Final Countdown

Only five more days until Cletus' due date! Gotta love that countdown clock...

Anywho, I plan on wrapping up this blog on April 16. Thanks for the feedback. I'll make sure to keep family and friends' posted on Delia's progress via e-mails and stuff..and maybe even (gasp) personal phone calls and visits.

Today is our first day alone together (BD is, quite unhappily, back at work). I'm not really getting much done on a school project, but I can't blame this on Delia... only on good old fashioned procrastination.

She's a really cool kid, and I'm very proud that she's gaining weight like a champ (now up to 7 lbs, 6.5 oz). We've pretty muched gotten the whole breastfeeding thing figured out, even though I still curse like a drunken sailor with tourette's syndrome every time she first clamps down. This is the main reason I have yet to breastfeed in front of others... not out of boob modesty, but because my foul mouth betrays the serenity of the moment.

Tonight, I'm going to class without her. Which means BD, Unkie Matt, and Dr. Rachel get her "to themselves." This will also be the longest time-wise and distance-wise I've been separated from her. The anxiety! My ta-tas are already twitching in protest.

Delia as Scholar

Delia slept through an entire graduate school class on evaluating health communications campaigns. She's way ahead of her time.

The New Balance

My plan had been to finish up all of my work for the semester (which ends April 25) by the baby's due date (April 16). But she came three weeks early, so.... new plan!

Fortunately, I feel good and have lots of help. So I'm going to attempt to go to class tonight (but maybe just for an hour), write a paper by Saturday, and go to class on Saturday. I know I don't have to, but I kind of want to. Mostly, I want to bring her and show her off!

As for work, well, I'm officially unemployed right now. I guess April 1 began my maternity leave/ leave of absence/ termination (whatever you feel like calling it). If you'll recall I had a super-productive day at work the day my water broke, so I actually (mostly) left things in a good place. I still have my office to clean out, but I probably take care of that in a couple of weeks.

I'm giving myself some time to figure out this new balance...but so far, I think I really like it.

PS: Our in-house pediatrician moved in yesterday. Lucky, eh?

Registering Today

Today, I'm registering for three graduate school courses for the summer semester. I will happily drop one or two classes if I later determine that I can't handle it.

Thanks for all of the advice and feedback...all of which I've interpreted the following way: do whatever you want to do. And this is what BD and I want to do. :)

Superwoman Complex?

I've had pretty much the same plan in my head since I found out I was pregnant: that I'd stay home with the kidlet during the day while taking graduate school classes at night until I finish my degree.

As you saw on the blog earlier this week, I have been able to arrange this plan with my work.

I got a lot of support for this plan. BD is behind it 100%.

But now that I actually have to enroll in the courses for next semester, people are coming out of the woodwork advising me to reconsider taking classes. These people are all moms, all smart, all accomplished, and they come from my family, school, and work life.

People, I'm already leaving my career. The kid will be about 6 weeks old when I start classes again... over 4 months old during finals. Do I really need to be at home 168 hours every week? Am I really going to be so tired and so frazzled, that I can't handle 6 hours of class-time plus an additional 6 hours of study time a week?

And if your answer to both of these questions are "yes," then I'd love to hear your advice on how I should sell that to my bosses. "Oh by the way, when I said I was coming back in January 2008, it'll probably be more like January 2009... is that okay?"

I know it won't be the easiest route...but I have never taken the easiest route. So, I'd love to get some more feedback: Am I really not the superwoman I seem to think I am?

The Work Situation

I billed this blog as a "working woman's guide to pregnancy"...and yet I've been nearly silent on my maternity leave discussions and plans. This is because I've heard too many stories about people getting fired or in trouble for saying things about their office or employers on their personal blogs. So, I wanted to make sure everything was on the up and up before I took it online.

A bit of background...

I have been working at the same, wonderful public relations firm since 1999. Very few people in PR stay at the same place for a long time (two to three years seems like the average term). I have been incredibly loyal to the firm, because they have been incredibly loyal and supportive of me. I could definitely see myself here for the long-haul.

I also started graduate school (part-time, night class) last June. This decision was supported by my boss.

Then I got pregnant.

Okay, so I have the potential of making a beautiful life collage, using three main elements: motherhood, career, and academia. But am I a talented enough artist to do all three at once? My answer is probably not...and that if I tried I'd probably also be short-changing my roles as a wife and friend.

So I approached my bosses in January about this dilemma, and asked for their reaction to the following plan: that I take a leave of absence when the baby arrives that spans from delivery through the completion of my master's degree. That way I'd be home with the baby during the day and continue taking classes at night. With five courses left (one of which is a thesis), I projected I could return by January or May 2008, depending on my ability to juggle school and new motherhood.

