"How can you stand it?" a friend asked me--not in those exact words, but in a similar way, when I explained that I have been caring for my son full-time until a couple weeks ago (and it still is all-but-fulltime, with a babysitter coming six hours a week). Last week at my son's ten-month checkup I said I was planning on remaining an at-home mom until at least his second birthday; "When you change your mind," this wise-cracking doctor in his sixties told me with a smile, "it's okay."
They're both right. I can't stand it, and I don't want to stay at home full-time. Yet my words to my son, lying quietly in my arms as he drank his last bottle this evening, were also completely true: I will always be there for him and I love him. It's hard to give him up to someone even for six hours a week.
So I can and I can't. And it will always be that way.
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