Don't Go Mummy!

Leaving for work in a morning is always a military operation.

Trying to get ready before Leo awakes so that I can spend that little bit of the morning with him. Maybe even squeeze in breakfast together if I have a spare 20 minutes before I have to run away for the day.

Leo was 13 months when I returned to work, and he didn’t really care whether I was there or if I wasn’t. It made no difference to that beautiful boy of mine if I was to leave the room or go to work, but now he is getting older he is starting to really hate my exit each morning.

It is as though he anticipates me putting on my coat and picking up my car keys, as it is this moment he chooses to cling to me. When I pick up my hand bag he knows I really mean business and my exit is imminent, and he will throw a real stinker if he is not coming with me!

Leo associates all of these little things with me leaving, if I pick up my hand bag while Leo is in my arms, he will persistently wave at everyone in the room as he thinks that he is coming with me.

The next task in my 007 mission to leave the house, is to hand him over to Granny so he doesn’t follow me out.

This is where he holds on to me for dear life and buries his head into my shoulder. He screams out and the tears are falling down his cheeks, but the anger is very obviously there and it is temper that is out to play.

He is angry at me for leaving him, and he is too young to understand why I have to leave him. No amount of reassuring him that I will be back later gets through to him quite yet. I know as he gets older we will have this understanding, but for now this is something that he has to experience: Separation from his Mummy.

I know that 5 minutes after I have left, I am just a distant memory as he sets his sights on playing football with the vase in the living room, or posting anything and everything he can find into the mystery draws. He gets on with his day and probably doesn’t even give me a second thought, but that goodbye we share in the morning, makes him angry.

Very angry as he wants to come along with me.

I am looking forward to the day where we can say goodbye for the day without him getting upset. Where we can exchange a hug and he doesn’t cling on to me like I am about to abandon him forever. A goodbye for when he knows that I will be back in a few hours time.