Working.

For the first few months that I blogged I did so as a stay at home mom, I guess. Not really a SAHM--as all the internet folk call it--by definitive choice, just by circumstance. I quit a job where I worked full-time overnight when I was eight months pregnant, telling everyone I wasn't sure if I would come back but knowing good and well that I wouldn't. How can you work a job like that with a baby? With children at all? There was only one other woman with a child who worked there, and she worked a lot more than I did, and her husband was a stay-at-home-dad. Problem solved.

This crux of working, being a mother, being yourself, being both--it's hard stuff. There's no better way to put it. When I graduated and had all of these grandiose plans floating around in my head--Pulitzer prize, immediate job at a daily paper--factoring in a baby was nowhere on my radar. It didn't even have a fleeting spot in my universe. And even back then the decision felt complicated. (Ha!)

I've been at the job I have now since July. So, five months. Almost six. I like it. Love it, actually. It's rewarding, and fun. It's flexible. It allows me to remain a mother most of the time, a family literacy program coordinator for a non-profit second. I work from home two days a week, in an office the other three with extremely flexible hours. Addy goes to a babysitter who is also a family friend that genuinely loves her.

It's great. And I have a contract to do this job for a year (I'm an AmeriCorps Vista--essentially the domestic version of the Peace Corps that aims to fight poverty). The thing is--this job pays next to nothing. And that's ok, right now, because the trade off of still being the one who is with Adelyn the most is worth the monetary sacrifice. I can't imagine another job--minimum wage or six figures--that would be so flexible, that would have a boss and co-workers who don't blink an eye when I leave an hour early to go pick up Addy and work from home. (Because, honestly, I often get more work done at home during Addy's naps than I do any other time.)

I never liked staying at home. I'm not miss Worker Bee, I never have been, but I have always been obsessed with feeling accomplished. Being a stay at home mom involves plenty of accomplishment, I know, but I was always aching to put some makeup and clothes on and go somewhere. Even now when I'm dreading finding a way to get myself ready and to keep Adelyn entertained, wishing out loud that I could just work from home all week, I secretly know I want to struggle to put together an outfit, to put myself together and walk out the door. There's just something rewarding in it, in getting yourself together, that I need. Working from home two days a week is the perfect balance.

For now. But what about next year? These kinds of questions drive you up a wall as a mother. I know it's not just me--it's at the center of nearly every conversation I have with other mom friends.

It's a tricky subject, working versus staying at home. What's best for the baby? For the mother? The family? It's a question that divides women, sends them grabbing for their battle gear and arming themselves for a fight. We all think we know what's best for us, our babies, our families--and a lot of us think we know what's best for the rest, as well.

I'm just going to say right here and now that I do not. I don't know. I don't know that I ever will. I know that after this year is up I desperately want to find a job that pays, preferably one that pays me to be a writer or a journalist--what I've always intended to do--but nearly all of those jobs will require a commute and putting Adelyn in full-time daycare. And that's a costly endeavor--both emotionally, for me, and economically. Most daycares cost more than I make right now. I know that when Adelyn starts school, I want to have been doing something for the past four years. I can't always show off the articles I wrote for my college newspaper as credentials.

The thing is, most employers just aren't cool with a mother being a mother first.

I'm working from home today. Adelyn has been napping for about an hour. In that hour, I've confirmed, paid for, and organized the volunteer delivery for four meals to be served at family literacy programming. I've researched half a dozen grants. I've written a press release. I've started my laundry, done the dishes and written this blog. Working from home some of the time works for me--and this job--right now. Wouldn't it be nice if they all allowed us this flexibility?

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Off the Mommy Clock.

This weekend I had my longest stretch of Adelyn-less time. My mom and I spent Saturday, almost the entire day, working on wedding stuff and shopping. We went to lunch. I got a facial. It was a much-needed break.

Jason watched Adelyn from nine in the morning 'til about three in the afternoon.

When I came home he was in the recliner, Adelyn snoozing on his chest. There was a half-eaten bottle on the table beside him. He had a burp-rag thrown over his shoulder, another draped across his knee. The sound of whining teenagers on "16 and Pregnant" played in the background--surely not his show of choice, but whatever happened to come on after what he was watching. The remote was across the room, on the couch. (You can't really run to fetch it when you're in the middle of feeding her, burping her, playing with her, comforting her.) He was in the same clothes as when I left, plaid pajama pants, Sonic Youth T-shirt. Whenever Jason gets time to himself he picks up his guitar, and I know he was hoping he'd get some playing time in that day, but it was still in its place in the corner of the room, untouched.

I walked over to him and pulled Adelyn off his chest. She immediately started crying, as she usually does when she's torn from a position she was comfortable in, and Jason got up, wiped a spot of spit-up off the front of his shirt and took a deep breath.

"I need a shower," he said. And he gave me a kiss and went upstairs.

It was the most validating moment of the past two months yet.

