2 Mommies and a Baby
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Monday, September 11, 2006
our little-big blog world
First of all, I want to do a shout-out to the bloggers out there who read this blog and who write their own!
I try to stay on top of all the blogs we read even if we don’t comment all the time, and am more than happy to add anyone to our list if they leave me a comment.
I think it’s an amazing thing that we are able to share in each other’s lives through this blog world and want to thank everyone who reads this blog and everyone who contributes to the blog world by sharing their world with us!
Back to our lives (since we have become so solipsistic after getting pregnant)...
Lois is a planner. She is a commitment-phobe when it comes to making plans for entertainment purposes long in advance, but when it comes to money, she wants to know every details of our supposed plan.
I am whatever the exact opposite of that is.
Here’s a poll for our readers...
1. How many people had a watertight plan for the birth of the child as far as the bio-mom taking off work, extra money aside, etc.?
2. How much time did the bio-mom take off work during the child’s arrival? How about the time off the partner/spouse/mommy/daddy took off?
3. If you are interviewing or applying for a job when you are pregnant, what is your moral obligation to your prospective employer (not your legal obligation, but whether you would feel bad or not by not telling prospective interviewer that you are 5-6-7 months pregnant, but when you get the job, you take it, then tell them you are taking 12 weeks off a little while later)????
I am trying to stop her from completely freaking out. She snapped at me this morning when I mentioned her going after this city job, something about how I don’t understand how much day care costs.
She’s not accepting my answer of "it’ll all work out."
I try to stay on top of all the blogs we read even if we don’t comment all the time, and am more than happy to add anyone to our list if they leave me a comment.
I think it’s an amazing thing that we are able to share in each other’s lives through this blog world and want to thank everyone who reads this blog and everyone who contributes to the blog world by sharing their world with us!
Back to our lives (since we have become so solipsistic after getting pregnant)...
Lois is a planner. She is a commitment-phobe when it comes to making plans for entertainment purposes long in advance, but when it comes to money, she wants to know every details of our supposed plan.
I am whatever the exact opposite of that is.
Here’s a poll for our readers...
1. How many people had a watertight plan for the birth of the child as far as the bio-mom taking off work, extra money aside, etc.?
2. How much time did the bio-mom take off work during the child’s arrival? How about the time off the partner/spouse/mommy/daddy took off?
3. If you are interviewing or applying for a job when you are pregnant, what is your moral obligation to your prospective employer (not your legal obligation, but whether you would feel bad or not by not telling prospective interviewer that you are 5-6-7 months pregnant, but when you get the job, you take it, then tell them you are taking 12 weeks off a little while later)????
I am trying to stop her from completely freaking out. She snapped at me this morning when I mentioned her going after this city job, something about how I don’t understand how much day care costs.
She’s not accepting my answer of "it’ll all work out."
6 Comments:
Shout out to you too. Love reading your blog. :)
Had to click on your link there and saw that it referred to the documentary "Making Grace." Did you end up seeing it? We own it if you'd like to see it sometime. I'm sure I could send a copy your way. I didn't like it much--it wasn't detailed enough and didn't really give enough of the TTC aspect of things.
As for the plans... We don't have some big set of plans but Angele did do calculations to figure out how much money we'd have while I'm on mat leave. In Canada (or at least Ontario) we get 1 year of mat leave. I will take 9-10 months of it and Angele will take the rest. We know things will work out, even if money is tight during that time.
As for the job question... I would feel guilty applying for jobs knowing I'm pregnant. I would be upfront with them just because I'd feel weird if I wasn't. I think it's hard to switch jobs while pregnant just because it's a lot of stress/pressure taking on a new job and you have so much going on with pregnancy. I just couldn't bring myself to do it. But others have and are quite happy so you have to do what feels right for you. I would be leery about switching at 6-7 months only because a lot of jobs have a 3 month probation and can easily terminate you instead of keeping you on and giving you mat leave. That being said, since our mat leave can be a year and yours is 12 weeks, it's quite the difference. I think I'd feel more guilty about leaving for a year compared to 12 weeks...
I'll second that, Holly! It's been awesome getting to know you and Lois through your writing. Thanks for sharing so much!
Babies are things you can't plan and it would be a shame to try. I decided to stay home to raise my son after the birth. My husband stayed home for one week and part-time for a second. My mother stayed with us for a week too. You can't plan the temperment of the baby. Some babies are easy and you can leave them with anyone. Some babies cry alot and only want you. You and Lois may not want to leave the baby with someone else and have a greater attachment than anticipated. It's very hard to plan.
As far as getting a new job while pregnant, I feel it's very unfair to an employer. You will have very little time to adjust to the job and the people to you, then take 12 weeks off, and come back a completely different person. I suggest a temp job for now if you really need the money, and a new, more permanent job after the baby is born. You really do change when you have a baby. There are even more hormones when you nurse, even if for a short time. You have different needs and priorities. You have another thing to focus on.
Anyway, just one opinion...
Hmm... money planning... here goes.
We planned on Charlie having a SAHM until he started school at the school I was teaching at. Jean quit her job while pregnant because they found her replacement (she gave lots of notice, and left when they found someone perfect who needed to start immediately). I left teaching for an office job to make more money and to reevaluate if teaching really was what I wanted to do forever. Before he was born, we had a HELOC with roughly $12k in it and another $15kish in savings, plus smaller accounts here and there and plenty of padding in the checking account. I don't remember exact amounts, but it was well over $20k and inching close to $30k if not over that we had at our disposal.
Charlie was born, everything was lovely. Then a supposed friend stole $6000 from us. But, we were still okay. Then Charlie started getting sicker, and sicker, and sicker. We took him to every doctor, every specialist. If it wasn't covered by insurance, we paid out of pocket for it. His medications each had a $50 or more copay and he was getting 2 or 3 new ones every week. Every specialist was $40, and he saw at least 2, sometimes 3 or 4, a week. Each pediatrician visit was $20, and he went at least once a week. Doctors that were out of network or just plain not covered could cost us $500 for one visit. Testing that insurance didn't cover could be over a thousand dollars at a time. He was in the hospital and I had to take time off work because Jean couldn't be there 24/7. Insurance dropped him and we had to pay everything out of pocket before we could get him on medicaid. He couldn't eat anything, and Jean was on a super restricted diet and not making enouch milk for him, so the formula we had to give him averaged about $3 per liquid ounce.
By the time he was six months old, not only was all of our savings gone, but we had taken out another mortgage on the house and run ourselves deep into debt. Jean went back to work (and takes him with) and we went months barely scraping by.
He's 13 months old now, he's pretty damn healthy, and we're back on track. We will be owing medical bills for G-d knows how long, but we've got a roof over our heads and food in our bellies and a child who is still here with us.
Moral of this story? You can't plan anything. But you WILL figure out a way to make it work.
Holly, can I just say thanks for having this blog and letting us all see what is going on with the getting pregnant, being pregnant and learning how to plan or not to plan, etc... I totally plan for kids but right now I have no real concept of the realities of the process.
Maybe I'll find other donor spawn of mine out there when I get pregnant via blogging, too.
My answers are pretty boring because I don't have plans for kids at this time...might re-visit the issue in 5-10 yrs to see how the career plays out. We (husband and I) are less than 5 years into our careers now so it's too soon...
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