10 Weeks Is a Long Time Until It's Over

My maternity leave is over. I had 10 lovely, fully-paid weeks off, which sounded awesome 10 weeks ago but now it seems too soon to be leaving my little guy without his life-sustaining breasts for eight or more hours at a time.

The baby and I have been sleeping late, so I am anticipating a lot of pain tomorrow when my alarm--which I haven't used in 10 weeks--goes off at 7:30. Not that he sleeps through the night to late mornings, no no no. I am lucky to get a 5-hour stretch. But in the mornings he feeds a little, sleeps a little, and we cuddle. I already can't wait for the weekend so I can do that again.

Now you may be wondering how I am blogging on my first day back from maternity leave. Actually last week I called my boss and begged him to let me start back tomorrow instead. I realized that it would ruin my Christmas to have to get ready to go back to work the next day. He agreed, thankfully and gave me a file to "work on" "from home," so long as I'm in for a few hours tomorrow. I don't have full-time child care until January 2 so I will be mostly working from home for the three work days until then. I probably don't need to mention that my boss is awesome and I love my boss.

But I still work at a law firm and I have two briefs due between now and January 3. Sad face. So much for easing back into it. I am the most junior attorney in my group, however, so I'm sure the attorney covering for me was not exactly thrilled and when it came to writing briefs over the holidays she was not feeling generous. Although she only has about six months on me--well, six months and 10 weeks--and we are hiring so I won't be the rookiest rookie much longer.

More good news: my full-time child care? It's my husband. He's been working in "a job" at the hospital for about a year and half now that has lots of great benefits but no real future. He's staying on per diem and will work 8-16 hours a month, but will otherwise be a full-time dad. I am so relieved to have this convenience, not to mention the benefit of my son's getting care from one of us. I'm sure this will be challenging in a lot of ways too. We'll see.

For now I just can't wait to come home from work asking, "Really? That's ALL you did today?"