Later that day Jason told me what I needed to hear--what I didn't even know I needed to hear. He told me how hard the day had been, fun and rewarding, but hard. Adelyn had one of her needy days, as she does sometimes, when she's only satisfied attached to a human body. Those moments are sweet, those moments when you can tell she's only happy lying on your chest. But those are also the moments you have to continually forsake a shower, or answering the phone, or being productive. Doing the dishes or doing your work.

About a month after she was born I started working on my own business. I've been trying to establish a freelance career, focusing on writing grants for non-profits, and I've been luckier than I expected in finding projects to start with. But even if you can land that parenting holy grail--working from home--the battle doesn't end. You still have to find time to work, even if you are in your pajamas. And that's infinitely easier said than done when you're doing it on a newborn's time.

Does it make me a bad mom, or a bad fiance, that my most validating moment so far was seeing that frazzled-look on my partner's face? There are those women--those crazy strong women--who do it on their own, who don't even get a moment to see that look mirrored back at them. I think about them all the time, especially when I get a day to myself and come back home to my baby renewed, refreshed. Eager to change a dirty diaper because I got an afternoon away from it.

Seeing that look was like having your boss pat you on the back, saying that all those long hours are appreciated. That maybe you're up for a promotion.

I think we need to see that look in someone else, us mothers. Especially us mothers who are, either permanently or for the moment, treating motherhood like a job. It is work. Even when we're wearing spit-up stained PJ pants while we're on the clock.

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Six years and two days.

It's amazing how different things look in the morning.

Freak out over.

Have I mentioned recently how lucky am I to have a partner like I do? We celebrated our six-year anniversary on Sunday by driving an hour and a half to Monteagle, Tennessee, to a restaurant Al Capone built for his mistress. Before we left we promised each other we'd drop the baby-convos for the night, but ten minutes into the drive we both had a hand on my stomach feeling her kick. It's pretty much impossible these days to focus on anything else.

Jason and I have been through a lot to get where we are. There's still so much, though, I don't know about what makes some relationships work and others fail. But I do know that I'm marrying someone who listens to me cry and rant and only makes me feel uplifted and supported. He runs me a bath when my back hurts and goes to the store to get me ice cream just because my pregnant-self wants some. And when he comes home from work and I'm freaking out about where the hell my life is going, he helps me remember that we don't have to figure it all out right now.

First, I'm going to have a baby.

P.S. She has the hiccups right now, and I can feel them all the way down to my butt. Hiccups in your butt, folks. The things they don't tell you.

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Boredom setting in.

It's the first day I've felt like someone without a job. Or even a goal or an itinerary or a schedule. I woke up early and have spent my time since then reading and watching TV. The climax of the day's excitement came at lunch, when a friend was supposed to stop by to see the new apartment and to eat. So I hurriedly tidied up and traded my pajama pants for arguably real pants only to find out that she couldn't come after all because work had gotten too busy. Back into the pajama pants I went.

I don't function well without things to do. I'm on week three of no-job, and it's taken until today to have that creepy-crawly lazy feeling catch up with me.

I've never been able to take naps, no matter how tired I may be, thanks to that nagging voice telling me I should be doing. I can't sleep in because the second my eyes open, even just between dreams, that voice is back, demanding that I do, do, do. When my health demands otherwise--in the past when I've hardly been able to get out of bed for a day or more at a time--the voice doesn't rest. It only goes to war with my body, calling it worthless and ridiculing its lack of tenacity.

Back in August when I made the final decision that I'd have to leave work earlier than the average pregnant person, I knew this day would come. When I got done packing, and moving, and setting up the new place. When I got to my sixth novel of the month and the novelty of reading voraciously wore off. When enduring 12 more weeks of a task-less existence would suddenly outshine how impossibly fast the last 28 weeks have flown by.

I spent 23 years falling in love with language and words and writing and four years focusing that love on telling true stories and journalism. Then I spent 11 months after I graduated with a bona fide job. And not just any job, but a job with an impressive title in my chosen field, one that is--according to the innumerable experts and professors who drilled it into my heads during college--supposed to be dying, dying, dead. But within a month of getting my diploma I was an associate producer. I was writing the words people call "news." But I still wasn't satisfied.

In 12 weeks or less, I'll have a child. That thought has taken over all others. I've forsaken contemplating my future, my already-stalled career and exactly how I will occupy my time after baby-mania has worn off. And when the to-do list dwindles, I can't help but stop and think about it.

I've always been lucky that I've known what I want to do. Earlier this year, I found a survey in my parents' garage that I'd filled out in first grade. My favorite color is no longer pink. I no longer spell my name with a backwards "r." But one thing hadn't changed--next to future career, I already knew. "Writer." Backwards "r" included.

I only hope my daughter has the same focus, that she can love something so much to look back nearly two decades later and watch the progression.

I guess that when the time comes for me to start teaching Adelyn about hopes and dreams and goals and careers--and who knows what I'll be doing then--I can tell her that when she was born, I was at the precipice of figuring it all out. Teetering over the edge.

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Changes.

