The first time I was pregnant I waited to spill the beans at work until I had a clean bill of health and an adorable ultrasound image of my 13-week fetus to show, mostly because I thought no one would believe me if I couldn’t produce solid photographic evidence. They still didn’t believe me at first, but eventually they had to as I became increasingly rotund and unfailingly dismissive of every single glass of free wine I was offered at company events.

This time there will be no big surprise–I’m a married mother of a three-year-old; most people will probably respond with “FINALLY!”–and, expecting neither tickertape parade nor mushroom cloud when I share the news, I guess I’ve just let the last few months go by figuring, “Eh, they’ll find out eventually. What’s the rush?”

(Also, if I’m honest, I really wanted to enjoy this brief period of not being consumed with paranoia that all my professional contacts consider me a liability now that I have baby on the brain. I know I’m not the only one who worries about this.)

So I’m telling them, but I still don’t know how I’ll do it. Surreptitiously drop it into the agenda notes of an upcoming meeting? Tape an ultrasound photo to my office door? Singing, dancing telegram in a bear suit?

Heck, I could even just post it on Facebook and let word spread via digital wildfire the way Al Gore intended.

How did you tell your coworkers? When did you tell your coworkers? How did it go?

We spent the holidays with my family in Utah and had ourselves a jolly-good time, but then three days after Christmas my grandfather died in a car crash on his way to the volunteer job he’d been doing several times a week for thirty years (THIRTY YEARS) and, well, it wasn’t a very happy New Year after all. (My mom took that tack of greeting family members with a cheer of “Crappy New Year, huh?” and everyone nodded in solemn agreement.)

My little family of three (and one-third) were originally supposed to fly back to California on the day after the accident, but we ended up extending our stay by five days (for a total of thirteen) so we could be there for the funeral. It wasn’t the greatest of trips–in addition to the grief and the harried logistics of funeral planning, we weren’t prepared for that much time away, and I spent most of those extra five days working–but it wasn’t all bad, and if I may take a break from talking about work here, I’d like to share a few things I learned about parenthood, parents, and grandparents.

Being back home for so long, and seeing family I haven’t seen in years, and thinking about what it was like to grow up five miles away from my grandparents instead of an hour-plus plane ride made me think a lot about what kind of experience and memories of family I want my kids to have growing up. As new parents, still trying to figure things out, we’ve put plenty of thought into what kind of community environment we want for them (diverse, safe), what kind of schools (challenging, nurturing), and what kind of home life (loving, peaceful), but until recently I hadn’t given too much thought to extended family beyond the occasional wish for free last-minute babysitting so my husband and I can go to a concert.

Currently our nearest family member (my MIL) lives 400 miles away, and one contingent–my husband’s only sibling and her family–live on the other side of the world, in England. When my son was a baby, I regretted them not being here to watch him grow up, but now that he’s old enough to miss them, I feel guilty about him not knowing them as much as them not knowing him. Also, I miss them too.

Our life is here, and our life is ours, but the more our family grows and changes–our kids are getting older, but so are our parents–I think about the life we have now versus the variety of lives we could have elsewhere, closer to family, and I watch priorities jostle for position: careers, friends, schools, cousins, grandmas and grandpas and the two great-grandparents my son has left.

Are week-long visits back home every six months enough? And if they are, for how long will that be true? I grew up having sleepovers with my cousins on my grandparents’ back porch, each of us using the special sleepover toothbrush with our name painted on the handle in my grandma’s nail polish. I’m starting to want family around not just for Christmases and the occasional Fourth of July parade but piano recitals and impromptu park picnics and just-stopped-by-because-I-was-in-the-neighborhood drop-ins.

We’ll soon be a couple with two kids and no family support in the area, and the bottom line is that we feel at a disadvantage. My eternally rational self chalks it up the change of heart to practical matters like money and convenience (free babysitting!), but to be honest, behind all that is a purely emotional longing to give my kids what I had growing up: family. Lots of it.

I never thought I’d leave the San Francisco Bay Area voluntarily, and I never (ever, ever) thought I’d set up a home back in Salt Lake City. And yet here/there we are.

