Opportunity Knocks

I’m working on getting into a pattern with posting – once a week is my goal, and at least for the time being, I’m meeting my goal. Awesome. This week is my last of full time maternity leave. I’m sad about it, but feeling more confident about being able to leave. La’s summer class schedule plus my transition, means one of us will be with A until July, when my mom will start watching him one day a week (I’ll work from home another, and the other three he’ll be with the Mommy.) My biggest fear is pumping and maintaining our breastfeeding relationship, so if you have tips or success stories, please share!

Ansel is up to 9lbs 6oz as of yesterday, transferring about 3oz during groups, bringing his weight gain to between 7-9oz a week over the last month. I’m pumping once a day usually, at night after he goes to bed, and getting between 3 and 3 1/2 oz to save. I have 40oz + (prompting La to walk around the house singing, “Baby got a forty!”) in the freezer – more than enough to get us through my first day of work, with some reserves as well. The LC I spoke to yesterday gave me some good tips for returning to work, and we bought her recommended bottles (playtex’s ventaire) and La is going to bring him to me for lunch, at least the first few days, so I think we are about as ready as we can be!

He is still sleeping a good 3-5 hours for his first go of the night, with wake-ups after that ranging from hourly to every three hours, with no indication of how it will go. The last few days he’s woken up between 4:30-6:30 and been firmly, solidly, joyfully AWAKE – at least for the next hour or two. This would suck except he is so beautifully full of smiles and coos that I can’t manage to be cranky about it. Because she is amazing, La has taken him at this time and let me get in a bit of a nap until he needs to eat again. Sort of coinciding with these early wake ups, he’s had a bit of a harder time going to sleep. We used to just be able to rock and nurse him to sleep, then put him in the rock’n’play and he’d sleep that solid 3-5 hours; the last few nights, I’ve rocked and nursed, put him down and he’s woken up crying 5 minutes later. This happens between 2-4 times before he’s solidly asleep. I am hoping this is just a little shift and not a full on change to his pattern, and . . .I know that there is no such thing as a schedule or ‘way things are’ at this stage.

But I can’t complain: 

In other news . . .

Before I went on leave, one of the school district’s I work with started talking to me about coming to work directly for them. I really love my job, but the district would be able to offer me (marginally) more money, summers off, and better benefits – all very attractive. I was excited about the possibility, and was biding my time until I heard from them. About a month ago, I got a call. The director said that they had discussed it, and because I don’t have a teaching license, it would make more sense for them to pay my organization for my time – basically, contract me out. The problem with this is that it doesn’t lead to that pay and fringe increase for me, it just gets the district off the hook. I told them I’d look into it, and was trying to think about how I might be able to parlay the whole situation into an increase at work. I consulted one of my best friends, who is also a brilliant non profit professional and A’s fairy godmother. During our conversation, she asked me what I wanted to do eventually. Like, what was my long term goal professionally?

The thing is, y’all . . .I have pretty much just been following bread crumbs for my entire professional life. It’s worked out well for me insofar as I’ve built a pretty diverse skill set and gotten to work really awesome jobs without being worried about following some pre-set trajectory. But, as I inch into my mid-thirties and have a kid, it’s occurred to me that it might be time to actually think about this long-term goal stuff. In talking to her, I mentioned that it would be pretty amazing to work for one of the national organizations doing reproductive justice and sexual health education work. Someday.

The next day, what should appear in my inbox but a job at one of these national organizations. A job that I was both interested in and qualified for, despite my somewhat erratic professional history. It felt like, well . . .a sign. So, I e-mailed the person I know at the organization (who works in a different department) and she offered to put in a good word for me, brushed up my resume and wrote a cover letter, found some writing samples, and sent it all off last Friday.

This morning I got an e-mail requesting a phone interview this Friday. What?!

I’m excited to even be considered for a national level job, so no matter what happens, it feels pretty amazing. But, of course, you can’t avoid the rabbit hole of ‘what would this mean if . . .” And what would it mean? Well . . .

It would mean moving across the country with an infant, leaving the only state I’ve ever lived in, leaving my family  . . . it would mean working at a national level doing work I love, living in Washington DC, raising a kid in an incredibly culturally rich world, having a new job market for La to find a full time faculty position . . .selling the house we love, trying to find a place to live that we can afford in a much more expensive market, leaving friends we’ve known for years, starting completely over socially . . .

I can go on for hours, and I vacillate between excitement and terror, which I think is probably typical. And then I remind myself that we aren’t there yet. An interview isn’t an offer.

But, it’s an interview. And that’s pretty damn exciting. And it could turn our lives upside down very, very quickly.

Please wish me good interview vibes, and say a little prayer that Ansel (and I, by extension) get a good nights rest on Thursday so I can think of smart things to say on Friday afternoon.