I Was An Emotional Prostitute Part 23

I always said that being responsible for taking care of a small human scared me more than labor. So I felt very blessed that Caleb was an easy baby. There were only three things that made him cranky:

1.      Too hot

2.      Hungry

3.      Tired

When he was about two months old, I flew to Florida with him to meet my father for the first time in over 30 years, since he and my mother had split. Caleb never had a problem flying.

One night during my visit, he got cranky. We were in the dining room of my father’s mobile home. I’d lain him on a blanket next to my chair as we were playing cards. When he started fussing, I looked at him and thought, “You can’t be hungry I just fed you. I know you’re diaper is clean and you’re not tired.”

That’s when I realized that I was sitting there in short shorts and an oversized t-shirt from when I’d been pregnant and I was roasting. He had on a cute little onesie outfit that snapped closed. I leaned over and the moment I started unsnapping his outfit, he got excited. The moment I had it off of him, he settled down and was fine.

During my pregnancy, I’d made arrangements to go back to school. I knew that my current skill levels wouldn’t get me a job that could support us both. I also knew that I couldn’t count on his father paying child support. After we got back home, I started college.

For the first quarter, a good friend of mine watched over him while I was at school. Then that arrangement fell apart and I had to find a daycare quickly. I called everything within a reasonable distance of home and school starting in the “A’s.” I was into the “S’s” before I found one with an opening for a child under a year old. Thankfully, I liked the place, but I did put my name on a waiting list at another day care just in case.

When I first put him in daycare, I would walk up to his room at the back and observe through a window in the top half of the door. He was always fine till he saw me, then he’d start crying. He was there from the time he was about eight months old till about two years old.

Several months after I graduated college with an A.A.S. in paralegal studies, I switched daycares to one that was closer to home. It was difficult to find one with an opening, even though he was now a toddler. The one I chose, looked good on the surface, but soon revealed that it wasn’t.

At this point, I was using cloth training pants with plastic covers as Caleb had outgrown diapers. One night I walked in and was informed by the young woman in charge that she’d thrown his training pants out as they were so messy “that I wouldn’t have wanted them.” I was angry about that as she effectively threw my money in the garbage. I’d been using cloth in the hopes that it would encourage him to potty train. Shortly after that I switched to Pull Ups to prevent such things happening again.

I walked in another time and found a worker sitting a chair sleeping. Given that she was the only adult in the room, I got upset. When I complained to the manager, she told me that the worker was working two jobs. That just made me more upset. I don’t care how many jobs someone is working. If you’re in charge of a roomful of children, you shouldn’t be sleeping on the job!

Another night when I walked in a little boy had a ball in his mouth. I managed to get it away from him, but he should never have had access to a ball that small in the first place.

There were two things that caused me to start looking for a new daycare within two weeks of me putting him in that one. The first was that Caleb had started telling me on the way home that he didn’t like his daycare. I knew that he knew the difference between going in and going home, so I took him seriously. The second, which really clinched it was when I walked in one night to pick him up. He came running over to me just as happy as could be with first aid packets in his hands. I was horrified, especially when I realized that at least one of them contained first aid ointment of some kind. Thankfully, he hadn’t opened them. If he had, that daycare would have had a law suit slapped on them for as much as I could get out of them. When I handed over the packets to the person in charge and explained that my son had them, she said, “Oh, someone didn’t lock up the cabinet.”

I looked at her and thought, “Really? That’s all you have to say for yourself? Those damn packets shouldn’t have been on a shelf low enough for the children to reach them regardless of whether the cabinet is locked up!”

Thankfully, it didn’t take me long to find another daycare. It was further away, but still not an unreasonable distance to drive. One morning I got about 2/3 of the way to the daycare when Caleb said, “Thank you, mommy.”

Puzzled, I said, “For what?”

“My daycare.”

He said that a few times over the course of the time he spent there. It really helped me to know that I’d found a good daycare for him. He still had days when I’d have to peel him off me and then I’d see him crying in the front window as I drove away. That always made me want to go back and get him, but at the time I had to work to support us both.