Missing out

One of the frequently-fired missiles in the mommy wars goes something like this: "As a stay-at-home mom, I'm able to attend all of the class parties at my kid's school. I see all the kids who don't have a parent there because both parents work. I see how sad those kids are."

I always roll my eyes at that. "Well, I have a flexible work schedule. I'll be at every party. No problem. It's called work-life balance, duh."

At the orientation meeting for Littles' preschool, we got the calendar of all the important dates for the year, and I dutifully sat down and put every single party for the entire school year into my calendar. I wasn't going to miss a single one!

Fast forward about two months. I received a calendar placeholder for my training in Seattle this week, went to accept it -- and realized that the last day of training conflicted with Littles' very first class party.

An enormous wave of mommy guilt washed over me. I immediately pulled up an instant messenger window to tell Hubby to please, please, please make time to go to Littles' school on November 19th for a special Thanksgiving lunch.

He agreed. Mommy guilt assuaged.

That is, until my normal pre-bedtime phone call with Hubby and Littles tonight. Turns out it wasn't just lunch; the kids put on a little play for the parents. Littles' class sang songs, and apparently Littles (who loves to sing at home) just stood there and didn't sing anything!

I giggled at that with Hubby, and then it hit me: I missed my daughter's first school play :(

I pressed Hubby for more details, but I could hear Littles wailing for bedtime in the background. He said, "I'll tell you all about it when you get home."

I can't wait.

My worst day as a working mom

I was in the office today and had lunch with one of my friends, who had her first baby back in January. She just started back at work a few weeks ago, so not surprisingly, it didn't take long for our conversation to drift to the topic of working motherhood.

She is pretty unhappy right now, for a variety of reasons, and talking fairly seriously about quitting her job to stay home with her daughter. Listening to her struggles took me back to my early months back at work.

I started this blog about three months after I returned to work, which means you all were spared the depths of my working-mom despair. I've talked a little bit about it, here and here, but... well, it was bad. Sometimes, I look back and I'm just amazed I made it through and that I am so genuinely happy right now. That's what I tried to get across to my friend.

Specifically, I told her about my worst day as a working mom.

It was in December, the week before Christmas, so Littles was 6 months old and I had been back to work for just under two months. I was working in the same job that I had had before going on maternity leave, which was an onsite product support position. Pre-baby, that job often took me on the road for overnight travel.

Luckily, while I was on maternity leave, an amazing opportunity opened up. A customer located just 20 minutes away from my home purchased a block of "dedicated" hours -- basically, they paid big bucks to get a support person assigned to work through support issues with them. I hoped to be that person, as it would guarantee little to no overnight travel for me.

That week before Christmas, there was a big meeting at the customer site to discuss plans for a big project that would require a significant amount of support. I was invited to sit in on the meeting. All the project bigwigs would be at the meeting, and I saw this as an opportunity to make a good impression and solidify me as their dedicated support person.

The meeting was scheduled from 8 AM to 5 PM. Since Hubby was out of town, this meant I had to ask Maria, our nanny, to come at 7:30 AM so that I could leave Littles with her and get to the meeting. Since it usually took a few minutes to get Littles settled with Maria, I told the meeting organizer that I'd likely be a few minutes late. Not much I could do about that -- I felt bad enough making Maria come an hour early as it was. But I also felt bad wandering in a few minutes late, knowing that the reason for my late arrival likely hadn't been communicated to all the attendees.

As usual during onsite customer visits, pumping was a huge pain. The meeting ran all day, with just some very brief breaks and a working lunch. I didn't even have enough time to make it out to my car, so I pumped in the bathroom for the first time. The female bigwigs from the meeting used the same bathroom, and I worried about what they thought when they heard the "whoomp-whoomp" of my pump. In my head, they were saying, "Why is she pumping in the bathroom? She's so stupid." "She breastfeeds? Yuck. That's so gross." (No one actually said anything to me, but I worried nonetheless.)

I also stressed about not being able to pump often enough. I had had a bout with the stomach flu about two weeks earlier, which had killed my supply, and my freezer stash was dwindling dangerously low. I was pretty sure I was just days away from supplementing with formula. It was a very bad time for me to have a day where I could barely pump at all.

So it was a stressful day for all those reasons. But the kicker came at the end of the day.

As I said before, the meeting was scheduled to run till 5 PM. 5 PM rolled around and the leader showed no signs of wrapping things up. Then, at 5:30 PM (the time that Maria expected me home), we launched into an entirely new -- and extremely important -- topic of conversation. This was not something that could be covered quickly. I knew it could take hours.

I sat in the back of the room squirming. With Hubby out of town and no family or friends anywhere nearby, I was the only one who could pick up Littles.

There were no openings in the conversation for me to explain why I had to leave. And I was on the verge of tears anyway, and didn't trust my own voice.

Finally, at 6 PM, I got up and just walked out. (I later found out that the meeting ran until almost 9 PM.)

I ran to my car and sobbed the entire way home. I felt like a complete failure, as an employee and as a mother. I just wanted to make it all stop, quit my job and stay at home and stop feeling pulled in so many different directions. It is very lucky that I was at a customer site and not at my own office, because if my boss had been there at that moment, I might have quit my job on the spot.

That was absolute rock bottom for me. I teared up today as I was talking to my friend about it, just remembering all the emotions I was feeling at the time.