I'm about to take pictures of our apartment to post on Craigslist. The hope is that we can have it leased out by next week, our new place picked by then, and everything moved by next weekend. Ambitious, and a little ridiculous, but that's how Jason and I are. We decide to do something and then do it way too fast and with hardly enough planning and we get incredibly stressed and on edge and then, suddenly, everything's done and all's right with the world.

I hate moving. With every fiber of my being. Except this time I have a good, solid excuse to not do all that much. You know, the whole pregnancy thing. So I'm in charge of taking pictures of our apartment now and packing up all the non-heavy stuff and unpacking that same stuff and organizing everything.

Now we just have to find a place.

And this is my last week of working at Channel 4, at least for now. I become an "on-call" producer starting Monday the 2nd, meaning I'll be taken off the schedule until I'm ready to come back. They wouldn't let me quit. This way I don't have to be "rehired" when (if) I decide to come back (I probably won't).

And, by the way, I don't get my insurance through my employer, just incase anyone thought I was manipulating them into keeping my coverage while I sat on my lazy pregnant behind.

This means that, starting Sunday morning when I get off work after working overnight, I will no longer be a pregnant vampire. I can sleep at night--at the same time as my fiance--and wake up when the sun is shining. What a novel thought.

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Can women really have it all?

She's the kind of woman who always dresses the part. She always walks into work with heels, looking professional, smiling, her shoulders up and back. She's the woman who has a picture of her pigtailed four-year-old as her computer background and another of her sitting on Santa's lap taped beside the screen. She's got an ease about her--you just know, from your first day in the office, that she's one of the head honchos. Even though she's only around 30, she produces the highest-rated news broadcast. She's been with the station for 10 years. She's a woman whose husband, when he calls in to ask a question like what she wants for dinner that night, doesn't ask for her by name. He asks for "the hot red head," and everyone--including me, the newest in the hierarchy--knows who he's talking about.

By any definition of the word, she's a success. She has it all.

During my first week on the job, I got to shadow her, follow her into the production booth while she ran her show. We made small talk. I asked her if she really liked this job--if the hours suited her, if she got enough free time (the question I asked nearly everyone during my first few weeks, when I realized I'd gotten myself into the entirely wrong field).

And she looked at me, sincerely, the smile gone.

"This," she said, gesturing at the wall of TV screens in front of her, the row of microphones she'd just gotten done speaking into, "this used to be my baby. But now my baby's at home, and working 10 hours a day is just too much. I try everyday to find a way out."

And here, with this realization off her chest-- maybe expressed to me so openly because I'm not her friend, nor anyone with a real place or reputation within the company-- her shoulders slump, her eyes glaze over. She doesn't look like she's enjoying herself. She has 20 minutes left to go before the cameras stop rolling and she can leave for the day.

This was before I knew I'd be faced with a similar dilemma.

Unlike this woman, this job is not "my baby." It's more like something to endure, something to suffer through because I'm supposed to suffer through it. Because in this economy, I can't expect all my dreams to come true like I thought they would. Sure, if I stuck it out, I probably would one day advance to a producer. I might even be seen, one day, as "that woman," that same woman who really just wanted to go home. But I don't want to. Not there.

I already feel immensely pressured by the battle of the Stay at Home Mom versus the Worker Bee, and I'm not even close to being in the thick of it. By our third-wave-feminist standards, if you stay at home, you're lazy. You're going backwards. You're not living up to your potential. If you work, you're likely going to have to work harder than any one person should. You're not giving your child the attention it needs. How can we have it all if the decision is moot? If you're destined to lose out no matter which path you take--and, even more, if the people doing the judging are women themselves?

I've gotten my fair share of judgement for the decision I've already made. I'll be quitting my job in the next few months. I will try to work something out with the powers-that-be that I might have the possibility to return. And even here, I'm tempted to spout off excuses for my decision--like my health (which, I'll admit, is something to consider) and the fact that as a new employee I'd get the bare bones of maternity leave.

I'm not quitting so I can be super-mom, so that I can be there for every single second of my child's waking life. I'm quitting for the benefit of the first few month's of my baby's life, the last few months of my pregnancy and my health and sanity, and for my career, because I genuinely dislike what I'm doing.

And the icing on the cake is that if I did stay, and I did take whatever leave they'd offer me, I'd be paying more for infant childcare when I returned than I even make.

I might go back to school for a Master's and then PhD. It's much more feasible to juggle school with a baby than a midnight til noon shift at a job that pays little and makes me miserable.

The truth is I have no idea. I know I'll only by 24 by the time I'm done with the beginning of babydom and when I think I'll be ready to resurface into the learning/career world. Most people haven't even started to fathom a career by 24. And I'm confident enough to say I already have quite a bit under my belt.

If you asked the woman I mentioned before if she had the unattainable "all," I bet she'd say no. But if the rest of the world judged her life (as it so loves to do), the answer would probably be yes. Hugely successful career? Check. Adorable baby? Check. Adoring partner? Check. But a satisfaction with life? Not so much, apparently.

I do think it's possible. I think we can have it all.

It's just hard to have it all at once.

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