Leaving Baby for a Weekend

Last weekend I left our 4 month old baby for 48 hours while I spent the weekend in Chicago.

I had tons of anxiety about it before I left. I mean, who leaves their brand new baby for a whole weekend? Well, I'm here to say that it can be done, and can be done with no problems at all in fact.

My girlfriend Jenna is getting married this summer, and we had planned her bachelorette party weekend while I was still pregnant. As I was yet to give birth, I had no idea how attached I was about to become to this little baby, and how hard it would be to leave her. So we planned for this girls weekend and I assumed leaving the baby would be relatively painless.

I didn't realize that once she was born, I would feel tied to her in a way I've never known before. And that after returning to work, my moments with her became the most valuable moments possible and that I couldn't bear to leave her if it wasn't absolutely necessary.

In addition, we found out Brian would have to work the entire weekend, adding another layer of complication.

It turns out though, that leaving her turned out to be okay, it just required a lot of moving parts.

In order for me to leave, my mother-in-law, Sue, kindly agreed to come spend the weekend with Grace. In order for Sue to come spend the weekend with Grace, my sister-in-law kindly agreed to work at her parents' furniture store to cover for Sue. In order for my sister-in-law to work at her parents' store, she had to have her nieces babysit for her children.

Basically, I have a whole list of people to thank, who rearranged their lives to help us out for this weekend.  But mostly, the thanks goes to Brian's mom, who moved in and just took wonderful care of Grace all weekend long (including late night wake ups).

And the weekend away was a blast. It was so nice to be with my college girlfriends again, some of which are also new moms themselves. It was nice to take long, leisurely showers, and to get more than 3 hours of sleep  in a row at night.

I had worried for months about leaving Grace for that weekend. And I worried while I was gone. But the weekend went as well as I could have hoped. Grace was in the best hands with Brian's mom, who kept me up to date with pictures throughout the weekend.

So, I'm here to tell you, that it is possible to leave your new baby for a whole weekend with no problems at all. When I returned, she was full of smiles for me, and it was as if I had never left.

I'm thankful that my first overnight trip away from Grace went so smoothly and easily. But as easy as that was, I still don't plan to do another one for a very long time!