It's the little victories

I work in a daycare. I am paid to be a parent. Some day, if Reid and I are blessed to have children, I will look back and think how great it was to be paid to be a parent. Although I don't like the politics of the specific daycare I work at or should I say the YMCA it is housed in, I love the kids and my co-workers. For the last two days I have been working in the infant room...yikes! This is the one room that I am afraid of. The reason is due to an undiagnosed slight case of OCD. The mess is never cleaned up, someone is usually crying, a diaper usually needs to be changed and a bottle is in the wings. The ratio in the infant room is 1:4. I think that this approach is totally wrong, there needs to be more of a man to man defense or double coverage.

So in all of the craziness of caring for multiple infants I found victory...

There was a child this afternoon that was in rare form. She was crabby, there is no other way to say it. She was changed, still crying. She was fed, still crying. She was in a vibrating chair thing, still crying. She was held, still crying. And so on and so forth for about 40 minutes. The crying never stopped, but just got louder and more shrill. For the last 15 minutes of the screaming I held the child. I stood up and swayed, bounced, and just held her close. She continued to cry, but what she needed was comfort so I give that to her. Now I don't know what a three month old child has to stress about. Maybe she didn't like her outfit, hair, or maybe one of the other babies looked at her wrong...I am not sure what her beef was. After that 15 minutes the crying stopped. Now I had not noticed that it stopped until my co-worker pointed it out to me. She was not sleeping, but was content with my feble attempt to comfort her. Within the next 10 minutes she was out.

I spent the next twenty minutes sitting in the rocking chair with her as she lay sleeping in my arms. It was a victory. Maybe a small one, but a victory none the less.