The Juggling Act

This entry is called, "The Juggling Act," and, I am sure, in some way, all of us have had to do it: The exhausting and difficult task of trying to balance work and family..........

I got a slight taste of it when I was pregnant with my son. My male boss, married but no children, was courteous enough about it in the beginning, BUT, I could see the looks forming on his face and his tone changing towards me as my pregnancy became much more obvious.
Then, the never ending questions began: When is the baby due? How long are you going to be gone? Are you definitely coming back? How often are all of these doctors appointments going to be? Now, don't get me wrong, I did expect most of them, but, what I didn't expect was the lack of "congratulations" or a "how are you feeling?" to come out of his mouth every once in awhile. Instead, it was just the constant insinuation that I had not picked a good time for this as our construction company was running at a ridiculously fast pace.
The housing boom in Florida during 2003-2004 was in full effect. EVERYONE was qualifying for loans, house flippers were scooping up enormous amounts of properties and making unbelievable profits, and sunny Florida was where they wanted to buy, and, oh how they did! The owner of our company was a "in it to win it" kind of guy and it was hard to keep up with the number of contracts that were flooding though our doors.
Finally, when I was 7 months pregnant, my prayers were answered and a "temp" was hired to help me and replace me in my absence. It was hard to train her in such a short time, and, I also had to make sure that I didn't scare her away. I don't know why, but, she stayed AND did a great job, so, that became one less thing for me to worry about.
However, my busy mind began to shift to many other thoughts:
How bad was it going to feel to push a human being through my you know what!?! What a downright cruel concept!
Why had we outgrown our "starter" home so fast and how I was dreading the fact that we had to join the feeding frenzy going on in the real estate market at that time.
Then, there was the sobering reality that little voice in the back of my head kept whispering to me...."Don't even think about staying home with the baby permanently. You know you can't live off of one salary these days!"

My constant thoughts were finally side tracked when the big day arrived. The funny thing about babies, though, is they don't care if the time is right or not, they are coming out regardless! So, he was born two weeks early and I was on maternity leave for 12 weeks!
Ah, 12 wonderful weeks away from work, right? NOT. I had a newborn, so, the around the clock feedings and care began, our starter house sold the day after I had him and we had to find a new one pronto, and, because the work load was so high, I stupidly agreed to work part time from home during the midst of all the chaos. My life consisted of two steady sounds for the next three months: The baby crying and the fax machine squealing from all of the incoming work.
There was a silver lining in all of this, though. Once my hormones started to balance a little more and we had mastered the art of switching off nights so we weren't both exhausted, it became more manageable to work and look for a house.
We were lucky to find a bigger house in the area we wanted to live in and we settled in nicely before I had to go back to the office. My wonderful mother in law had agreed to keep the baby while I worked and everything had seemed to have fallen into place.
So, I returned to my job with a positive attitude, but, the fierce juggling act began! The baby had to come first and my previous willingness for overextending myself beyond my designated work hours had changed. Regardless, if an impromptu meeting was called, or if the phone was ringing, or if someone without an appointment wandered through my door at the end of the day, I had a baby to get home to.
Suddenly, I was automatically thrown into another category there, the working mother, and it became immediately obvious that it was not the most tolerant place for employees with too many outside commitments. However, I juggled it. Faxes, emails, meetings, sleepless nights, doctor's appointments, making the bottles, running out at lunch for diapers, I did it all and I learned two valuable lessons through all of it:
It is not only important but vital to feel a sense of support and appreciation from both home and work when you are trying to juggle your responsibilities to each of them. I am sure there are many companies that are more tolerant and understanding to the struggles of working parents. Unfortunately, mine was not one of them, and, my juggling act there went on for many more years and NEVER got any easier or appreciated in any way.
Secondly, I have the deepest respect and admiration for every single working parent out there. The difficult necessity of providing for your family while trying to not miss out on too much of your children's everyday happenings is quite a constant yet rewarding challenge.

Image Credit: http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/life_and_style/career_and_jobs/secretarial/article3618889.ece