TWO MORE MONTHS!!! April 25, 2007

well i’ve been keeping a little secret from the blog because i needed to make a decision before i could let it out into the world for all to read.

i’ve been trying to decide what to do with my impending return to work….in just a week-and-a-half.

it suddenly dawned on me just a week ago that i couldn’t do it. none of us were ready. fiona still won’t take a bottle and though her sparkling smiling is shining through more and more each day, she still isn’t an “easy” baby….not to mention that she has a kidney infection and will be at children’s at least one day next week. my mom ( many of you don’t know ) suffered a minor heart attack just a couple of weeks ago. she is fine and recovering well and even spent the day with us. but she still tires easily and is still in some pain from the test procedures. remember that she is supposed to be one of my care givers 2 days a week. and then there’s me, i’m not ready to leave this all…not just yet.

it seems like it was one thing after another but suddenly i was facing leaving an already fussy baby to fuss even more since she won’t be taking the bottle with a mother recovering from a heart attack for around 11 hours a day. how can any of this be good for my family?

the final sign was at our pediatrician appointment last week after our night at children’s. completely unsolicited our pediatrician said, “how are you feeling about returning to work?” it caught me off guard…that someone would ask that question. she then offered up her own experience and some advice and then told me that she would be happy to write me a note to work recommending that i take 2 more months off….that this first 3 had not been easy with fiona and we had been through a lot. wow. that sort of sealed the deal for what i was already thinking….i needed to rethink my immediate future.

we came up with lot’s of options, greg has been completely supportive of this decision, but in the end i was very unclear what i wanted to do. see, i love my job. i really do. i mean if you have to have a job…mine is pretty cool. i work with great people on products that i love in an atmosphere that is very hard to find. the bummer was that if i left it i may not ever get it back. of course my family was worth that….i was ready to leave, but i presented my problem to my work to see how they felt.

and man did they come through. without even really taking time to think about it they said of course. of course take off 2 more months. if in one month it looks like things aren’t getting any smoother, well then a hard decision might need to be made, but for now take the time and do what you need to do. ISN’T THAT AMAZING? see why i love where i work. i mean you know and i know that that’s just a decent thing to do…but how many employers would actually do that?

i can’t tell you what a relief this is to me. 8 more weeks…that’s just a couple short of how many fiona has been in this world. in that time she will change and grow a lot. i honestly don’t know that just 2 months will be enough. until i had fiona i thought 3 would be enough for sure…but now i see…..

this just reinforces once again what is wrong in this country (wait, let me grab my soap box…) there is so much talk about family values. that family values are suffering, and that the family needs to be saved and protected….yet we live in a country where in a lot of cases 2 people need to work to afford a decent life style (not a glamorous one…no…just decent) and yet we only give moms (and rarely dads) 12 weeks off to care for the most deffensless of our kind. we have one of the worst support systems for parents in the world yet we’re one of the wealthiest countries. family values aren’t being ruined because of gay marriage or freedom of choice…family values are being ruined because we are simply not given the time and support we need to be a family.

all right enough, don’t spoil my mood. i get to send 2 more months at home with fiona, what a gift.