Gotta Get Away

I've always enjoyed the irony in all the trouble that people go through to have children, because it's been my experience that once the baby arrives you spend a considerable amount of time trying to figure out how to get away from the child.

In the very beginning, you want to spend every waking minute cuddling with and cooing with your newborn. Then after the euphoria wears off, you'll do anything to get more than two hours of sleep in one stretch. And it's pretty much guaranteed that when an infant is awake during the day, it's the exact moment that his or her caretaker wanted to be in the shower.

After a few months, mom and dad want to spend some time alone, so they call grandma and grandpa or the nearest aunt or uncle to babysit. Inevitably, a week later, you get an invitation to go out for dinner with friends. Craving a conversation with adults other than your spouse, you need to find another babysitter that's not still traumatized from the first babysitting attempt.

Once you get used to having the kid around, you have to try and figure out when you're going to clean the house, because if you wait until after your child goes to sleep for the night, you're too exhausted to scrub toilets or mop floors. Or, you need to go Christmas shopping and it would be much easier to do it kid-free. Or, you want to get that pedicure and hour of peace and quiet that you've been fantasizing about. It never ends.

It's one of life's vicious circles, I guess. And no matter how you handle, there's typically some sort of guilt involved. For me, the guilt comes from dropping my son off at my parents house so I can spend time alone with my husband on a Saturday night, even though Jack has spent Monday through Friday separated from us in daycare. Or leaving him with his dad for a couple of hours so that I can get that heavenly pedicure when I know Jeff is just as tired as I am from working all week and taking care of a 3-year-old.

Even though I appreciate those moments away from my son, I appreciate him even more. I just try to convince myself that getting those brief moments of solitude make me a better, much more relaxed mother.