It turned out that I hadn't made a terrible impression on the bigwigs -- or if I had, no one said anything or acted badly towards me. I was able to act as their dedicated support person for the next few months, until I moved into my current job, and it kept my travel low and my life somewhat sane.

On the mom front, Maria didn't mind my late pickup at all. And I made it through the last few days before Christmas (and then my remaining months pumping at work) without having to supplement with formula, so there were no long-term ill effects from that day of not pumping enough.

And now... here I am. Happy with my working mom life. If you had told me on that December drive home that I would be here today, I never would have believed it.

I'm so glad I stuck it out.

I missed my daughter's birthday

Littles' birthday was last week and I was out of town on a business trip. She's only two and so I know she didn't know the difference, but I felt guilty not being there.

To make matters even worse, the meeting that I had to attend was really stupid and a waste of time. Yet it was timed perfectly to make it completely impossible for me to catch a flight that would put me home before bedtime.

Sometimes, being a working mom really sucks.

I'm still alive!

I know it's been a while, but yes, I'm still alive!

I made another trip up to Seattle last week. It was pure craziness, as a number of my friends and co-workers were there as well, so we had some late nights out on the town :) And I thought I didn't get much sleep at home with a 1-year-old who wakes up at 7 AM every day. Yeesh.

This was my longest trip yet, at six full days. I left early Sunday morning (there was a meeting on Sunday afternoon) and got home on the red-eye early Saturday morning. I had fun and got some good work done, but by the end of the week, I was so ready to come home. I missed Littles and Hubby terribly, and the week just dragged on and on.

As a result, I continued what is probably a bad habit: I buy Littles a gift on every trip I take. It helps ease the guilt I feel from leaving her. Sort of. At least this trip, I had the good sense to indulge at a thrift shop, where I picked up a baby University of Washington football jersey for all of $2.17. Last trip, I happened to walk past a super-expensive toy store just a few hours before my flight. Not. Good.

Nothing has changed with Littles' nursing situation since my last trip -- she still nurses morning and night -- so I had to pull out the pump again. I skipped my pumping session on Sunday night, and ended up pumping really late (ummm, 3 AM) on Monday night, so my supply seemed to take a bit of a hit, and Littles seems a little less interested in nursing now that I'm back home. I'm fine with that; I'm not rushing her into weaning fully, but whenever she's ready, I am too.

I'll have only two weeks at home before I have to head up there for another week :( It's OK, because I did have a long stretch at home (4 full weeks) between my last two trips, but ugh, I'm not really looking forward to it.

The one thing I'm happy about is that Hubby and Littles may come with me on the two trips after this next one! I have a meeting in Jackson, Wyoming, in mid-September, so we're all flying out a week early for vacation. Then, Hubby has to go to Seattle in late September, so if we're able to find backup care for Littles, I'll probably try to fly out that same week and we'll bring Littles with us. Cross your fingers that it all works out!

In conclusion, I'll leave you with another installment in my "Where I pumped today" series. This is the nursing room at Seattle-Tacoma airport. Yes, a nursing room! It's a quiet, private space with two rocking chairs and outlets for moms who need to pump. Far better than nursing in public or pumping in a bathroom. Every airport should have one of these! I pumped here on Friday night just before boarding my red-eye home:


Adjacent to the nursing room is a children's play area. Brilliant! A place for active toddlers to burn off some energy before boarding their flights. Hopefully Littles will get a chance to play here in a few weeks when she comes up with Hubby and me!

I might just be the worst mom ever.

That's how working mom's guilt sometimes makes me feel.

Littles has had a rough time adjusting to Texas. First, her sleep schedule was all off, thanks to the time zone change. Then, on the Wednesday after we arrived, she came down with a double ear infection, which further threw off her sleep.

After a pretty rough day, she recovered well from that, and she started in her new nanny share last Wednesday. The first day went fine. On Thursday, the second day, I could see a tear running down her cheek when I came to pick her up, and Kristi (the nanny) said, "She's been fussy and clingy all day. I think she's missing you."

Sigh. At least Friday was better again.

But then, literally minutes before her first birthday party started on Saturday, I thought she felt a little warm. Sure enough, she was running a fever, which eventually spiked up to about 103 overnight.

We took her to urgent care midday Sunday, and the doctor said she looked fine and probably just had a virus or other infection. Her fever broke not long after that.

So I figured I'd proceed with my longstanding plans to catch a 7:30 AM flight to Seattle this morning. I was a little nervous, what with the bad day at Kristi's on Thursday and the fever over the weekend, but I figured I didn't really have a good reason not to go.

Until Littles refused to go to bed last night.

We're still not sure what that was about. She screamed whenever we put her in her crib, or tried to rock her, or tried to lay down with her. All of a sudden, around midnight, she calmed down and started running around and laughing and playing like it was the middle of the day. Strangest thing! I was finally able to nurse her to sleep at about 12:30 AM.

So I skipped the early-morning flight to see how Littles did today. She did just fine, settling down easily for her nap, so I felt better about proceeding with my Seattle plans.

I was able to stand by for an evening flight tonight at no charge, so that worked out well. But boy, I did not want to go. I think about her wanting her mommy, wondering where I am, wondering if I'll ever come home again, and I just want to cry :(

It's going to be a long week.