It's always really busy during the holidays; this always makes me think about how much time work takes up. Of course, with Keegan in the picture, this has become more of an issue for me than it ever was before. I made the decision to come back to work full-time. At the time my options were basically quit or come back full-time. I did talk my employer into letting me come back 1/2 time until Keegan was 5 months old. This was a wonderful thing. I don't think I could have lived with the thought of my little 8 week old being in daycare and getting sick all of the time.
Even though I made the decision to come back to work full-time, this decision constantly haunts me. There are a million thoughts about the working vs stay-at-home options always buzzing through my head. When Keegan gets sick, I think I could have prevented his discomfort if I stayed at home with him and he hadn't gone to daycare. When Keegan comes home from daycare tired and crabby, I feel like if he had spent the day with me he would have been happier. Sometimes I feel like daycare is raising Keegan. I wonder about the intelligence of having my child raised by a bunch of girls in their mid 20's to mid 30's. The saving grace of this all is my mother. Had she not offered to watch Keegan a couple days a week, I don't think I would be working still. Well, maybe I would be working.
That leads to thoughts of working and many more questions. Is it selfish that I like my work? Is it selfish to enjoy the challenges of work and the camaraderie of my coworkers? Is it selfish to like the extra money that me working brings into the household? Am I wrong for believing that all my hard work to get through college should be put to use on a daily (or at least weekly basis)?
Like any problem there are many aspects to it. Lyle and I discussed all of these issues many times through and came up with some answers that led me back to work. Of course, like any problem, the questions and situation keep rapidly changing.
When I spent those 5 months at home with Keegan, I was not happy. I missed my work and I missed my friends. I began to see how staying home with Keegan would be mentally very challenging. Staying at home with your child is grueling and under-appreciated work. At times I would even resent Lyle because he could go out to lunch and he could talk about interesting things that happened in his day and I couldn't.
This was part of the decision to go back to work for me. Keegan deserves to have a happy, energetic mommy around. He does not deserve to have a depressed and jealous mommy around. My mental well-being was part of me going back to work. The other part of the decision to go back to work was the money. I make good money. With this money I make we can save up for Keegan's college, we can take Keegan interesting places, we can do interesting things, and we can reduce the general stress of the household. Money isn't everything, but it goes along way in keeping a household secure and running smoothly.
Do all of the above out-weight having somebody else raise my child? I guess I really don't know. To be quite honest up to this point Keegan hasn't needed much direction. We have also been fairly happy with daycare. There have been a couple incidents where daycare skipped a nap, forgot to do his diaper ointment, or forgot to give him his morning bottle. I always talk to them about these issues and the issue is quickly corrected. I understand no one is perfect and they have multiple babies to take care of.
As Keegan has gotten older and can do more things I really enjoy being with him. Sometimes it makes me very sad that he does something at daycare or my mom's house before he does it for me. It does make me happy that Keegan is always happy to see me and always crawls over into my lap when he doesn't feel good. I guess I feel like the time I *do* spend with Keegan is high quality. Lyle and I and Keegan get time to sit down and play almost every night. To be honest more than a couple hours of playing can start to get a little bit boring to me. Sometimes I think Keegan has so many toys so that I can stay interested in playing and not him ;-)
As Keegan gets older and needs more direction though I am revisiting the topic of staying at home. Last week I talked to my manager about going down to 4 work days a week. He was very amicable to the suggestion; although he said it would have to wait until after our project gate in Feb. He suggested a compromise instead; he thought I could work four 10 hour days and stay at home on Friday. Since I am already at work 9 hours a day, it is not a bad suggestion. I will try this schedule out starting in the new year (prior to upper management approval). I was very pleased that he was willing to hear me out on this!
Most of the mothers I know that work say that if they had a choice the perfect work-life balance would be to work part-time. Luckily I am at a job that may be able to accommodate this. If that is the case maybe I can stop angsting a bit about the work-life balance and find a perfect balance with working part-time.
Okay second topic...my knees.
I mentioned a couple posts ago that my knees were giving me awful troubles. Well they are better, but still swelling and hurting. So I had a doctor's appointment today. I love my internist; she is funny, concerned, takes me seriously, and gets straight to the point about a diagnosis. So the diagnosis, while not pretty, was as follows.
Both of my knee joints grind; she jokingly asked me how old I was because usually they see knees like this on a 60 year old. This is because of bone spurs in my joints. The swelling is bursitis (not sure how to spell this).
The bone spurs can be caused by trauma (back to marching band maybe) or can be hereditary. No one knows why it happens to some people and not others.
Short-term the bursitis can be controlled by wearing a splinted brace over my knee, icing it, and taken large does of anti-inflammatory meds. She mentioned taking glucosamine might help if I want to give it a shot.
Longer-term it will not get better, only worse. I can mitigate it by controlling the bursitis (see above) and avoiding high impact activities (like DDR and running).
If the swelling and pain continues long term there are two options; surgery and shots. I can get a series of three very expensive shots into my knee joints. These shots help the knee to lubricate itself and should last a year or so. The surgery would remove any bone spurs from the joints, but would probably only be effective for 1-2 years before more spurs developed.
If my knee at any point gives out I am in trouble. It was pretty wobbly last week but it never gave out. She told me that if it does give out I need to call her immediately; they will have to do a scan to make sure I don't need re-constructive knee surgery. She prefaced all this by saying that this is serious and if I don't take care of myself I will probably need knee replacement surgery by the time I am 40.
So, that sucks. I have had trouble with my knees as long as I can remember, I figured it would catch up to me eventually. Oh yeah, and the doctor also said that she thinks DDR is great fun and recommends that I try limiting my sessions to 30 minutes or so and wearing shoes. She would hate for me to have to give up that fun activity :-) I loved the fact that she was straight forward, laid out my options, and tried to do it with a sense of humor!
She also, like usual, asked me about everything else in my life to make sure I was doing okay in every way. She wanted to know how Lyle was doing, how Keegan was doing, how work was, and how I was handling Keegan having to be in daycare. We discussed the whole work/child thing. She sympathized with it all, told me that she hopes the part-time thing works out, and told me that it sounded like I was doing okay mentally :-) She is great about trying to track overall health to make sure that nothing else is causing me undue stress or discomfort. Anyway, my family has heard enough about how much I love this doctor. Anyway, back to work. I will do my utmost to help my knees be better.
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