]]> http://workitmom.com/bloggers/workingonmotherhood/2012/01/11/how-parenthood-changed-my-thoughts-on-family/feed/ http://workitmom.com/bloggers/workingonmotherhood/2011/12/07/the-sick-pregnant-woman-at-work/ http://workitmom.com/bloggers/workingonmotherhood/2011/12/07/the-sick-pregnant-woman-at-work/#comments Wed, 07 Dec 2011 13:00:56 +0000 Leah K http://workitmom.com/bloggers/workingonmotherhood/?p=231 The first time I got pregnant, I sailed through the first trimester with very few symptoms and very little trouble hiding my growing belly behind flowy tops and a sturdy desk piled high with manuscripts and granola bar wrappers. At thirteen weeks, after my NT scan said all was well, I took a little printout of an ultrasound image and shared it with a few coworkers (who then took care of making sure everyone else at the company heard the news), and the rest is history–and, as these things go, a largely uneventful history at that.

I had an easy and, dare I say, pleasant pregnancy, and aside from the crushing (or rather, spreading) rib pain there at the end, it was pretty much business as usual for me during all nine months, the only notable changes being extra snacks, extra trips to the bathroom, and extra inches on my waistline (and thigh line and butt line and boob line). This time around I feel a little sick now and then, nothing serious, but I’m really grateful to be working from home simply because the appearance of maternity pants at seven and a half weeks would have given me away before I was ready.

(Before the lucky three-month mark, I decide whom to tell based on whether I’d want to discuss a miscarriage with that person. The Internet? Sure. The guy in marketing I only see every few months? Not so much.)

That first time, before I told my coworkers, I was of course bursting with excitement to share my news, but one thing I was lucky to not be bursting with was “morning” (ha) sickness. I didn’t use any sick days, I didn’t have to run out of any meetings with my hand over my mouth, I didn’t have to invent non-suspicious excuses for why I’d be coming in three hours late every day for two months (or more) straight. One of my coworkers tried that last one–”I’m going to be starting my workdays at noon until February! No reason!”–and we all knew exactly what was up. After that pregnancy (her first) turned into a nine-month bout of hyperemesis gravidarum, it was a no-brainer when, two years later, she didn’t come into the office for months in a row and could only work from home in the afternoons and evenings because she “didn’t feel well in the mornings.” I don’t know if she thought she was fooling anyone, but she wasn’t fooling anyone.

In cases like that, I always wonder why women don’t just say they’re pregnant. Isn’t that easier than inventing a bunch of excuses that most people aren’t going to believe anyway?

Obviously, deciding when and with whom someone shares her pregnancy news is a personal decision and based on a variety of factors (maybe she just doesn’t want to receive unsolicited assvice about guaranteed morning sickness cures?), and yet whenever I hear about women with the persistent and, ahem, “productive” kind of morning sickness, I can’t wrap my mind around keeping the secret for long. I say this, of course, as a person who has only this time around experienced what I’d call moderate and short-lived pregnancy-related queasiness, so I’m honestly wondering how the sick and working-outside-the-home women do it.

How? How do you dooooooo it?

(And please know that you have my deepest, deepest sympathy. I can’t even imagine.)

When did you tell your coworkers you were pregnant? How did you decide when to reveal the news, and was morning sickness a factor? If you had first-trimester symptoms that affected your job, how on earth did you survive the weeks or months before you came out with the truth?

Last time, I was here talking about tattoos and piercings and how they might affect your job prospects, especially if you’re sporting them in places you can’t hide during an interview. Two weeks later, things have changed a bit for me, and hey, guess what you can’t hide, at least not past a certain point and without the aid of smoke and mirrors and creative camera angles and well-placed props? Pregnancy.

Yes, it’s true, WIMmers, I’m pregnant again, and just as my body’s up to all its old tricks (I can barely breathe after a meal for the bloating), my brain is swirling with what this new addition means for my career in the long run as well as my ability to even DO my job in the short-term.

As much as I rebel against the concept of “baby brain,” I also admit that I nearly left the house in slippers the other day–in fact, I did, although I caught myself before I stepped off the porch–and have, for the past several weeks, had an all around harder time remembering what I’m supposed to be doing and when and why (who are you people and why are you in my house asking for dinner?), and I can’t think of anything else to blame it on besides baby.

The last time around, I chalked up my absentmindedness to the fact that I was maybe a little totally obsessed with the embryo/fetus I was growing and couldn’t really concentrate on anything else beyond literal navel gazing. This time, I’m thinking about the pregnancy enough, sure, but I’m also thinking about daycare pickup and preparing healthy toddler snacks and meeting work deadlines and prepping for the holidays and making sure everyone is fed and clothed and at least mostly well-rested, and that no one is walking out the door in his or her slippers. I’m trying to keep it all together–a challenge pregnant or not–and it’s definitely been harder than usual to keep my bearings. This time around I think there might be  something chemical going on after all. (But I still take issue with the research that says a woman’s brain shrinks 8 percent during pregnancy!)

