Our First Day
Mommy’s going back to work today.
You’re wearing your brand new outfit: a little striped shirt and black pants that are slightly too big. You’ve always been small for your size — except for your big ass 90th percentile head that resulted in God knows how many stitches — but it’s part of your charm — especially with your long curly hair that garners so much attention. My uniform fits a little snugger than it used to. Four months postpartum and I’ve already lost a considerable amount of pregnancy weight, but the tummy pouch is still there and squished into the belt. Your daddy says I still look good; it will be several more months before I start to believe it myself.
You’ve been such a trooper through all of this. In your first five months of life you’ve moved, stayed in a hotel, flew nine hours from Germany to our new base in the states, stayed in another hotel, moved into a house far bigger than our first apartment, and today you will be separated from us to start daycare.
I’m supposed to be one of the lucky ones.
In the Air Force we get four months of paid maternity leave and the father receives three. Women in the civilian sector are lucky to get six weeks and that’s only if they’d saved up their sick days, worked through the morning sickness and discomfort, and scheduled their appointments strategically to not risk losing out on a single day of leave. I had four blissful months of you, months spent holding your tiny fingers, watching you grow aware of the world, dodging the piss cannon when changing your diaper, napping and snuggling while waiting for daddy to come home, watching the littlest changes and milestones. Have four months passed already? You’re still so small and yet so big. I’ve been with you every day since you’ve been born; when did you get so big?
I’m supposed to be grateful.
But I don’t feel lucky or grateful. I feel nauseated. I feel my heart being ripped from my chest. I feel like I’m betraying you. This is wrong. How am I supposed to let strangers raise you? I’ve done the math; you’d be spending more of your day in daycare than with your parents. I have part-time custody of my own child with the military. Everyone says babies are resilient, it’s good for socialization, that you’ll be well loved and taken care of. But you’re supposed to be home with me, loved and well taken care of by your parents and grandparents and not by people who are paid to do so.
This wasn’t how it was supposed to happen. It was always the plan for me to get out of the military and stay at home with the future kids, but that plan existed before those two pink lines showed up years sooner than we expected, before we had our finances under control, before we had orders to another country. In a twisted irony, the cost of daycare also forces me to stay in. If I got out, surely that would save us money on childcare, right? The cost of literally everything else says otherwise. We can’t afford for me to get out.
But as I don this uniform for the first time in months, I can’t help but wonder how I’m supposed to return to serving a cause that no longer feels as important as you do.
You, my whole heart, my new mission.
Your daddy has spent days trying to reassure me, and as we take you to your daycare room and meet one of your caretakers, I am reassured – and admittedly annoyed – by how kind she is and how tender she lays you down with the toys. She speaks Spanish and promises to speak it to you so you’re still exposed throughout the day. You lay there with these bright toys in your baggy pants, and you don’t cry. In fact, throughout this experience, we’ll come to learn how much of a people person you are.
In a year, you’ll be walking and waving hi and bye to everyone you meet. You’ll have the biggest, almost mischievous grin, and you’ll babble and sing and the caretakers will be upset on the days you stay home because you bring such joy to everyone. You’ll see me through the window coming to sign you out and you’ll run off laughing in the other direction because you’re not ready to come home yet. You want to keep playing with your toys and the other toddlers. While this will break my heart at first, I’ll once again be reassured by how beloved you are.
But that’s a year from now. Today, all I know is your big brown eyes watching me leave you with people you don’t know yet in a place you’ve never been. All I’ll know is as soon as I step out into the parking lot my heart caves open and I start to sob uncontrollably as it feels I just left a huge piece of myself behind, and your daddy will have to stop me from going back inside to get you.
Then, I’ll compose myself and go to my new office and meet my new coworkers and learn about my new job. They’ll show me the lactation room where the cold leather recliner and whirring of the pump machine doesn’t compare to your small, warm body against my chest and the sound of your breathing.
At the end of our first day apart, I’ll race across the base to be the first one to pick you up. And we’ll do it all again the next day.
Isabella Ortega is an active-duty Public Affairs Specialist in the Air Force. She is currently on her fourth attempt at finishing her English degree at Arizona State University and plans to publish her debut fantasy novel within the next year. Her son does, in fact, still run away from her during daycare pickup.
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