My Geek Baby

“I thought I heard a baby in here!” said my co-worker who sits near my office. I was trying to stroll Indie out with a quickness after a the maximum amount of time allowed to have kids in the office had passed.

Here’s part of the “new normal.” Daycare calls and tells me that Indira’s ear infection is looking kind of gross and want me to pick her up. OK, no problem. But I have a meeting after lunch that I need (want?) to be in person for. Why not just take the call from home? Usually that would work but I’m a managing editor of a magazine and sometimes you need to look at photos or graphics together or it’s simply more effective to have the meeting in person. Our art director was about to leave for vacation. I had to make a decision. So I did. And luckily, the awesome people I work with were totally cool with the fact that I had a sleeping baby in the meeting, and later an awake baby clinging and swinging from me like a hiker who just slipped off Mt. Everest. Decisions were made and we all went back to our tasks - mine was getting baby home before too many other people noticed she was there. But she was and I have to be OK with it. Life happens. Roll with it. Hopefully your colleagues will too.

We’re t-minus 24 hours away from this new mom returning to work and are still figuring out daytime care for baby. Although both of us staying with her during the day and tag-teaming was our original plan, it’s starting to look like an insurmountable challenge. So we’re revising our goals and looking into daycare options. More on that front, when we have it all figured out. Between my colleagues who have new babies, craigslist, sittercity, dcurbanmoms, I think we’ll find something reasonable. Affordable. That’s another question.

But before we get to all that serious business, a quick review of the weekend shows that Indie and her parents had a lovely time.

We took her out with Aunt Melinda to Rustico on saturday, during the early dinner hour when babies rule this restaurant.

Did a photo shoot of ladies who sport sweaters with birds on them.

We also took stock of the clothes she’s already grown out of. So what do you do with too-small pants?

Fashion them into pants for hobbits!

After taking the full maternity leave that my job offers, I am reading up on heading back to work and the struggles other working moms face. Today’s Washington Post published the transcript to a live discussion about heading back to work. I probably don’t need to say that I’m conflicted about heading back so soon, but Jake and I have decided to keep the baby at home and work from home part of the week and tag-team so we both get face-time in the office too. It’s the best decision for us and we’re thrilled that our jobs allow us to telework. Although some jobs like teaching, allow for summers off, they don’t allow for telework, and no matter that you do for a living, there’s always a trade-off.

Social change is slow. But huge strides have been made in the last decade to address issues of work-life balance. Flex-time, teleworking and more consulting or part-time opportunities have become more available to people (not just women) who want to spend more time in their non-work lives, whether that means volunteering at a food pantry, participating as a coach or teacher for a sports team or music group, or whatever it is. In today’s Washington Post, this issue was raised. For new moms or women who have recently had their second or third child, a shift sometimes occurs when trying to figure what to do with their time. Opting out completely from the workforce is financially difficult for many families, and for others, it is simply a matter of life satisfaction. It’s OK to want to work outside of the home and not feel guilty about that choice. It’s OK to stay at home if you want that and can swing it financially. But it seems that most people are happiest finding a balance of part-time work. Because, really, who wants to throw away a college degree you might still paying down the loans from? Thankfully, in the age of the Internet, and because more employees are speaking up for themselves, opportunities are being created to find a happy medium. More needs to happen. For example, part-timers often struggle to obtain or keep the same benefits that full-timers enjoy. But companies realize the expense it takes to replace useful employees, many are making the effort to keep their employees happy.

From the article: “More women would work part time if they could. A 2007 Pew Research Center report found that 60 percent of working mothers across all income and education levels said they would be happiest working part time, a jump of 12 percentage points since 1997. However, only 24 percent actually had part-time hours.”