Nope!

I have horrible horrible intuition! Nothing happened yesterday, nothings happening today. Why do they even give you due dates? It has to be to make you crazy! Actually maybe it's to make your family crazy so they bug you everyday. It really wouldn't be so bad if everyone else didn't keep asking.
We have to go down to San Diego tonight so I know nothing will happen tonight. No, it will happen when we're suppose to drive 2hrs away for some holiday party for Rachel's work on the 7th (which of course is my lucky #). Her boss tells her "if you don't go I'll be mad". I swear she's like 12 and her bestfriend said she wouldn't go to the dance. Goodness. Anyhow I'll stop bitching for now. Maybe I'll ask them about inducing this weekend at my Friday appt. I guess I'll shoot an email off to our Doula to see what she has to say and to hopefully reassure me. I just start worrying that something's wrong, and it's only been 3 days. I can only imagine 3 weeks ;)

Is it today???

I'm 3 days past my EDD. I think the operative word in that sentence is ESTIMATED. I've never had good "women's intuition", but for some reason I think that today will be the day I go into labor. I keep feeling I'll start active labor sometime after 7pm tonight and give birth sometime tomorrow morning. I guess we'll have to wait and see if my "mother's intuition" is kicking in. I know there are lots of people waiting to hear that this little one is born. I'll try to post as soon as anything changes!

1 cm

I know it's not much but I went to the Dr. today and I'm 1cm dilated. Yippie!!!

I know I could be 1cm forever, but it gives me hope that if I do have to be induced at some point that it will go well. My weight was the same so that's good too. My next appt is a week from Friday and if I haven't gone into labor before then they will hook me up to the monitors to check on the baby and the fluid. The Dr. said he was happy with what he saw so that's great news to me.

I guess I really should get our bags packed just in case.

Okay, I'm scared

I have to admit that I am really scared to become a parent. Sure I worry about the pain of labor, but that's nothing compared to the change my life will experience once the baby is here to be cared for, and I'm really scared. Don't get me wrong, I know I can do it, that's not the issue. I've cared for kids of different ages and loved it. I was even getting a degree in Child Development so I know I can do it, but I also know that it's much different to care for children then to have your own 24/7.
What am I afraid of? Lots of things. I'm afraid I won't bond well with my son or that I'll be a bad mother. I'm afraid that we won't have enoughto give to him, time, energy, money. I know kids don't need a lot of material things but I do want to be able to provide for him. I'm just really scared about how this new little life is going to drastically change our life.

Good to be off

Being home this week and after how my boss treated me I've come to the conclusion that I should have taken off more time before the baby came. Oh well, hind site is 20/20. I love not working, so far at least. I actually get a chance to relax and clean my house. Which I should get going on again today. Maybe we really will move to a place where the cost of living is less and I can stay home, and where my biggest stress is which park to take the lil butterball to this time.

No go

Well I finally talked to my boss. He never said a word about it so I had to approach him before he left for the day on Friday, my last day. I tried to keep it light hearted.

Me- I have a feeling your trying to avoid me regarding the proposal I gave you.
Boss-No, I'm not trying to avoid you, we can discuss it.
M-Well we don't really have to talk about it, I pretty much figured out your feelings by what you said a couple of weeks ago.
B- Yeah I thought that said it all.
M-Well is there any room for discussion about any type of alternative schedule?
B-The only alternative would be a 4 day week...Where you work 10hrs/day.
M-Well I don't think that would help me any because I would still need to get FT childcare, so I'll keep it M-F.
B-I did look it over, and asked some other people in the office and it just won't work with the structure of things.
M-Oh. Well there are a couple of things I wanted to let you know. When I'm here I'll give 100%, but right now I already take some work home to do and I won't do that anymore. My time at home is for my family now. This might mean things don't get done here as quickly as possible so that's something we'll have to work out. Also, I plan to breastfeed and as stated in our handbook I'm going to have to have a place where I can pump 3 times a day.
B-How long will that take and when will you need to do this?
M- Well I'll need to use someone's office and I'd do it during my regular breaks. Once in the morning, once in the afternoon, and once during my lunch.
B-And then you'll take it to him?
M-No, I'll put it in the fridge here to use for the following day while he's at day care.
B-Oh, well I'm sure we can work something out, even if you have to rotate offices. Hey maybe we'll add on a second story with offices and a day care. (dry laugh)
M-Sounds good to me.
B-Okay, well I'm going to be leaving in a couple of minutes so make sure you keep in touch.
M-I will.

