8 More Days...

I have 8 more day of maternity leave.

I am extremely lucky to have had this time with Joaquin. Most people get between 6 and 12 weeks of leave, of which most is unpaid. So, five months leave is very generous. I know that.

But.... sigh. It is going to be very hard.

It's not that I don't want to work. I thought I might dread the working part a lot more than I actually do. It's that I don't want to leave Joaquin. I am actually looking forward to certain aspects of returning to work. I'll be honest - I'm mostly looking forward to my paychecks. But, I am also looking forward to being around adults during the day and feeling like I have a life outside the house. Plus, two of the most incredible women I have ever met and had the fortune to become friends with will be at work.

But, in my perfect world (you know, the one that WILL NEVER exist except in my wildest, craziest fantasies), I would go back to work for about 25 hours a week, rather than double that (and sometimes more). Unfortunately, I have chosen a career that really doesn't allow that sort of schedule, even in the most flexible of circumstances. It's sort of all-or-nothing when it comes to corporate law. After all, I can't really imagine a client being thrilled to post-pone a multi-million dollar merger because I only want to work five hours a day.

So, here I am, near the end of what my friend's husband has dubbed "the vacation of a lifetime", about to go from 0 to 60 in about 10 seconds.

Mixed feelings abound.

One the one hand, my mom worked full time when I was a baby and still does today and I turned out pretty well (if I do say so myself). I am independent, self-motivated and have never once doubted that I could do anything I wanted. I have never worried about my ability to shatter any glass ceiling that came my way. I admire my mom for being successful both inside and outside the home and have always thought she set a great example for me. I want to teach Joaquin (and his future sibling(s), if all goes as planned) that women are just as capable as men at achieving in the workplace. Plus, I think working will keep my brain sharp. I never want to be one of those women who cannot go twenty minutes without talking about their kids and I am definitely headed down that path.

On the other hand, it makes me so sad to think that there will be days (and I'm sure they will be more frequent than I would like to imagine right now) when I only get to see Joaquin for a brief period in the morning and I get home after he is asleep for the night. And that will kill me.

But, no matter how I feel about it all, I will be back at work next Friday. And I am sure everything will be fine. At least, that is what I have to believe.

Sleep Training, Take Two

Sorry for the long break in posts. It's been hectic around here lately.

So, to catch you up, we decided to put sleep training on hold for a little bit after my last post. We were stressed out and it was emotionally draining. Plus, we were about to go on a trip to Jackson Hole and knew that any progress we made before the trip would almost assuredly be reversed by the change in routine.

About a week ago, we decided we were ready to try again. But this time, we started with just working on spacing out the time between middle of the night meals. I read the infamous book by Dr. Ferber and he suggested that we start with try to get the meals at least 2 hours apart and increase the time from there.

The plan was that if Joaquin woke up before 2 hours had passed since his last meal, only Jay would go in his room and soothe him back to sleep. If he woke up after 2 hours had passed, I would go in, feed him and put him back to bed.

The book suggested increasing the time between meals by one hour every night. We thought that was too harsh and decided we would increase in half hour increments each time Joaquin had successfully slept the allotted time between feedings.

We are now up to 4 hour increments and have been here for two nights. We were not successful last night (but very close). So, tonight we are still trying for four hours.

We also layered in the traditional Ferber method a few days ago (aka, crying). Unlike our first round of trying, we have been much more successful this time around. The first night he protested for almost 2 hours but on other nights it has been as short as ten or fifteen minutes. And, most importantly, he has been going right back to sleep without protest after his midnight meals. What a relief!

So, we are continuing with the training. We are happy we are doing it but it is definitely not easy on us.