Separation Anxiety
Ever since Natalie started crawling, she’s having some anxiety about separating from Mom & Dad. I guess now that she has the power to move on her own, she wants to make sure that we’re still there when she wants to come back. Thankfully, she is securely attached to both of her grandmothers and hasn’t had any trouble when I go to work. But our once completely extroverted daughter now takes a little more time to warm up to new people or people she doesn’t see regularly. Totally normal, it’s a phase, no biggie.
What surprised me was discovering that I am also having some separation anxiety. Friday night I went to a Mom’s night out and Chris stayed home with the little one. On the way there I worried about him forgetting to turn on the monitor and not hearing her before she dove out of bed onto the floor. I had to force myself not to call and remind him of things he’s fully aware of. When I returned home, Natalie was, of course, safe and sound.
We did finally buy baby gates and worked on child-proofing the house this weekend, which should curb some of my anxiety. But given that I tended toward worrying before having a child (all right, all right, I’m a complete and total worry-wort) I’m going to have to find more effective ways of managing that. The list of things to worry about is only going to get longer as Natalie gets older.
Here’s a picture of Natalie’s first subway ride. I’m including it in this post because for some reason, we both look really worried even though I’ve ridden the subway plenty of times and Natalie was securely attached to me. Weird.
