Working Family

Before I left work on Wednesday, I let my boss know that I would be checking my email and that I was available to her by phone. See, we are hitting one of our two peak seasons, and even though I had a perfectly legitimate and necessary reason to be out of the office, I couldn' t shake the feeling that I was leaving her high and dry. It's all part of balancing work and family.

I found out I was being promoted to my current position while I was on maternity leave. It was a godsend in more ways than one, mainly because the promotion came with a raise. You see, we couldn't afford for me to stop working, but we didn't see how we were going to be able to pay for daycare either. It was our own personal Catch-22. The raise I would get would exactly cover what we needed to pay for daycare, so we wouldn't feel the increase in our pockets, but we wouldn't be scraping together nickels for hamburgers either.

Taking the promotion meant cutting my leave short. I had intended to be out for eight, possibly ten weeks. My new boss needed me ASAP. We compromised and I came back at 6 weeks, working half days for a week, until I was able to settle in. My first day back on the job, I gave myself an extra 45 minutes, dropped my son off at daycare for the first time, cried for half an hour, composed myself and went to work.

I set up my schedule so that I am able to spend my lunch hour with my baby, and that's really what makes it possible for me to work at all. I was talking to another mom at daycare about that. She goes a ten hour day without seeing her daughter. I told her she was amazing. I mean that. Working moms deal with emotional issues no one will ever understand until they've walked a mile in those high heels.

I am fortunate. I found an excellent daycare center that is only five minutes from my office, and I have a boss who was willing to let me be flexible in my hours (and my twice daily stops to express milk.) I go in to the office in the very early hours, so my baby is home with my husband until late morning, then I see him an hour for lunch before picking him up in the early afternoon.

I'm still trying to figure out how to cook dinner at night and keep my house clean, but for the time being, I'm just really proud of myself for getting this far.

~Elese Morris