On Leaving Baby

It’s always nerve-wracking when we’re both away from baby. We’re still the only two people she’s totally comfortable with, so we know that the situation will be stressful for her (by “stressful for her”, I mean she’ll cry and scream). Of course, that makes it stressful for the babysitter, and the whole thing is stressful for the two of us. All of which somewhat defeats the purpose of going out without baby to have a relaxing evening.

We try to go out on our own at least once a month, to make time for ourselves and to remind ourselves that, while baby is now the center of our universe, she’s not the only thing in it (despite what she may think). Luckily, May’s got a large family, so there are a lot of potential babysitters. If someone has a particularly traumatic experience we can move them to the back of the rotation for a while.

After we get everything set, we kiss baby goodbye, then try to sneak out before she realizes we’re leaving. We have to avoid hearing her cry before we leave. Otherwise, it’ll be impossible to relax the rest of the night. For the first few minutes, as we drive away, we’re both feeling guilty and wondering how she’s doing, but trying not to bring it up. We remind ourselves: this is our time away from baby, to be with each other, to relax. We’re not fooling anybody. She’s all we can think about. At this point, more than any other point in the evening, our night out doesn’t seem like such a great idea.

We get to the restaurant and immediately order drinks to calm our nerves. We start to feel better. We realize we’re starving and begin to fill up on bread before our food arrives. We talk about things other than baby. We eat our seafood linguine. We laugh. For a while there, she’s not the center of our attention. It’s nice to be together like this, just the two of us.

As dinner winds down and we get ready to leave, we start thinking about baby again. We realize how much we miss her. How we can’t wait to see her. How she’ll be so happy to see us come back. How happy we are to have her.

We should do this more often. It’s nice to be away from baby, but it’s even nicer to come back.