I think my dream this morning pretty well summed up what’s going on in my mind since I’m going back to work tomorrow and taking Lark to the most germ infested place possible – daycare during a swine flu pandemic.  This wasn’t exactly a dream that flowed very well and I only remember bits and pieces.  But I was going to Lark’s daycare and for some reason I had to take a train, but it wasn’t the train I normally took, so I remember thinking I was never going to get to the daycare on this other train but I got on anyway and somehow I did get to the daycare.  The next thing I remember is I’m in the infant room which is a 4 x 4 room painted in blue with no windows, one daycare worker handling 8 kids.  She’s sitting in vomit on this really dirty blue carpeting and holding one child, the other babies all have gross runny noses and have swine flu (the daycare worker had swine flu too).  And then somehow I’m out of the room talking to the middle-aged guy who runs the daycare who is holding a bottle of my breast milk but it doesn’t have the typical nipple end, it has a sippy cup top because Lark wasn’t taking the bottle with a nipple.  And he then decides to drink my breast milk in front of me and I asked him a question which I can’t remember and his response was “Oh, I’m okay, I had 7 ounces of this milk and I usually can’t drink that much.” Yup… this is how my brain works.

So if you had a hard time gathering from that what’s really going on in my brain, here’s the skinny:  I’m absolutely dreading having Lark start daycare in the middle of the swine flu pandemic and I’m a little terrified she’s going to catch it.  Lark’s having trouble taking bottles, although she did take one for her sitter last Saturday, but she’s not taking them from Martin, so I’m worried she’s going to starve while at daycare.  And I’m a little nervous about going back to work in general.  It’s almost like the first day of school nervous.

Luckily, Martin’s pretty good at keeping me grounded and sane.  So today I’m going to savor my last day of freedom with Lark, avoid the news except my staples of People & US Magazines, and think positively about what the daycare experience will do for Lark in the long run.