So I’ve decided to go back to work. Have I talked about this yet? I don’t think so. It’s a pretty big decision.
Sometimes when I think about it and I’m with Ash I get teary. I honestly don’t know how I’m going to do this.
Waiting lists are long for daycares here. There’s a new one opening up that has a partnership with Clive’s employers that give us a guaranteed spot AND a good rate (daycares here range from $20-$35/day) in April that I think we’ll put Ash in. A rep came to Clive’s work and they had an hour-long presentation about what kind of place they are (Kids and Co, in case you’re wondering) and they answered all of my overprotective mama questions that I sent along with Clive since I couldn’t attend the meeting. They cater to vegetarians and kids with food allergies, they don’t allow television for babies and toddlers etc. It sounds nice. They’re not open yet, so I can’t go in for a tour, but I will as soon as I can.
We have a family trip planned for the end of April for two weeks (to Ontario, to meet our brand new niece or nephew), and getting a job and needing a two-week vacation period within a month of being hired is pretty unlikely, so I probably won’t go back to work until we return. Good paying jobs are hard to find here, and when we were living in London I was making about $18/hour to do shitfuckall and now I’m faced with the reality that I’m probably looking at $10/hr to work my tail off. It’s not fair. My maternity leave is going to be half of what it was the first time around, and that really blows.
The question is, where to work? I could apply to Clive’s employer and maybe luck into getting a good paying job (even though he works for a large company’s call center, it pays more than most jobs around here), I don’t know how forgiving they’d be of my necessary weekly trips to the hospital for ultrasounds or blood tests (if anyone has had either, you know you’re there for at least an hour). This is going to be a problem with pretty much anywhere I work, though.
There’s a new store opening up in town, and even though the pay is low, it is right up my alley (natural parenting), and I think it would be amazing to spend my days convincing moms that there’s a Johnson and Johnson alternative. It’s surprising to me how many people blindly trust things that are on shelves for babies and children (baby powder, for example) instead of doing research and finding out just how unhealthy things are. If it wasn’t for some key moms online, I’m not sure what kind of parent I’d be right now.
Anyway, I just love talking about parenting and think, that if I could get the job, it would be a FUN job and a fairly easy job, and possibly even a flexible job so that I could go to appointments or if Ash is sick at day care be able to take the day off work for him. But $10/hour hardly seems worth leaving my child with someone else for nine hours a day. It makes me uncomfortable and devastated just to think about.
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A friend of mine explained what it feels like to ovulate a couple of months ago and I had a light bulb moment and was like, “THAT’S WHAT THAT IS?!” and today I felt the feeling (ouchie!) and, sure enough, my calculations are that in two days will be day 15 of my cycle, which means it’s right around when it’s supposed to happen. Thing is, is that I don’t want to be pregnant until I start working, and because I want to avoid having a Christmas baby, I think we’ll probably wait until May or June to really start trying. So, there’s that update.
