Time for Nursery

As I write this latest post, Milly has just started her 4th week at nursery.  We have been quite lucky in the respect that we have been able to get Milly a place in the nursery where Elaine works.  This means that Milly and Mummy are never really far apart, although I'm sure for both of them, the distance is far too great.  

Milly starting nursery has given me mixed feelings.  On the one hand, I wish that we were in a position to be able to look after Milly ourselves, especially for her first few years.  She is not even a year old, and she is having to spend a lot of her time away from Mummy and Daddy.  On the other hand, Milly loves the company of other children, and I'm sure that it will do her good to be in a different environment, learning things that she won't pick up spending all her time with us.  But I do have to admit that I don't like the idea of her being looked after by someone else.  This is not a question of the quality of the care that nurseries provide, rather a gut feeling about Milly being anywhere that we are not in control of.  I'm just putting this down as one of those feelings that we'll have to get used to, as I'm sure it will crop up again and again.

It was one of those coincidences that, just as Milly was approaching 8 months, and Elaine was starting to think about returning to work, Milly started to become aware of when we weren't around, and becoming very vocal in her displeasure of such circumstances.  Having cuddles with various people would often end up with an upset baby and a hurried exchange back to Mummy or Daddy.  While we had expected some separation anxiety, as it is something that all babies go through, it made the prospect of Milly starting nursery a daunting one, especially for Elaine, who would be the one who had to leave Milly and see her face as she did so (I am spared this as I get to bail out early due to the location of my library!!).  While we had never intended to just dump Milly at nursery on her first morning and let her get on with it, we decided that a better approach would be to take Milly in to meet the staff, get used to the environment and leave her for short periods to get used to the idea.  I must confess that this was mainly Elaine's idea, I hadn't really thought about  the practicalities of the situation, and the nursery were really accommodating during this period.  It is actually their preferred method of introducing a new baby to the nursery, and so had a structure in place for Milly's induction (for want of a better word!!).  As with everything else, Milly took to it brilliantly, wowing the staff with her smile, and enjoying the opportunity to play with other babies.  This certainly helped to put Elaine's mind at ease, knowing that if she had to leave Milly somewhere, it was somewhere she could have have fun, and with people that she responded well to.

When I returned to work after my paternity leave, I didn't have too many problems with it.  I had always expected to only have a few weeks off, and the circumstances surrounding Milly's arrival meant that, for me, it was a relief to return to work and start getting things back to normal (the day she was born, returning to work seemed a long way off!!).  For Elaine, however, although she also expected to return to work, she had had nine months of building a routine with Milly, getting to know her, and enjoying every second of it.  I can still remember the feeling of that final day of the summer holidays, dreading the return to school, and hoping for 4 more weeks off.  I can only imagine how Elaine felt (and probably still feels) returning to work after 9 months, something that too, seemed a long way off.  Despite being understandably upset at times, Elaine has coped with it in a way that I'm sure I wouldn't have been able too.  But Milly has been the real star in all of this.  She has those teary moments when being dropped off, but apparently gets over it quickly enough, and gets on with having fun at the nursery.  

It seems that despite all the changes that Milly has gone through over the last few weeks, it is Elaine and I that have had the most adjusting to do, and probably me more than Elaine if I'm honest.  I always came to work knowing that Milly was safe at home being looked after by Mummy.  I was secure in this, and it never caused me any distress.  But this last few weeks have been testing for me.  I always knew that it wouldn't be easy to leave Milly in the care of relative strangers, but I have found little things really annoying about what they do.  The one thing that has really bugged me though is that they think that Milly is a handful, simply because she won't sit quietly playing with the same toy.  Milly is a baby who constantly enjoys interaction, and she gets this at home.  She watches everything that we do and is learning all the time, even when she does sit playing on her own, she likes to look around and know that we are paying attention.  Apparently, this makes Milly a handful...I can think of worse things!!!