Telling your boss

Now that we have chosen an agency, we are starting on their initial application and I need advice from those who have already gone through this process.

When do you tell your boss? My initial plan was to wait until we were home study approved. I don't think it would go over so well with the circumstances of my job. Here's the thing. I work at a college. Mostly I do research and my job next year will involve a great deal of travel. Which of course would need to be reconsidered if I have maternity leave and even when I go back to work I don't want to leave a 3 month old for an entire week. I also teach some classes, which has its own complications when thinking about having a baby. How do I get someone to cover my class? Is it possible to maybe miss one or two classes around the time of birth and placement and then continue teaching a class that meets once a week (while stopping other work responsibilities)? There have been a few men in my department who did that, but no woman has had a child since I've been there.

The uncertainty of adoption makes this conversation even harder. We are making decisions now about who will teach what class next fall. I don't want to not teach a class in hopes of going on leave in the fall, but then not get a placement for a year.

But the first step of the home study process is getting references. And they want work references. So I think I need to have this discussion soon.

Re-engaging

Dear blogging friends,
Sorry for my extended absence, but my life has been crazy for the past month. I had two big deadlines come to a head at work at the same time. One deadline was Wednesday and one was Thursday. unlike most deadlines in my job, these were firm deadlines so missing them was not an option. And both involved a great deal of work, especially the second deadline. We were writing a grant proposal and while we've been working on it all summer, there were many people and many institutions involved and of course it's always hard to get people to actually deliver on different parts until right at the deadline.

I did have a few nice things happen during this push to make the deadline. While meeting with a grad student I work with, I mentioned that I was tired because I didn't sleep much the night before. The next day she brings in a set of CDs she uses to help fall asleep and said she knows what it is like to lie awake at night stressed. I was touched, but then had to explain the reason I wasn't sleeping is that I was up working at all hours of the night. But that was so sweet of her to think of me.

Now my deadlines have passed and my life is somewhat back to normal. I managed to get caught up on email I ignored for the past 2 weeks. I spent some time vegging out and am mostly relaxing this weekend.

I'm back

I've been a bad blogger. Sorry about that. But actually I enjoyed this mini-blogging vacation. Not quite a vacation since I was at a conference for work all of last week, but the conference kept me so busy I couldn't think about babies, fertility, pregnancy, etc. And for a brief week I felt like a normal person again. I didn't wake up every morning and take my temperature. I even (gasp!) drank wine at some receptions. I felt so reckless. Nothing like a little wine and a scintillating research discussion to make one go crazy.

Of course coming back to the real world brought it all back. So much for having a 2009 baby. That won't be happening now.

IRL

I did it.

I told someone IRL about our IF problems. I didn't intend to. I don't even really know the person I told. We are colleagues who are definitely friendly with each other and I enjoy her company, but we don't really know each other well enough to approach the level of friendship.

There we were, talking about the project we work on and I was giving her advice about graduate school and the big conference for our field that is coming up. And then she dropped the bombshell.


She charts.

The only people I've tried telling about charting IRL looked at me like I was crazy and were utterly confused about the whole thing. Who just drops that in casual conversation? She is making her trip to the conference as short as possible because she predicted her next two cycles and doesn't want to miss her fertile period. Now, I have that same concern and usually am bursting at the seams to say something when this topic comes up.

But there I was telling myself to not go down that road and trying to change the subject. And she kept talking about it and said they haven't gone too overboard with charting yet and just have been having lots of fun. So I decided to take the plunge.

It felt really good to get it out the open with someone. I finally felt like I wasn't lying to everyone. My family is always on our case about having kids. And academia is not exactly the most supportive field for having a baby. Even when people are not asking specifically about babies, I feel like I'm lying when I make plans for conferences or data collection trips several months in the future when I'm really thinking, "well, if I'm pregnant by then..."

Now it's out there. Well, I guess the fact that this colleague lives in another city and has a very small chance of bringing up this topic with the rest of our project made it possible for me to open up to her. But still. Someone else knows.