Over the last two months, we have had dozens more conversations about the "plan." In short, they understand what I want (or think I want) to do... but it is inconvenient and undesirable for them. They say.... How about part-time starting in September? What if a big proposal opportunity comes through the door? Can we bid you in? Would you be able to work on an hourly basis on proposals? My answer to all of these questions had to be a "maybe," since I just don't really know what lies ahead.

Our firm's maternity leave policy is four weeks of paid leave with up to two additional weeks where you can use vacation or sick leave. We do not have a policy for leave of absence. So this is why I now have a letter of termination in my file.

So on April 14, I will technically no longer be employed. Anywhere. Weird. Do I worry that I won't be able to get a job back at the firm? No. Not really. But it is weird to think about.

I feel fortunate that I work in PR...in an agency...which has a revolving base of clients and projects anyway. My job changes on a regular basis anyway, so it won't be the biggest deal that it will undoubtedly be different when I get back. New project, new client...probably new team. C'est la vie.

But as great of a firm as it as--and as progressive and friendly my bosses are--this hasn't exactly been the easiest of negotiations. I really feel for the moms who've had to make impossible situations work out, simply because the options aren't there. It goes to show, we still really haven't figured out this "women in the workplace" thing.

It's a New Day!

Hallelujah, I've gotten through the week (mostly). A quick update...

*WORK: the campaign launch yesterday was a huge success and the client is very happy. We started the day with a story in the New York Times and on Good Morning America. There's a lot more work to do now to sustain the campaign, but anyone who's worked on a launch before knows how intense they are. Phew!

*SCHOOL: I enrolled in two courses this semester and had my first taste of both this week. One, I love...the other was just not going to work out for me in this final trimester of pregnancy. It's not just that it was going to be a lot of work; it was going to be a lot of work that I was not going to enjoy. So, for the first time ever in my academic career, I dropped a class. I'm really excited about the course I've replaced it with, which is much more in line with my day-to-day job and interests. This semester is still going to be a complicated jungle between school, work, and the final three months of pregnancy...but I think it's doable.

*LIFE: BD and I now have in our driveway our new baby-friendly Subaru. It rules. It has butt-warmers. Need I say more?

*CLETUS THE FETUS: The kidlet has still been moving all around. Last night, it staged a Cirque du Soleil two-hour act in my belly. Freaky. In other news, I pitched a reporter named Rad (short for "Radford") this week and promptly decided it was the coolest name I had ever heard. So you may start hearing me refer to the kidlet as "Rad" or "Baby Rad." Yeah, that's sweet.

*FUN: The program at my women's group meeting this week was "A Champagne and Food Pairing Extravaganza." Even though I didn't imbibe, I did have a yummy assortment of poached pears, almond cookies, mushroom quiche, salad, and pear and brie bruschetta. MMmmmm....philanthropy!

Just Need to Get Through This Week

You may have noticed that my blog posts are a bit thin this week. Well, it's a doozie of a week. I've started my new semester in graduate school (two courses), I had a meeting for my women's group, and--this is the big one--I'm prepping for a Thursday campaign launch at work. When people ask me how the baby is doing, this is the project I think about.

And I'm working really hard not to get stressed out about it all. And yet, my right eyebrow started to uncontrollably (and quite visibly) twitch the other day. It clearly did not get the memo on avoiding stress.

Getting Ready for Baby

No, we haven't figured out a theme for the nursery or picked out names. We haven't set up a registry or started knitting booties.

We've been getting ready for baby in all the non-cute ways. My hubby, thankfully, is taking the lead on this.

We have:

*figured out health insurance (I'm switching over to his)
*bought life insurance
*started thinking about drawing up our wills
*explored 529s (college funds...we might divert some of our 2007 401k investments this way)
*scheduled graduate school courses for the Spring semester with professors who will work around my due date
*started planning child care options

Odd that people don't ask me about these kinds of issues when they want to talk about getting ready for baby!

Scheduling Around the Unknown

How do you plan around something major that could happen any time during a four-week-plus span? It's like if you were planning a wedding that could happen on the 15th...but it might also be on the 1st or 27th, just wait and see.

For the pregnant woman who also juggles graduate school and multiple work projects, this whole planning thing is a real challenge. Take school, for example. The new semester starts in January and ends the last week of April. I'm due April 16, so if this holds, I'd only miss the final class or two of the semester. But it's best to be prepared if things change. So I've spent about a month talking to professors and an academic advisor, trying to figure out plans and contingency plans. Just when I think it's been sorted out, one of the courses I picked is now already full.

Work is a whole other issue, one that I haven't even begun to really think through yet.