Working Mom

Now, before I go any further, this Huzzah is not meant to denigrate mothers who work at/in the home. Believe me, that is just as much work as slogging it for a paycheck, but since I've gone back to teaching, this entry is going to be about working outside the home and still trying to be a good parent.

So, school has been in session for a week, and I am totally busy all day---which is good, because I don't have time to miss Bean until the end of the day, and then I only have about an hour and a half before I see her again. That being said, I must have been in denial about how freaking exhausting it is to be sleep deprived AND working full time in an environment where I can't "sleep when the baby sleeps". I'm so catatonic by the end of the day that I think I get really amusing and witty and honest with people. Really, for a polite Canadian child, this is a huge step. For instance, I was in a meeting today that just sort of rambled on and around and through the loop and back up to form the bunny ears, blah blah blah blah blah. I caught myself saying things like "Look" and "here's the point" and "realistically speaking"...but the odd thing is, people seem to listen more and better when one IS blunt. Go figure. I'm just glad tomorrow is Friday, not least because some very dear friends of ours are getting back from five weeks in India---huzzah!

As for the actual content of my working day, well, I have the great good fortune to have five fantastic classes and one total crackhead class. I mean crackhead in the sense of complete and unbridled zinginess, all period, every period. Thank god it's a smallish class, otherwise I'd be about as zingy.

I am just really impressed with the level of analytic skill and synthesis that my students are displaying, and I think most of the credit needs to go to their 7th grade teachers, so if any of them are reading this, thank you. When the students are this much fun to teach, it's a whole hell of a lot easier to drag myself out of bed at 6 am after a night of intermittent squawks from the nursery. So huzzah for the 8th grade class of 2003.

The hardest part of my day (apart from 3rd period) is the twice-a-day pumping sessions I have to do to keep Bean fed. It's not so much the actual pumping that's hard, I can practically do it in my sleep, it's the fact that lunch for me is only 36 minutes...take three minutes to set up the pump, fifteen minutes to pump, three minutes to clean up and bag the milk...and then I have to go to the bathroom, check my email, eat my lunch, get the milk into the staffroom fridge. Etc etc etc. It's certainly easier to pump at my prep because it's longer and I have no classes afterwards, but often my husband brings Bean by at that time because she's eaten through all the milk I left at home. Ack. It's lovely to see them, that's not the problem, I just feel as though I can't keep any farther ahead than a shoelace tag of this food situation. Well. The good news is that in about three weeks, we can start introducing solids, and the whole feeding thing will just become less and less dependent on me as the year wears on. All I have to say to other working, nursing moms out there is, if you don't have a private office/classroom/whatever, YOU ARE HEROES. Pumping is bad enough when you can lock all the doors and be assured no one will barge in. I can't imagine having to do it in a bathroom or a storage closet.

This is a fine line between a Huzzah and a non-Huzzah, but because Bean went to bed with very little protest tonight AND seemed to enjoy her bath, let's go ahead and make it a Huzzah.