The inevitable work outside the home or stay at home crisis has come. Lately, I've been entertaining deluded, romantic fantasies of staying at home with two little ones, fantasies that included morning runs, healthy Crockpot meals, an absence of sibiling rivalry, and homemade play clay art projects that left no mess. Though I know staying at home would be nothing like that, these daydreams have me thinking more about work, life, motherhood, and my ever-shrinking retirement fund.
I'm sure you mamas out there were asked if you were going to go back to work when you were pregnant. I think that's the third or fourth question in the list of inquiries for pregnant ladies, after what are you having and what are you naming it. Note that no one has asked my husband this question. Ever.
Here are the things whirling and swirling inside of my head. The list makes it all appear nice and organized, but truthfully it's anything but. It's a tilt-a-whirl of frazzle and what-ifs that makes me kind of queasy.
1. I like my job. I work for a community foundation, reviewing grant proposals and engaging with nonprofits. It's a pretty great gig. What's more, I like my coworkers, I work four days per week, and I have an office with a door - a benefit that I didn't value highly enough until I had to pump three times a day. I worked hard for this job, and I don't want to give it up, nor do I feel confident that I'd be able to get it back if I did decide to leave for awhile.
2. This is not an economy in which having a job - a good, stable, engaging job that you like - should be taken lightly. The endless reports of rising unemployment rates, not to mention friends and neighbors losing their jobs, reinforces that now is a time to hang on to what you've got. You never know when it - or your partner's job - might be gone.
3. Paying for childcare for two children will suck up the vast majority of what I take home.
4. When I'm at work, I miss my son. But working stimulates a part of my brain that endless readings of Baby One Two Three and conversations about dogs just do not.
5. There are fabulous, loving, dedicated nannies and teachers at childcare centers. But I am a better caretaker for my children than anyone I could hire.
6. I firmly believe that I am more patient and engaged when I'm with Axel because of my work outside of the home. It both throws me off balance - because of the chaos and time crunch - and helps me be balanced. I don't think this is true for everyone, but it is for me.
7. That whole chaos and time crunch thing? I imagine it's only going to get worse come July, when little Junior arrives. Getting out the door with one child is a crazy adventure of flying raisins and lost socks. Getting out the door with two, with all three of us fully dressed and fed and with our lunches and bottles and work stuff in hand seems like a challenge of herculean proportions.
8. Financially, there's no right decision. Things will be kind of tight for the next three to five years if I keep working at the same rate, and really tight if I'm not working or am working less. I recognize that I'm incredibly lucky to even consider work as an option, not a necessity to feed my family.
9. My husband's job is going to get even crazier come fall, just when I'll theoretically be going back to work, and so I'll be doing more for the next year - more cooking and cleaning and pediatrician's visits. In the long term, this is a good thing. In the short term, I will have to invest in family-sized brownie mix and lots of trips to the park to stay sane.
10. Life, as they say, is short, and it gets even shorter when children are involved. Babies create some kind of time warp that makes five minutes of crying last for two days and makes the progression from sitting up to crawling happen in thirty seconds.
As you can see, I don't have an answer. I go back and forth so much that I lose track of the question.
How did you go about making the decision about going (or not going) back to work after baby?
