I took a huge step on Sunday and left Baby Evan in the nursery at church for the first time ever. It took me 5 minutes just to walk out of the room and 5 more of peering through the door to make sure he was ok before I made it back to the service, but I did it. And he was fine. He was actually better than fine, he was totally happy to be playing with a whole room full of new toys and other kids to yell at instead of sitting in my lap in the service being told to shhhhhh constantly.

Apparently my subconcious was much more upset about the decision than I was because Sunday night I had the absolute worst baby dream EVAR. I dreamed – in a horribly realistic fashion – that when E and I went to visit my parents for Christmas, we left Baby Evan in his crib. In the dream, we discussed bringing him with us but decided he was going to be too much of a hassle to travel with and we’d just get someone to watch him for the 7 days we’d be gone. But we both forgot to actually get someone to watch him and made it all the way to Virginia before we remembered. The next four hours of my nightmare was spent trying to find the phone number for my next door neighbor, calling people we knew who might be able to come check on Baby Evan, fighting with the bizare woman who answered the phone when I called the baby store that ended when she called Child Protective Services and told me I’d never see my baby again.

You know how in dreams, sometimes you’re conscious of what you should be doing but your dream self refuses to comply? Clearly, if I really did forget my baby, I would turn around and drive right back to get him (although after that nightmare the chances of forgetting the baby are even more minuscule then they were before – I’m never again leaving a ROOM without him, let alone the state). But in my dream E and I had a very serious discussion about whether or not Baby Evan would starve to death if we just stayed 5 days instead of 7. And we wondered if $500 was enough to pay the neighbor’s teenage daughter to come over and watch him for a while.  I think at one point E mentioned there was water in the dog’s bowl (which the dog didn’t need because we REMEMBERED TO BRING THE DOG) and the baby would figure it out.

I woke up even more exhausted than I was when I went to bed and feeling like the worst mother in the world. I spent all day Monday making up my horrible (imaginary) parenting to Baby Evan with lots of hugs and patience and taking him everywhere I went. I was rewarded with no baby-abandoning dreams Monday night. Clearly, my subconscious and I have some issues to work out before I try to leave the baby in the nursery again.

Tags: baby evan, bad parenting, dreams, travel