Because it’s a topic that never gets old: Where do you stand on the concept of “baby brain” (aka “mommybrain”)? Did being pregnant mess with your mind? Did you fight it or lean into it as an excuse?

When my husband was looking for work a year and a half ago, one of his mentors told him he’d have to lose his nose ring, at least for job interviews. He’s had the nose ring–a simple, non-obtrusive silver hoop–for about fifteen years, long enough that he stopped noticing it ages ago. But I noticed it the first time I met him, and our son remarks on it constantly, so it’s definitely not invisible. I think he might have taken it out for one or two interviews, but he didn’t take it out when he interviewed for the company he’s now been with for a year and a half, so apparently it wasn’t a deal-breaker. Although he, like my mom, has to be an expert and an authority figure at work too, we’re in the liberal-as-it-gets San Francisco Bay Area, and his job, although sensitive, isn’t quite on the same level as saving lives in a medical facility. So the nose ring stayed.

Meanwhile, I work for the most relaxed company ever when it comes to personal appearance–we once had an intern who was exploring her nascent Wiccanness via a wizard wardrobe, pointy hat and all–and yet here I am with no tattoos, not a single piercing, and only a few fleeting dalliances with Sun-in and color contacts (that were, incidentally, the same color as my eyes but just deeper by a shade or two because that’s how adventurous I am).

I was thinking about all this because of an article I read titled “Visible Tattoos and Other Corporate No-Nos,” in which research shows that piercings and tattoos are two of the top three factors that might turn off a potential employer. (The other factor is bad breath.) Research also suggest, however, that the workplace culture might have to change as more and more people enter the job market having grown up when tattoos and piercings were much more acceptable and common than they’ve ever been in generations past (professional pirate cultures excepted).

I kind of feel like I’m wasting the opportunity to be more creative with my appearance considering I have so much freedom at my company. So why don’t I dye my hair fuchsia and get a neck tattoo? Well, because I don’t want to, which is the best possible reason to not, I suppose, and yet…

I wish my mom could dye her hair purple and still be respected as the professional she is. And I hope my husband keeps his nose ring as long as it makes him happy (provided he doesn’t start looking like a sad old rockstar clinging to his youth via face jewelry).

What do you think about visible tattoos, unusual piercings, wacky hairdos, outrageous wardrobes and the like making an appearance on the job? Does your job limit how you present yourself style-wise? Would you ever work (or have you ever worked) for a company that restricted employees’ self-expression when it comes to physical appearance?

A few days ago I celebrated* having been at my day job for ten years. Ten years! That’s almost a third of my life! When I started there, I was twenty-two, fresh out of college, and living away from my parents for the first time–900 miles away in a different state, even. (Not to mention I was also sharing an apartment with a boy I thought I’d marry but didn’t (thank god).)

Ten years later, I’m thirty-something, I have a mortgage and a kid and a husband (the right one), and, having worked for the same company, and in basically the same capacity, for an entire decade now, I feel like I’m an expert in my profession. (Or at the very least an expert in this position at this company.) I mean, I should, right? TEN YEARS.

I don’t know anyone my age who’s been at a job as long as I have save a few coworkers, which I think is a testament to my company more than it is indicative of the employment culture of our generation. For the most part, it seems that Gen Xers and Yers jump from job to job—sometimes within the same industry, sometimes not—and…well, I don’t really know what to make of it, but it sure is interesting.

(Maybe it’s because I know a lot of people in publishing and the arts, maybe it’s because I live in the San Francisco Bay Area, maybe it’s the crap economy and shaky job market, maybe it’s our generation’s collective ADD, always looking for something new and exciting to keep us interested. Any theories, Internet?)

There’s something to be said for moving around in the workforce, having different experiences, learning different skills from new people and in new environments. Lord knows I hate change and am happiest when surrounded by the familiar and routine, so it’s no surprise I am where I am, ten years later. But then I look around and sometimes wonder if I should be expanding my work world the way everyone else seems to be doing.

I always thought company longevity was a virtue. It shows loyalty and commitment, and it hopefully pays off at retirement too. My parents have both been with their companies for almost forty years, which is even longer than they’ve been married, and they’ve been married for an eternity. Within each of their companies, they’ve both moved up through the ranks and gained new skills and responsibilities over the years, but when you get right down to it, she’s still a nurse and he’s still a high-voltage electrician, and at this point I can’t imagine either of them running off to do anything else.

