We’ve just finished the first week of a
Slightly Mad Dad and his son being home alone together. On Monday Sane Mum
became the Bread Winning Mum (BWM) and returned to the workforce leaving the
boys together at home. Slightly Mad Dad called his blog just that because he
thought he was mad being a stay at home dad and it was going to be pretty hard
work.
How hard was it? A lot harder than I ever
imagined! Monday was pretty good I started the day at 90% excited 10% scared on
my sliding scale. We went to swimming lessons, had a sleep, we caught up for
lunch with a couple of other dads in the park and we cruised around. This was
pretty good. It was only about 4:30pm when the witching hour started and I was
busy trying to get dinner organised and H was grizzling that the scale started
to slide more toward scared. It’s around this time I started to look for the
cavalry coming over the hill. Was it coming? Yes but only after dinner, bath and
bottle and Mum arrived home from her own exhausting day to kiss H good night
and put him to bed.
Come Tuesday I knew what I was in for a
little more. BWM had meetings until late and wouldn’t be getting home until
after H was in bed. This was something she was not happy about and is working
hard to make sure she can get home to see H before he goes to bed. The boys
were going to be together all day – no cavalry would be coming. In this case I
started the day at 80% excited 20% scared. We were went for a run, had a sleep,
we went to the shops, we kept busy and by the time he was down and out for
sleep I was probably at 50% excited 30% scared and 20% exhausted.
Wednesday came and went with visits,
sleeps, shops, play time. BWM had seen H for a few minutes in the morning as he
woke up late and she only just made it home to see him as he fell asleep again.
Despite me feeling exhausted at the end of the day I could see it was difficult
for BWM because she had spent the last year spending everyday with her son and
now things were changing. We were lucky that we could sit down each night and
talk our way through our days, our anxieties and also our successes so that the
feeling of where we were on the excited / scared (exhausted) scale could even
itself back more toward the excited end.
We got through Thursday with the routine we
had begun to establish. Morning walk, sleep and then off to Gymbaroo for some
playtime in the afternoon all happened fairly smoothly. Thursday though saw BWM come home early so
she could spend some time with H and also I could go to rugby training. As she
arrived home I was sitting at the table feeding H his dinner all dressed in my
rugby gear with the scales tipping up towards the high 90s on excitement. I
won’t go into the details of rugby (that’s for another blog) but it was so good
to spend time with adults again after four days with so much contact with a
child of nearly one.
On Friday morning H went to childcare for
the day. The boys had been doing some great bonding all week and we’d been
setting up our routines. Watching him go into childcare for the day was the
hardest thing I have done in a longtime. From the moment he arrived he started
to tense up and as we walked into the room he gripped me tighter and as soon as
I put him down to play he cried and cried. What are my choices here? Stay and
play and maybe make it worse or get out of there fast and trust the carers who
work at the centre. I chose to get out fast – I didn’t want to be the parent
who hung around and maybe makes it worse. It is quite distressing to walk out
the door to your own child’s cries. As I drove away there was a tear of my own
in sympathy for my son. Needless to say when I rang later he was running amuck
outside very happily.
How did the first week rate then? As I said
at the beginning I thought it was going to be hard. It was harder. Was it fun?
Most definitely! Did I learn anything? I learnt lots (I now have many notes for
more blogs – just need to the time to write them!). The best parts of the week
though involved knowing I had the support of BWM and that together we are going
to enjoy helping our son grow up this year.
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