And just like that…my return to work was here…for the second time.
August 12th came way to fast.
Jolee was not doing great with a bottle, but she was at least getting some milk in her while I was away, so I was okay with it.
I was working 8:00 a.m. – 3:30 p.m. I was feeding her before I dropped her off and as soon as I picked her up. This time frame allowed her to only be fed twice at daycare.
I was happy to be back to work. My mind and body needed normalcy and adult interaction.
We were still having a trillion appointments for Jolee and myself, so I still technically wasn’t even working full time.
I did not enjoy pumping. God, I just hate it so much.
The first week back was a struggle. I was ready to break away from Jolee. I wasn’t really ready to go back to work. My brain was not functioning in work mode. It was constantly thinking of appointments that we needed to go to…was she going to take a bottle today…was the daycare providor going to text me today and say, “Sorry, I can’t do this anymore…”
To answer some of these questions…Jolee basically got her milk from syringes this entire week. This is how the daycare provider is feeding her!!
I just felt so bad for the daycare provider. Because I know it wasn’t easy to take care of Jolee on top of all the other kids she had to deal with. But she didn’t give up on me yet…
The next week was the week we had been waiting for.
She had a chiropractor appointment and immediately following she had a speech therapy appointment.
I told the chiropractor that I felt like we had taken 2 steps back because she wasn’t taking a bottle.
As soon as she put her hands on her, she told me her entire body was super tight.
Like all over again. My heart fell into my stomach. WHY? HOW?
I thought she had felt tight just based on what I knew, which wasn’t much, but I didn’t think too much about it.
She went through a growth spurt. And apparently at the 3 month growth spurt, is a bitch. It’s very common for babies to tighten back up at 3 months. It’s just part of it. They made sure to tell me, it wasn’t 2 steps back, she just needed to be adjusted. That made me feel better.
At the speech therapy appointment, she basically said the same thing. The right side of her mouth was super tight. And I had felt that when doing her mouth exercises, but again, I just thought, what do I know? Surely this isn’t right. But, she told me, I was right. She concurred that she probably went through a growth spurt and this is normal. I told her how the daycare provider was feeding her and she was okay with it. I told her she was still trying a bottle every day and some days were better than others.
She asked if I was trying to give her a bottle on the weekends and I told her no. Mentally, I couldn’t handle it anymore.
To date, she has never taken a bottle from me and she was just chipping away at my mental stability everytime she refused the bottle.
I think the speech therapist understood my stance.
The ST was definitely happy she was taking a pacifer. The only one she will take is a NUK:
She said she wasn’t surprised because this type of pacifier is most commonly taken by babies with oral dysfunction issues because they don’t have to use the back of their tongue to suck.
Great.
So was this helping her or hurting her?
The ST basically said it’s okay because it will help develop her suck. I gave all the credit to the daycare provider. I gave her a bag of pacifiers that first day and she picked that one out of the bag and it worked. She was actually keeping it in her mouth pretty well too.
The ST kept reassuring me that we were on the right track. I didn’t feel like we WEREN’T on the right track, but I felt like we still had a long way to go.
Jolee was about to prove me so wrong. In a good way.
The very next day after her chiropractor and speech therapy appointment, I had just got out of my morning meeting at work and my phone was flashing with the daycare providers number.
So many thoughts were going through my head before I answered the phone call.
Number one, she never calls me. So I thought, “Okay, this is it. She’s finally reached her breaking point. She is calling to tell me she is done with Jolee. She can’t even wait for me to get off work…she is absolutley 100% done.”
I was so wrong.
She was calling to tell me that Jolee took an entire bottle.
She wanted to call me and share her excitement instead of texting me.
I could not believe it.
I COULD NOT BELIEVE IT.
But, I was 100% still at arms length. She had taken a bottle before and then regressed. I was hoping it was just the whole growth spurt ordeal. It seemed to make sense that she would regress due to the growth spurt.
I just needed to be happy that she took a bottle, but I couldn’t be.
It was and is such a frustrating situation.