In the same way, I’m an editor, and I believe I always will be (and always have been). I get paid for other work on the side (writing and wedding photography are the two I’m proudest of), but I think part of why I’ve been content to stay where I’ve been for so long is that I know, without a doubt, that I’m doing exactly what I should be doing, because it’s exactly what I’m good at.

Are people my age job-hopping because they’re seeking that elusive sense of career fulfillment that was barely even a factor when our parents were starting out? Or are we just stupider, unable to see the long-term consequences of professional fickleness?

What about you? How many jobs have you had since you joined the workforce? Can you imagine staying at one company for thirty or forty years (or even ten)?

*The celebration involved me leaving a note on the company message board saying, “It’s my ten year anniversary!” and not one person saying a single word about it. So maybe it’s not such a big deal after all?

For me, my slow extraction from the social part of my job started when I had my baby, took four months of mat leave, then switched from full-time to part-time, and finally settled into telecommuting 98 percent of the time. Being physically removed from the office environment definitely makes it harder for me to attend quick afternoon birthday celebrations in the conference room or long lunches at restaurants that sometimes also involve cocktails; and after-hours meetups at pubs are kind of impossible when two-year-olds are generally not welcome in bars.

For the last few months, my coworkers have been holding a monthly staff lunch, as a way of bringing together all the part-timers and telecommuters with the in-office desk jockeys, and guess how many of those events I’ve been able to make it to? One. Either my kid is sick or I have too much work to catch up on or it’s raining and I can’t risk getting stuck in traffic when I have to be on time for daycare pickup. It’s a constant juggle just getting my have-tos taken care of every week, so the ball that usually drops first is the one that would require me to make an extra trip to the grocery store because I have nothing at home to contribute to the Wednesday afternoon company baked potato bar.

Do you find it harder to stay connected to the company social scene now that you have a family? Is it harder because you’re older and simply less interested, or is it because you have other responsibilities that take precedence? Do you have to stay home with your family when you’re not working, or do you want to stay home with your family? Or do you want to spend that free time pursuing a hobby instead of kicking it with the guys from IT and the newest batch of interns whose names you’ll never know.

Tell me I’m not alone, and help me figure out why I care so much less about the office community than I used to (even though I really do love my coworkers, many of whom have been friends for a decade now). Has being a parent caused you to drop out of the work “community”? How do you feel about that?

Everyone tells you how how being a mother will change you. “You’ll think of your children before you think of yourself.” That’s a biggie. It sounds good, too, doesn’t it? Becoming a mother will magically transform you into a soulful, selfless person who never puts her own needs before those of her child. Poof! You’re a saint. There’s just one problem: I still like pie. 

Don’t get me wrong, motherhood has changed me in a thousand ways, but some of those ways are teeny tiny, and not a one of them foiled my sweet tooth. What no one tells you is that even if you DO start thinking of your kid(s) first in most situations, it’s possible you still think of yourself second. Being a mother definitely gave me different priorities, but it didn’t whittle me down to one priority (although some days I admit that would make things a whole lot easier). I have a child but I haven’t forgotten myself. And I really, really like pie!

I thought becoming a parent would make me immune to diaper stench, tolerant of whining, and placid in the face of the epic public tantrum. It didn’t. I deal with these things because it’s what you do, because it’s my job, but oh ho ho, that doesn’t mean I have to like it. Motherhood has altered many things about me, and yet some days I marvel at how unchanged I remain underneath it all. I still like sleep and need lots and lots of it. I still like working, having a profession, being counted on by a team of adults, and maybe even receiving praise from them once in a while after a job well done. I still wince when a small human makes a horking motion in my general direction. I still want to wear ridiculous high heels now and then. And of course I still care for pie very, very much. Delicious, symbolic pie. Mmmmm.

Did you expect motherhood to change you in certain ways but then realize it didn’t? Were you as shocked as I was?

As much as a disadvantage as it is to not have instantaneously become a more selfless, more saintly person the moment my son entered my life, what I’m left with has its high points too. In not sublimating myself in an effort to become a two-dimensional storybook mother, I still make time for my hobbies, I still seek happiness personally rather than vicariously, and I still identify as someone–and in fact many someones–besides just Mommy. As it was with priorities above, having a favorite role doesn’t mean having only one role. I’m still me. I’m still ME. And, dammit, I still get pie, just maybe not as often as I used to.

