A year ago, I walked away from my screaming baby and got on a bus to the city like some kind of half-functioning adult.
It was my first day back at work after maternity leave. I didn’t have family nearby. We couldn’t afford for me to stay home. And honestly, I hadn’t really planned on not wanting to go back to work – but there I was. Cracked open. Crumpled. Questioning everything I thought I wanted.
That daycare drop-off? Gut-wrenching.
I don’t use that word lightly.
Every fibre of my being screamed don’t do this. But I didn’t feel like I had a choice. I needed the income. I needed the structure. I needed to pretend I still had a career to return to even though a big part of me wanted to quit, go home with my baby, and learn affiliate marketing on YouTube.
Which, incidentally, I did Google… frantically… while queuing for the bus.
But I went to work.
And she stayed at daycare.
And for weeks, months, 4 long months to be precise, it was hard. Really hard.
She didn’t settle easily. She cried. A lot. She caught every daycare bug imaginable and brought them home for us to share. It made the transition brutal for all of us.
I kept thinking, no one warned me about this. Not the crying, not the guilt, not the sense that I was split down the middle.
Instagram told me to “soak up every moment” and “you’ll never regret time with your child,” while the real world expected me to hold it together, meet deadlines, and act like everything was fine.
It wasn’t.
And here’s the part I don’t think we talk about enough: how that moment – walking away while your baby cries out for you – stays with you all day, a year later and possibly forever.
You’re in a meeting nodding at a spreadsheet, but mentally you’re still standing in that daycare foyer with a lump in your throat.
You’re wondering if she’s still crying, if she thinks you abandoned her, if she’ll remember that you left.
It hits in waves. In your chest. In your gut. And then you go back to work and act like nothing happened.
It’s a kind of heartbreak that doesn’t get enough airtime.
But slowly, somehow, it got better.
Fast forward to now – a year later – and my daughter loves daycare.
She has little friends who she talks about constantly. She barely waves goodbye. She walks in like she owns the joint.
Sometimes I’m proud. Sometimes I’m crushed. Often I’m both.
And still… I wonder.
Am I a bad mum for sending her three days a week?
Because those instagram posts haunt me. You know the ones – the ones that say daycare before age three disrupts attachment, or that kids need their mums full-time to thrive. They plant little seeds of doubt that grows fast when you’re tired, emotional, and just trying your best.
My mum was a stay-at-home mum. I used to think she gave up so much.
And she did. All mothers do in different ways.
But now, I think the real sacrifice might be going to work and missing those tiny, fleeting, heart-melting moments. The way she says “Mama” after her nap. The first time she makes a friend. The ordinary, sacred, slow stuff.
I don’t have a neat ending to this story.
There’s no grand lesson.
Only this:
It’s okay to find it hard.
It’s okay to not be sure.
And it’s okay to love your child and still send them to daycare because you’re doing what your family needs, and that’s not failure. That’s care.
Real, messy, grown-up, motherly care.
And if you’ve ever cried behind your sunglasses after drop-off… same.
You’re not alone.