I don’t want to,” said my baby as I left her in the care of her nursery school. Toughened up by getting through two other children’s separation anxiety, I had swiftly handed her over to an experienced teacher and firmly walked out of the room.
The following morning she wouldn’t allow me to take her out of her car seat, “I don’t want to. I don’t want to I don’t want to” she insisted.
Again I bravely lifted her out, handed her over and left the classroom. Outside, I hung about peeking through a window to see how she settled. When she seemed ok, I went to the principal’s office to check on the teacher’s credentials. A teacher who was in charge of my baby girl and 19 others must be made of pretty special stuff. She has twenty children in her care.
‘Twenty children.’ the phrase sounds familiar. Presidential, even.
So there I was in the principal’s office, talking to a woman who’s been teaching for about as long as I’ve been breathing. And I cried. I wept. I was desolate and inconsolable.
I was abandoning my baby. I was abdicating my maternal responsibility. I was handing her to another woman – a stranger! — turning around and running away.
What a bitch.
The principal was kind and caring and soon talked me down. I stopped crying. I went to work.
At lunchtime, when I fetched her, my baby seemed fine. I still feel traumatised.

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