A New Title

Well, word on the street around here is that the Greek Advisor isn't coming back to work after her baby is born.

And the rumors are true.

Now that the cat is out of the bag in my world, I figured I could share it in my blog world too!

Throughout my pregnancy, I have kept an open mind about my options post-baby. I decided to look into childcare possibilities while not ruling out the possibility of staying home if circumstances allowed.

To make a very long story short, when you combine my measly salary (Yay, public higher education!) with my ridiculous hours (Yay, college students!), the cost of 8-to-5 childcare and all of babysitters I would need to cover nights and weekends would have eaten up a good 75 to 80 percent of my salary.

I really began to pray about the best option for our family, while also desiring to have integrity in how I handled the professional side of things. My colleagues are fantastic, and I wanted to leave them in the best position possible for a smooth transition, regardless of my choice.

So a couple of weeks ago, I met with Human Resources to arrange for my FMLA leave. To make another long story short, I discovered that I am not eligible for maternity leave at all. This is all due to the fact that my job was considered temporary for the first 10 months of my employment and only made permanent this past August. Essentially, my temporary employment days do not count toward the 12 months of employment necessary to be eligible for FMLA, and therefore I do not get maternity leave.

In many ways this was an answer to prayer: decision eliminated! Only one option remained, and so a couple of weeks ago I resigned from my job, effective April 30th. Which leaves me one month to plan a smooth transition with my colleagues and with my students. This has been a very bittersweet process for me. I love my job. I love my students. I love my coworkers. I love academia. I love the University of Memphis.

But. I don't love that tonight I will be working until 11 p.m. And that last weekend I worked Friday, Saturday, and Sunday. And that I am only home maybe two nights of the week. And that if I attempted to do this and raise my son, something--someone--would end up terribly neglected.

The entire business of negotiating work and family life, for me, has been a confusing one. My emotions and desires seem to change by the day, and I wrestled with these issues long before becoming pregnant.

Yet I've recently decided that, yes, I can have it all.

Just not all at once.

At some point, I would love to return to work...maybe even to school (that illusive Ph.D. still calls my name at times). And yet this season of my life, I know, is for Riggins. And while I still have a little anxiety over taking the plunge into stay-at-home-motherhood, I have a feeling that once I get this sweet boy in my arms I won't be able to imagine it any other way.