Back to work

Last week was my first week back to work. Everyone kept asking, "Isn't it sooo hard?" And the truth is, it wasn't so bad. If all things were equal and I had to choose between working and spending the day with Evan, I would probably try to find some happy medium where I could do half and half.

I wish I had more time to spend with Evan. This is one area where his advanced sleeping skills kind of work against us. I don't get to see him before I leave for work. I sneak into his room and whisper to him, but he's asleep. I'm not going to go in there and wake him up just to satisfy my own selfish needs. Maybe, in a way, that makes it easier. If I fed him and then he fell back asleep in my arms (what he always does after the first meal of the day), I'd never make it to work. Since Brian has been able to arrange his schedule where he is home most of the week, I also have piece of mind knowing he's in good hands all day long and not with people we don't know very well.

On the other hand, it is nice to be around adults again and have conversations that move beyond the letter, "Ohhhh.*"

*Evan has started interacting with us and whomever he is around. He'll stick out his tongue and if you do it back at him, he will smile and laugh and just think it is the most awesome thing in the world. My sister said that tongues are the first muscle babies can control so when they use it and you use it, its almost like you are communicating with them. Also, babies love to say, "Ohhh." So if you say it to Evan, sometimes he will repeat it back to you with delight. Trust me, it's super cute.

I think I was more nervous about going back to work because I wasn't sure what to expect. There were a lot of organizational changes that happened while I was away. Many roles changed. We are even going to be moving our offices at some point.* But my position didn't change at all. In fact, my direct supervisor and myself probably had zero change. Most of my changes happened pre-maternity leave when I was able to "hand-off" a lot of legacy responsibilities that didn't align with what my particular role is now. Now I get to do what I enjoy doing and not spend so much time on stuff that I don't find all that challenging or interesting.

*In my five years with the company, our division/department has always been on the 7th floor (top floor), which is great because we are close to all the big dogs. During those first five years, we played magical cubes 3 different times, when they "realigned the organization" and then decide that the seating chart needed to be updated. Now, we're going to move down to the 2nd floor. The silver lining is we will probably be among the first groups to try out the new workspaces that will be part of our overall building renovations.

So the actual work part. The first two days it was hard getting into the swing of things because everywhere I went people wanted to know about Evan and ask, "Isn't it SOOOOOOO hard coming back to work?" I would gladly show pictures of my baby boy and just nod in agreement with their question. I'm not sure what they were looking for when asking me that question. Did they think I might burst into tears? Anyway, I was able to go through 2 1/2 months worth of mail (all crap), clean my desk, determine the strategic locations of the pictures of Evan I keep on my desk* and book an interview with some of our experts with a writer for the Wall Street Journal,** in addition to a few other tasks. Not too shabby.

*I wanted pictures of Evan to be within easy eye sight. So I have three on my shelf just to the right of my computer and a fourth picture is to the left. That way, if someone comes into my cube and sits down, I can see my baby boy while we are having a conversation.

**Fair disclosure. I didn't cold call the WSJ and set this up. The writer's editor suggested she contact us for a waste-to-energy story she is working on. My boss' boss was out of the office on vacation Monday. On Tuesday he came back and asked what I was working on and I joked, "I set up an interview with the WSJ on my first day back, what do you plan to do today?" We all had a good laugh.

I did miss Evan's last appointment. Part of me was glad that I didn't have to watch them give him those shots and part of me was very sad that I wasn't there for my son during the most traumatic experience of his short life. I think I teared up a little bit when Brian told me about it.

Yesterday, when I came home from work, he was in his swing just smiling and laughing away. I wanted to hold him, so I picked him up. He did NOT want to be held at that time. So, another lesson learned. Don't wake a sleeping baby and don't pull a happy baby out of his/her swing no matter how much you want to hug and kiss them.