Returning to Work After a Four Month "Break"
I've been working full time for an entire week now. Oddly enough, I'm working on the same project I was working on when I left and have been given back most of the work I handed off to others. I really like designing interfaces for mobile devices and I enjoy my coworkers so, if I had to return, I'm glad it is to this work and to these people. I never thought I was cut out to be a stay-at-home mom but things have changed over the years and now I'm certain I'd be happy to be at home full time. It was really hard to come to work last Monday. By the end of the week, I counted my success by not having broken down in front of my coworkers once. Adlai is a good sleeper by baby book standards - he usually gives us one burst of 6 hours - but that stretch ends at 1 am after which point he often wakes up two or three more times and sometimes doesn't want to go back to sleep. So my emotions are tied up in complete zombie-like exhaustion. I love every minute of Adlai but a big part of me wants the minutes to pass by faster until we reach his ability to sleep 10 to 11 hours.
Matthew and I have an arrangement that we decided upon before the wee Simon was a mere speck and it has worked really well for almost four years. Obviously, since we didn't initially plan to have a second child, we didn't expect for Matthew to need to take SO much time off. But his part-time job and side projects with other game enthusiasts gives him enough stress to make him feel like a grown-up. I'm eternally grateful to him for "disrupting" his career to stay at home. I don't know how I'd ever be able to justify leaving the boys with non-family on a full time basis.
Anyway, there was one point last week when I did break down (maybe more than one but memories are fuzzy without sleep). I called Matthew from the "Mother's Room" (i.e. the dairy, the pump room, lactation central) and he told me that, on the way to school, Simon had been playing with a maze game. There is a big silver ball in the center and the goal is to get all the little balls through the maze to the big ball. Simon said "I have to get the little balls to the big ball because they miss their Mama." Simon wasn't awake when I left for work most of last week - including that morning - so, when Matthew told me about the maze, tears flowed along with the milk.