*sigh*

So now I'm going to spend time before birth trying to find childcare where I feel confident leaving a 3 month old. During this time I'm also going to see how well we do with my pay cut. I might extend my leave and take FMLA, which I think I can take up to another 6 or 12 weeks unpaid.

I asked the two people I assumed he "talked" to about it and the one girl, HR, said yes he asked her about it but it was pretty much to find out what he had to do to comply with FMLA. She basically asked him what the big deal was. I guess he wasn't too happy about that response. Then I asked the other person, who I had talked to this about before and he said yes he had talked to him about it and he didn't seem too interested. He went on to tell me that when he had his first he had to make the same decisions and he and his wife decided to cut back as much as possible so she could stay home.

Honestly I just think this is so lame. When I start back on I want to keep a log of how often I meet with him and how often I'm doing things that couldn't be done at home. There are basically two reasons he doesn't want me to do this. One of my many titles is I'm his assistant (not personal) and he wants me available for him when ever he wants. Everyone in the office already agrees that he needs someone who is specifically his personal assistant. This would be wonderful since I hate making his personal dinner reservations, birthday limo reservations, ordering flowers for him mom or wife, ordering special wines, calling about his home property taxes, etc. Just maddening. The second reason is he wants me to do customer service, which I hate. It is so not my personality and I have told him this on more then one occasion, but he doesn't care. It's quite rude actually. Dealing with customers gets me all stressed out and I really don't know how to handle them. I'm non combinational so I usually try to get someone else to take care of them. That's just the customers that call or email us. There is a whole other group of people that we actually pay someone to call and ask how there experience was. I HATE solicitors so if it was me on the other end of the line I would already be ticked off by the fact that they are calling, most likely at dinner time. Even if I really didn't have a problem with the company I would list anything I disliked, and that's exactly what happens. It just such a bad concept.

Anyhow, I'm rambling now. I would quit my job in a heartbeat if I could, but the pay is okay and I don't think I could find something better. I will be looking though.

The Final Countdown (sung of course)

Well there are only two days left until my leave begins and other then “maybe I should wait on my first impression”, my boss has not said one word about my proposal. I think he’s basically just avoiding me at this point figuring that if I don’t talk to him about it, it means everything will be the same upon my return. Little did I know that he was going to be out of town until tomorrow afternoon which makes this avoidance tactic very easy for him. I’m in the process of writing him an email letting him know that I had hoped to talk to him about this, and to find out if there is any room for discussion of an alternative schedule or if my only option is FT M-F.

Even if this is the only option I need to let him know that I still want to cut down my hrs to 9-4 so that I can have time to drop off and pick up my son from the people who will now be raising him, whoever that may come to be. No, I’m not bitter :( I also need to let him know that I will no longer work OT at the office or bring work home, as my family will now come first. As well as the fact that if I am going to be working at the office FT that I need a place to “lactate” as allowed by CA law and included in our handbook. So three times a day he has to offer a private space where I can pump, and it can’t be a bathroom. I actually hope this will help in my plea for an alternative schedule. Don’t men usually get all freaked out by this woman bodily function stuff?

At this point I am also “training” a temp. I feel like I’m a horrible teacher, but she seems to be picking up things really well, so maybe I’m not so bad after all. I guess she was just really quite the first day and seemed bored, which I can understand. The only issue I foresee at this point is the fact that she told us she got let go at her last job because she is too detail oriented, which to me says that she might have a hard time meeting deadlines. I can already see the detail oriented issue in the way she is doing things. My boss has very strict deadlines and he does not accept excuses, so I need to try and explain a few tricks to her, which I can only hope she will take to heart.