at what cost is this

We made the decision to add one more day to M's daycare yesterday, moving from four to five. Which had moved from three to four earlier this year. Coincidentally there have been discussions swirling around about daycare this week and reading those has made me think. See, I've gotten a promotion, one that entails more responsibility and being available at different times. We'd managed to cheat the system for awhile, juggling days and shifting schedules but it's simply not workable if I am to do this, and this will be what gets us to our sabbatical next year.

But it makes me feel like an asshole. Because it still feels fundamentally wrong to pay someone to care for my child. And please know that I am absolutely not judging anyone who does or doesn't use daycare. I am talking about my situation, my heart, and how it breaks in two at the irony of this. And I use this daycare I am speaking against, so I know the hypocrisy of my words.

But I still do it. I allow her to go to a place, a very nice place, where she has learned the alphabet and how to draw a circle and make sandcastles. Where she has friends and nutritional food and seems to have a very good time. But I can't get around it - the feeling that I am doing something so against what I believe is right. Socially right. And then not (perhaps if I am being very honest), right for me. I enjoy working and I enjoy the work I do. I am not sure I am the stay at home mom I fantasize about. But that makes me feel like more of an asshole instead of less.

We rationalize that this is only for a year, and that the year to follow will be 365 days of travel and family and little to no time apart. But it's this year that wears on me. I suppose I will never feel unconflicted again. Balance is elusive, the scales never rest gently in the middle instead of one side clanging down from the weight.

It's one of many aches of mothering. Missing the moments you will never get back. Hearing M say something I did not teach her. Seeing a behavioral issue that I do not think would exist if she wasn't in daycare having to fend for herself. I just don't know how one reconciles that in their heart and mind and rationalizes it away. So instead I think I will live with this punishment of sorts for compromising based on financial necessity and also because I lack the courage. And what does that say about me, does that make me less of a mother? If one of you were to pose that question I would respond with a rousing NO WAY! YOU ARE DOING YOUR BEST! And I would mean it. So why can't I say that to myself I wonder, and I wonder that quite a bit.

Because whether it's the little girl or our developing motherness, we hear others better than we do to ourselves. Or at least with more compassion. And we are going to do this, this fiveness instead of four, and I will regret it and maybe cry as I drive away and rush to pick her up and will overcompensate and beat myself up. And I will count backwards from 365 and hope I can continue the journey more fully into motherhood along the way.