On Mommy's Guilt and Sleep Strikes

Today is Charlotte's last day at daycare.  Monday, she'll start at Miss D's.  Her teachers haven't made it very easy on us though.  They love Charlotte and have been sad everytime I've gone and picked her up.  Yesterday, when Chris dropped Charlotte off, they presented him with a handmade card.  Every baby in the class had put his or her handprint on the card, with their names next to it.  Just about broke my heart seeing that card.  One of her teachers, Miss Sandra, wrote "Charlotte, I'll miss your sweet smile."  Chris and I are both a little sad about leaving the school, but we think it's the right thing to do now.

Today I dropped Charlotte off, which resulted in Charlotte bursting into tears as I left the room.  Miss Tiffany said that only happens when I drop off, which made me feel even worse.  Poor Charlotte.  It makes me feel like I'm abandoning her. Thankfully (for me), Chris usually drops Charlotte off and she is clingy but not sobbing.

I've been feeling a lot of guilt lately, ever since Charlotte started her clinginess and separation anxiety.  I have a much longer commute, so most days, I leave for work before Charlotte even wakes up.  And then it just takes so long to get home that we have so little time together, especially when a good portion of the evening is figuring out something Charlotte will eat and cooking it fast enough that she doesn't have a fit in the meantime.  The poor girl wants to eat dinner by 5:30, and we usually don't get home until 5ish.  Sometimes I wonder what it would be like to work part-time, but I really like my job.  I just miss my little girl. It's really hard sometimes and some days are much harder than others.

Which brings me to sleep strikes.  Charlotte has always been easy to put down to sleep.  Even when she didn't seem remotely sleepy at her bedtime (7 o'clock), she'd be almost eager for bed because that's when she gets her pacifier.  We give her a pacifier and a stuffed animal, turn the lights out, and shut the door.  Oftentimes, we'll hear her talking on the monitor for a few minutes and she'll go to sleep.  For the past week, things have changed.  Bedtime has resulted in hysterical crying and we'll find her standing up in her crib sobbing, having thrown all her pacifiers overboard.  No amount of comforting or patting works, so we've resorted to bringing her downstairs for a half hour or more until she's calmed down enough to go back to her crib.  This usually works but not always.  Charlotte seems to have thrown the 7PM bedtime out the window.  She did okay the one night we pushed her bedtime back to 7:30.  It's not a bad thing in the grand scheme of things because it means I get some extra time with her in the evenings, but I'm wondering if I need to look at some new sleep solutions to get her back to being okay with bedtime.

Oh well, not exactly the happiest of posts. Sorry guys. Like I said, some days are just harder than others.  At least today is Friday, and I get to spend two whole days with my favorite girl.