Melissa was all set to enroll her daughter in daycare, but then she had a change of heart. When a woman at the daycare told Melissa to pack a disposable camera each morning so that the employees could photograph important moments in her daughter's life, Melissa says she broke down crying in the parking lot. "I know she didn't mean anything bad by that, but that was just not something to tell a new mom," she says.
Actually, Dr. Robin says, that was exactly what Melissa needed to hear. "It was a gift because it was real," she says. "For mothers who would still choose to work outside of the home, they're saying, 'Let us capture the moments that you might miss.' For you, that stirred you in a way that you thought, 'I'm not sure that I can walk with that miss.'"
Melissa returned to the daycare and asked for a refund. "I talked to my husband and asked him if we could just take one year to think about things, and let me spend some time with [my daughter]," she says. "Then maybe [we can] reevaluate things in a year and see what we should do at that time."
