I'm a Survivor

A few weeks ago, Kevin left me. Not permanently or anything, although I'm sure after enduring my pregnancy hormones for 38+ weeks then my post-partum hormones for 6 weeks after that it crossed his mind. Probably more than once. But he did have to go out of town on a business trip when Greyden was 12 weeks old. Now I had already been ditched left alone with Grey over night a few times. Kevin's usually out of town 1- 2 nights each week. But this trip was different. This one was for his national sales meeting, meaning he was leaving me for a WEEK. Yes, you read that right. For. A. Week. Monday through Friday. Alone with a 12 week old. And although I'm obviously looking for sympathy for me, I'm sure more than one of your minds is running down the path of "oh, poor Kevin, he had to leave his family and new baby for a week to go on a business trip!"  I'll admit, I was almost thinking the same thing. That is until he called me that Wednesday on his way to his massage. Sympathy crisis averted, back to poor me now.

 It actually wouldn't have been too bad if it weren't for the timing. Like I said I had been left alone overnight before so I knew what to expect. But the timing of this meeting couldn't have been worse. The Monday morning that he was flying out to Arizona just happened to be the same Monday morning that I was headed back to work. Which meant that it was also the same Monday morning that Greyden started daycare.

Needless to say, the weeks leading up to the trip held a slight amount of anticipation. I was dreading Kevin being gone for a number of reasons. Mainly because that meant that I would be getting up alone with Grey at night. You see we have this routine: Greyden wakes up, Kevin, Harley, and I all troop into the nursery. Kevin changes Greyden, Harley lays in front of the chair so that I have to move him to get to it, I remove the dog then get ready to nurse. Kevin sets Greyden on my lap and lays down on the nursery floor to spoon the dog sleep for 10 minutes while he nurses. When he hears me burping him, he takes him from me, swaddles him, and hands him back so that he can nurse on the other side. Kevin and Harley head back to the bedroom to sleep while I finish feeding and put him back down in his crib. (I think Kevin is actually trying to wean me of this routine, being as he used to lay back down on the floor for the second boob too. Now I'm on my own.) 

Kevin being gone overnight means I get to do this routine on my own. Or something close to it. My "alone" routine consists of heading to the nursery (with Harley of course), changing Greyden, tripping over the dog while trying to get to the chair, holding the baby above my head with one arm while trying to sit down and position the Boppy pillow around me and under him, feeding him, standing up to go to the crib to swaddle him, tripping over the dog, swaddling (in under 5 tries if I'm lucky), tripping over the dog on my way back to the chair, and again doing the whole one arm hold above the head while also trying to get the Boppy off the floor from where it fell the first time I stood up so that I can feed him on the other side. Usually this involves removing the dog from on top of said Boppy. You can see why it is a little easier with two people.

Another thing I was dreading was taking care of Greyden by myself every night after work. Well, not the taking care of him part, but the part where I also had to take care of other things while taking care of him. Normally I can pass the baby off to Kevin to hold while I wash the bottles and pump parts for the following day and pack the bags (diaper, cooler, pump, work, lunch, and gym. So much for traveling light, right?) When I'm alone I get to do it by myself after Greyden goes to bed. It makes for an incredibly long evening and an even longer morning when I have to get all of those bags plus a car seat to the car, preferrably some time before I'm actually supposed to be at work.

And of course the thing that both of us were dreading (dum, dum, dum).....taking Greyden to daycare. At the very least Kevin was able to get on a late enough flight that he could come to drop him off for the first time with me. Regardless neither of us were looking forward to doing it. On Sunday night we even stayed up after Grey went to bed with the hopes that if we just stayed up, Monday morning wouldn't come. When it became obvious by the ticking clock and dwindling amount of alcohol in the fridge that Monday was indeed on it's way, we began to formulate Plan B, which involved us packing up the RV with all of our stuff that night and just leaving. I mean, we didn't do too badly when we did it that way over Christmas, right? In the end, we finally realized that we were going to have to suck it up and deal with it. And to be honest, it wasn't near as bad as we thought it would be. Greyden is quite a trooper. Mom and Dad, not so much. Especially after being up until almost 1 am the night before.

All in all I survived the week from hell. Barely. It just so happened that about 2 hours before Kevin was due to walk through the door, I got horribly sick. I managed to hold off the worst of it, but I couldn't stay vertical for anything. Poor Grey had to sit in his swing while Mommy lay facedown on the couch and tried to entertain him from there. I was able to hold out until Kevin got home, then passed off the baby and spent the remainder of the evening puking my guts out. The perfect end to the perfect week, right?