The sacrifices & compromises

In my last full-time position, I was given the opportunity to actually do the work I always wanted. I had not one, but two large-scale true urban renewal projects. Fort Myers isn't exactly a metropolis; but I was the project manager for two of the most dense, urban scale mixed-use projects in the City's history. It didn't really hit me until the day before I realized I was pregnant with MiniMe. My company had sent me to the State Planning Conference & I was very actively pursued by several other employers. I felt like the new, pretty girl at school. Except this had nothing to do with my appearance & everything to do with my brain. It was a profound moment in my life. Trying to talk about it makes me stutter. 

I was completely unprepared for becoming a mother in so many ways. Yes, my own mother worked through most of my childhood, but of course that first year, when she stayed at home with me, I don't remember that. I didn't realize that finding a caregiver was so hard. I didn't know that I would feel so torn; that I would come to resent my career for taking me away from MiniMe. When my boss tried to dangle a carrot in front of me that she might want me to take her place when she retired, I was already feeling the weight of what I wanted. I was honest. I told her that I wanted to have a child, & I knew that she worked longer hours than I would be willing to with a new baby. She assured me I could do it. It was a vague statement, & I remember feeling like I was expected to just smile & nod & move along. When I complained later of the trouble I had getting MiniMe to sleep the woman actually suggested I drug her. It's what she did with her children, after all.

I remember being three years old & refusing to speak English to my mother. She was away from me most of the time. I resented the changing of rules between when she was around & when she wasn't. "No es Mama!" I would shout. I believe it's something that made me a better mother to MiniMe, who so greatly needs to know what to expect. 

I never expected to be on this side of the Stay-At-Home/Working Mother battle. I always felt that I didn't deserve to have a choice. I spent so much time & money on my education. I am talented in my field. I felt the choice was made, if not for me, because of me. But when I think back to that the panic I felt when our nanny pulled the rug out from underneath me & I suddenly had no childcare, I shudder. The relief I felt when I found the wonderful, but outrageously expensive Montessori school that she attended for the majority of her first 3 years, was monumental to me. 

When I remember that first day back to work I get angry, but mostly at myself. I was lucky in that Biggie was the one who took her in, that I got to pry her from my breast in the privacy of our own home, was given the time & space to try to get ready for work in solitude & silence (except for my blubbering).  When I rushed in on my lunch hour to nurse her, she had already been fed & was asleep. I was full of milk. I had left my pump in my office. I just sat in a chair & held her & wept. Ms. Kim, who would become one of the people I am most grateful for, brought me Kleenex. I hadn't wanted them to let her go hungry. I was glad she was taking the bottle. I just didn't know it was going to be so hard. We had an appointment with the pediatrician that afternoon & he had told me that if she wasn't yet eight pounds he was not going to sign for her to be in daycare. I nursed her in the waiting room until they called her name. She was eight pounds, one ounce. As we drove home, I had expected to feel relieved. I could go back to my work & feel I was doing a good job as a mom, too. That's not how I felt. 

It is so hard for me to put into words how I feel about this scenario. Saying I am mad at the way that families are treated in this country is an understatement. No, I don't think parents should be given special treatment in society. I certainly think children should be. I'm not saying they should be allowed to run around like hooligans. I'm saying I think that we were made the way we are for a reason. The whole thing I went through of going back to work when MiniMe was just 9 weeks old?? Yeah. Never shoulda happened. It was torture for a reason. Both my body & her body were designed to put us through bloody hell if we were separated the way we were because it wasn't in our best interests. Now, I know there are some mamas out there that NEEDED to go away from their kids for a few hours (preferably to somewhere with someone playing a harp & a king-sized tempurpedic bed) when their kids were nine weeks old. It's alright. I get that. However, the majority of women, & babies if they could, would tell you they'd probably be better off, & choose to be, together. 

We have to screw with everything. We have to take every single natural process & try to make a buck off of making it better. I am completely not surprised with the whole formula thing. I wonder if anyone has ever taken it as far mentally as I have. Wouldn't be shocked. Follow me, here... 

It's no secret that men love boobs. But truthfully, boobs are meant to serve the purpose of nursing, producing food for the babies. Now, I know that there are a lot of women out there that can't nurse successfully & I'm not trying to make any judgements on them or the families who simply choose to use formula because they don't want to nurse. But the pushing of the formula!! The gallons upon gallons of free formula given to new or soon-to-be new mothers! We've got a perfectly good system of feeding babies, but we can take this thing that was invented to feed orphans or kids with sick mothers, tell everybody it's better than breastmilk, make tons of money off of it, our wives can go back to work & we get our wives boobs back to ourselves, again! (I literally had a dream involving Mad Men about this)

Then, there's the cereal... It will help them sleep better, it will help them gain weight. It has been found to increase the likelihood of diabetes! Yeah! Not only that, it tastes like wallpaper paste!

