I am fairly certain that during the week George either prefers Rob to me or has seriously got her punishment/ manipulative game on, in which case, Bravo, she got that from me.
Sure, when I walk in the door, I get this HUGE smile. However, once I wash my hands and come over to pick her up, she's pretty much over it. I may be projecting, but it is as if she remembers that I was not home all day and just for that, she is going to be withholding now. Whereas with Daddy, who did not abandon her, she has nothing but smiles and giggles, for mommy it is more of a "meh, sure you can sit next to me," kinda deal.
This causes me to spend all weekend trying to make it up to her. I get all up in her face and try to give her all my attention and love and good vibes. This works. By Sunday she is pretty much "I want mommy," putty in my hands, but come Monday, I am out the door again.
I was just reading a friends post about the COMPLETE HORSESHIT maternity leave at her work and it made me want to cry. I remember being so grateful to the very generous (by U.S. standards) maternity leave policy at my work. I remember talking to a couple other mom managers at my work who said they were so ready to come back after the allotted paid 12 weeks. When my twelve weeks were up, I was certainly not ready to come back, but I felt this incredible guilt that I was not. I felt like I was being a slacker. Not because anyone at work was overtly pressuring me to go back. I certainly could have used vacation time to extend my leave. But there is definitely this culture at work, this tone of conversation, that is not necessarily as open as we say we are to family flexibility. That said I am ridiculously fortunate to work where I work. I flex my schedule to go in and leave early and I am able to work from home most Fridays.
Being a working mom is so ridiculously hard. Not only for the logistics of everything (which, to toot my own horn, I think I am handling pretty adeptly, b/c I am a bad ass project manager) but for all the emotional turmoil that you are working through.
1. Guilt over abandoning your child at home and not being there for them every second
2. Guilt over being glad that you can pass over responsibility of your baby for a while and do your own thing.
3. Guilt over being happy to not have to feed and clean up after her.
4. Confusion and guilt over the "what do I want to do with my career now?" conundrum. I have been getting encouragement to move up in the organization now and I think pre-baby i would have been all over it. Now I find myself wondering
- if this would be more hours working and thusly away from my child.
- am I being a bad feminist for not jumping on this opportunity? I mean I know I am not b/c that is not my kind of feminism, but am I?
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