Heigh-Ho, Heigh-Ho....

Carter- Day one at "Daddy Day Care"..he seems to be OK with it...

It's back to work I went :-( I doubt there are few things more difficult than going back to work after having your first child...I literally felt as if I was leaving a piece of my own body at home.
Don't get me wrong, I love my job and I am so blessed to work in a place where I was able to take time off to be with my son for the first 2 months of his life, but going back there....was hearbreaking. 9 weeks off sounded like an eternity before Carter was born, but unless you have children you cannot imagine how fast that time goes.
I have been a Dental Hygienist for 3.5 years now and I truly love my profession. A large part of my choosing this career, besides that I get to wear scrubs and have 4 day work weeks, was that the profession is 99.9% female...Meaning that taking time off for family/children is pretty common and very widely accepted...that and its pretty much IMPOSSIBLE for me to take work home with me ;-)
Carter and I spent our days at home napping, feeding and hanging out with our family. We took trips to the lake house and watched A LOT of TV. I took pictures of him everyday and posted many updates about his progress on Facebook. In the back of my mind..September 13th was looming- but i just kept thinking 'oh, i still have 4 weeks left', '16 more days at home with Carter'- until it was "I have to go back to work tomorrow:-(" WAAAAAAH.
Now, Carter- being 2 months old is not on any kind of sleeping schedule- sometimes he sleeps for 3 hours some times 4, but its never consistent. I tried my best to time that first morning out as best I could, but the road to hell is paved with good intentions. I ended up having to WAKE A SLEEPING BABY UP to feed him before I went to work- which would have normally been OK, except for the fact that i had to hand a very awake baby to my very NOT awake husband at 7:45am and run out the door.
I will say however; that my husband is an excellent father and I was only slightly worried that he'd try to put the baby in the dishwasher or something...so that took a little of the strife away. I couldn't imagine the heap I would have been in if I would have had to drop him off at...DAY CARE!
The only time I teared up that entire day was when I was on my 35min commute to work and I looked in my rearview mirror. I could see the reflection of an empty carseat base in my "mommy mirror"- I then realized that this day was going to be my longest time away from my child since he took his first breath. Once I got to work, things went very smoothly- we were very busy and I didn't have much time to sit and thing about being away from Carter....oh, except every 2 hours when I had to sit in the bathroom (AKA meat locker) and pump breast milk..but that's a story for another day...