You too? *lackluster high five*

Even if you’re not an idea person, all it takes is a few clicks on Pinterest or the blogroll of an everything-is-shiny-and-perfect craft or parenting site and you’ll have ideas aplenty. So many ideas. Too many ideas. My question is how in the world people find the time to prep for that kind of stuff when the days are already so full of must-dos like work and school and laundry and catching up on Mad Men via Netflix that I hardly have time to transform an old pair of cargo pants into a messenger bag and then fill it with tiles on which I’ve mod podged family photos to make a personalized game of Memory for my kid, who’d just as soon stick crayons up his nose, frankly.

I mean, it’s not that we’re so overscheduled we don’t have time to build glittering castles out of popsicle sticks. It’s just that “go to the craft store to buy popsicle sticks and glitter” is always so far down on my list of priorities that I never get around to it, and, in fact, if I did take the time to prep for that sort of thing, we wouldn’t have any time left to actually do it. The result is that I default to simple, boring no-prep activities while my long list of awesome projects gathers dust and my dreams of outside-the-[crayon-]box creativity shrivels and dies.

Do you spend a lot of time prepping activities for your kids? When and how do you do it? I feel like I need to treat this the way I always intend to treat meals–by planning far in advance, and by setting aside a few hours every week to organize my ingredients (chopping veggies for salads = shopping for glitter)–but so far I haven’t been able to do it consistently. Thank god for frozen food.

I guess I could just give up on the idea–another casualty of having two working parents in the family–but it’s hard to let it go because when I am able to make the fun-but-complicated activities happen, I get such a kick out of it and want to do more.

Anyone feel me on this? Are you equally frustrated, or have you figured out a secret to making it work? Have you sacrificed other things (ordering take-out instead of cooking? forsaking the warm glow of the television?) in order to make your creative family projects come to life?

A couple of weeks ago I wrote on my personal blog about how the kindergarten age cutoff in my area is already messing with me (my son is only two; WE HAVE TIME), and the ensuing discussion was so lively and interesting that I wanted to pose similar questions here in the specific context of working mothers.

Did you hold your child back from starting kindergarten? Was your decision at least partially based on your status as a working mom?

A bit of background: More and more, parents are “red-shirting” their five-year-olds (especially boys) in hopes that they’ll do better–academically, socially, emotionally, and physically–if they start school as six-year-olds rather than five- or even four-year-olds. Some parents are unfairly taking advantage of the system, holding back their perfectly ready kids in hopes they’ll be the oldest, smartest, fastest, and tallest in the class (and therefore more successful in life forevermore?), but lest I go crazy obsessing over something I can’t change with a snap of my fingers, I’m now actively choosing to believe most moms and dads are just doing what feels best for their children on a case-by-case basis. Breathe in, breathe out.

Where I’m still hung up, though, is seeing how this “choice” is really only available to people who can afford the extra year of daycare or preschool or pre-K when the other option is to enroll their eligible children in free public kindergarten. If you’re struggling to support your family, you might “choose” kindergarten based on financial reasons rather than your child’s readiness (a term that means so many different and often unmeasureable things it makes my head spin), so doesn’t that mean the poorest kids are also more likely to be the smallest/slowest/youngest? And that some of their “peers” are going to be a full year (or even two years!) older, with all of those attendant advantages (and perhaps advantages multiplied by having attended a fancy academic preschool rather than a neighborhood play-based daycare)?

Depending on when a specific district’s age cutoff is (ours is currently December 2 but will gradually move back to September 1 by 2014), the reality is that some kindergarten classrooms will be made up of four-year-olds, five-year-olds, six-year-olds, and maybe some almost-seven-year-olds. (If I red-shirted my son, whose birthday is twelve days after the current cut-off, he’d turn seven just a few months into kindergarten, whereas some of his classmates will be four going on five. How can that not be a problem?

But…is this just one of those things that, however unfair, is simply a consequence of capitalist society? Is being able to afford an extra year of daycare akin to having the money to hire a tutor so your kid will ace his SATs?

There are so many factors involved (can you afford to delay enrollment? how will switching from full-day preschool to half-day kindergarten affect your work schedule? will your super-smart kid be bored in kindergarten if you hold him back a year? what’s the overall trend in your community and how does that inform your decision? how will the age differences affect your child’s social life when he’s a teenager?), and there are as many different angles to the issue as there are people to consider them.

I’d love to hear your stories. What worked? What didn’t? How do you feel about the trend in general? Should all kids be tested for academic, emotional, physical, and social readiness before enterting school? Does the entire kindergarten system need an overhaul?