Sometimes I feel like in the effort to free women from the trappings of motherhood, we kind-of made it an expectation. I feel like people use these 'advancements' to pressure mothers into spending more time away from their babies than they really want to. I feel like shaking a fist in the air & it's not because I want to stay home with my little offspring, gloating in the wonderfullness of bon bons. It's because it's what I feel I am supposed to do. I don't resent her. I resent that I'm going to have take a hit in my career for doing what I thing is the right thing. Anyone who knows me knows I take this work, of being a parent, seriously.

One of my peers, who seriously is a mentor, but so funny & humble she comes across as more of a peer, has a daughter in her second year of college right now. The friend is beautiful, witty, an excellent cook & hostess. She has an illustrious career. The daughter is darling, insightful & charming. When the daughter was graduating from high school I was leaving that last full time position. My friend told me in an almost self-deprecating way that I was doing the right thing. My friend was sad & was questioning her past decisions to not stay home for a while with her daughter. I don't want to be watching MiniMe graduate from high school & feel like I missed something. I'm grateful for this time & glad we, as a family, found our way to it.

Feminist my ass

I've been reading a lot of blogs, editorials, and commentaries on Sarah Palin over the last few weeks, as I'm sure many of you have. I know mine is not a unique opinion, but I have finally been able to verbalize what it is that bothers me so much about her. She's a bitch.

I know, I know. It's not nice to call someone you've never met names like that. I don't care. Let me explain...

In the spring of 2004 I left my municipal job to go back to consulting. I was excited to go work for a woman who had worked her way up, creating a Planning Department in an notoriously good old boy South Florida engineering firm. Let's call her Peg. Peg fought hard for me to take some time off before I came to work there, getting me paid vacation time, because she knew I would hit the ground running. At my 90 day review she gave me a raise. She was extremely pleased with my performance. Peg told me she was excited that she had found me because she was looking to retire in a few years & she wanted someone to take her place. She told me she believed that I possessed the ability to do the work as well as manage the politics of the office. Then she told me that she was glad that I got away from my boss at the City because the day that I turned in my 3 weeks (yes, I was trying to be nice) notice, my old boss had called her to say, "You know she's going to leave as soon as she gets pregnant." Peg shook her head over how mean this was telling me she was glad I didn't have to work for that woman anymore.

To be fair, I have no idea if my old boss actually said this, though it is possible. It is completely possible that Peg pulled this out of her ass.

I worked very hard, until almost 7pm every night, & wooed an important project to the firm that I had wanted very badly. Although I was hourly, I only claimed one extra hour a day. I felt the prying eyes of my peers on my back.

I got pregnant the following October. I actually did a pregnancy test in a hotel while attending a state conference. I didn't tell my boss until December. Other women in my department had kids. Peg looked the other way when they came in late or had to leave frantically to rescue sick kids. I didn't feel like I had anything to worry about. When I was put on bedrest 30 weeks into my pregnancy, Peg changed me to a salaried employee so that I would be able to keep my benefits. I was permitted to work form home. My billable hours were around 20 hours a week during that time. I found out the fiance of a man that worked at the firm was looking for work as a nanny. We had them over for dinner, talked about parenting philosophies, & we agreed on a price. I was relieved.

MiniMe was born 3 weeks early by emergency cesarean after 21 hours of labor. When I tried to turn in my paper work for my short term disability insurance, I found out I didn't have any. I went through my files & found photocopies of the forms that I turned in when I started working. Apparently HR never took the money out of my checks to pay into the program. I had never noticed the $1.12/week wasn't being taken out of my check. So now not only was I not going to get that money, I also had to find a way to pay my insurance premium while I was on leave. When Peg called me to see how things were going I told her about this. She basically told me it was my fault for not verifying money was being paid into the program.

When MiniMe was just 6 weeks old, I called the nanny to ask her to come meet her. She told me that her soon-to-be husband was uncomfortable with the prospect that she might be home alone with my husband. Basically, my response was, "Huh?" Maybe it was more of a "Wuh?". I was floored. I was scheduled to present my pet project at public hearing in 3 weeks. I had an infected incision and a teeny baby that wasn't nursing correctly. Now I had to find someone, somewhere to take our precious girl. I found a wonderful Montessori school that had an infant program that followed philosophies I loved. It was $350/week.

