known people like this personally and wondered how do they live this way?  How do they manage, day after day, to throw themselves into their work and away from their own babies?

I guess the part that I find most disturbing is needing childcare for thirteen hours a day and offering a childcare provider a whopping hundred dollars for that care.  A hundred bucks for sixty-five hours?  Are you kidding me?  What kind of care do you think you'll be getting at that price?  You're lucky if you get your baby's diaper changed.  Quality care costs money.  My master's degree didn't come for free, and neither do my services.

I am currently looking at a couple of different jobs and think they will work out one way or the other.  Granted, even charging ten bucks an hour for sitting, I'm not going to be bringing home gobs of money, but I will get to sleep in, have time to run errands or go to doctor visits, and care for myself.  But it's something, which is better than sitting around doing nothing.

It breaks my heart to see these pictures of mothers with their babies, knowing that the picture is a rarity because mom is working so many hours.  Regardless of whose choice it is, we really need to check our values in our country.  No child should spend more time with a caregiver than with a parent.  Ever.