When I went back to work, I was miserable. MiniMe was barely eight pounds. I would go to nurse her on my lunch hour & cry. I would go home in the afternoon & sit with her for hours, working on nursing. Because she was so tiny, I was only allowed one four hour stretch of solid sleep. After that, I had to nurse her every two hours, or pump & have my husband give her a bottle. My husband worked an average of 70 hours a week during this time. I was working 6 hours a day & flailing. Although I had my own office, I didn't have a lock on my door. When I pumped, I put a fluorescent post-it that was 3" by 6" on my door that said "ABSOLUTELY DO NOT OPEN!" People ignored it. I was told I needed to go to the women's locker room to pump. It made people uncomfortable to know what I was doing in there.

Another project manager criticized me for getting up at 5:15pm to leave a meeting. When I explained that I had to go pick up my daughter, he said, "Can't you just get someone else to pick her up?!" My husband had to work until 8pm, the school closed at 5:30, I was full of milk. The meeting was consisting largely of them discussing their golf games at this point. I don't golf. I looked at him & said, "No, Dan. I have no one else to call. Unlike you, I do not have a wife, or heck, even a spouse that stays home. I AM the wife, Dan!"

The landscape architects for the firm were largely four recently graduated men that sat in a big square of cubicles in an isolated area of our building. I had problems with them all along. They had photoshop images with each others heads pasted on figure skaters & a little putting station. They billed twice the hours they quoted to my projects & were shopping on ebay. One day when I was leaving their area after discussing review comments, I thought I heard the sound of a cow mooing. I ignored it. To get to the kitchen I had to cross by their area. The cow sound, followed by the snickers of fraternity boys, would be heard every time I passed by. When I complained to my stupervisor I was told that I must be misunderstanding something. Yeah, because between my 7 years of college & multitudes of animal toys in my house, I have no idea what a cow sounds like.

I went back to work full time between December & April. I don't know how I did it. In April, I begged Peg for mercy. She asked me what I needed. I told her I needed to be done by 2:30pm & was fine with being hourly, as long as I kept my benefits. She said fine, as long as I was there at 7:30 every morning. I don't remember much about this time of my life, except that I was moved from my office with a door to a cubicle between administrative assistants and interns. My clients would come all the way from Israel to be embarrassed at the conditions I was given to work in. Peg quit being my direct supervisor & I was now overseen by someone I had been told I would never work for when they hired me. When I had my review he told me I was costing the company money, being part time. My billable hours were at 81%. The man reviewing me was at 65%. When I confronted Peg with this she told me he was right, I wasn't coming into work on time. It made no sense to me. They were moving me to a smaller cube. I felt like I was in Office Space & needed to track down my stapler.

My husband & I had decided we wanted to move out of Florida. We decided that signing a contract to keep MiniMe at the Montessori for a year wasn't a good idea. The tuition would be almost half of my salary. I turned in my resignation & two days before my last day, Peg repeated what my previous boss had said. "I didn't think she was right that you'd really trash your career after you had a baby."

That's the kind-of feminist Sarah Palin is. She's had to hand babies off to someone else to take care of, but been able to afford to pay someone she can trust. She holds herself up as a woman who can "have it all", without acknowledging that it's not a level playing field. She allows someone to use her as a pawn, because she's pretty. She agrees to sell out other women, mothers, hell, even her own daughter, for her own ambition. She agrees that families in this country don't deserve healthcare unless they can afford it, that they should leave their children with people they don't feel comfortable with to pay for that healthcare, and even if a woman is raped, she should still be forced into this situation because it isn't fair to the baby to not be given a chance. I'm not even bringing up the issue of that if the woman is unfortunate enough to have to have a cesarean to bring that baby into the world she will be labeled as having a pre-existing condition that will slap her with higher insurance premiums for the rest of her life. That's for another post.

I'm not saying that women don't have the right to go back to work if they choose to do so. I am saying that for some women, it isn't a choice, & Sarah doesn't even acknowledge that. Even women who can chose to stay home with their children do so at a risk to their careers. What about the men that do so? She stands on a platform of "family values", when she refuses to consider legislation that will help every family have the same opportunities for their children. Sarah perpetuates the system that ignores the best interests of my child, just like Peg, she's a bitch.