Working Mama Wednesday - Prepping for Leave

Even though we haven't figured out all of the details of new baby's case (in fact there has been even more crazy drama introduced) and we're not going to be sure how it will turn out until the baby is at least 48 hours old, we do have to plan as if the baby is coming as to not get caught off-guard.  We're not buying clothes and stuff, but still trying to be as ready as possible if and when the phone does ring.

We're busy, so we don't think about it too often.  But when we think about it often enough to roughly keep track of when the baby is due and how many weeks there are left before the due date.  The answer right now is 5, about 5 weeks.  Which means mom must be about 35 weeks pregnant.  I'm trying to keep that in mind so I can remember what it was like when I was 35 weeks pregnant.  Of course I was shooting for the unmedicated/intervention-free birth via the Bradley method so I'd mentally prepared myself to go to 42 weeks just in case so at this point I thought I'd have 7 weeks left which I hope isn't the case in this situation, but regardless.

One area I'm keeping in mind is work.  I will be staying home for a period of time, depending on how things work out somewhere between 6-10 weeks or so, maybe a little longer depending on how I do my leave.  With my son I took off 13 weeks, which was great (not long enough!) but as it came pretty quickly I probably won't be able to swing that financially.  The new job I took this year involves project management at a high-level, and all of the things I'm working on are just in the beginning of the project, which means they aren't at the point yet where I could walk away and leave instructions.  So I'm doing my best to try to plan and prepare and get things ready so if I did have to go with 48 hours notice then I'd be able to make that happen with minimal glitches.  The more days that come and go the more opportunties I have to prep for leave and the more likely I'll get the call. 

Prepping can be a challenge though.  At this poitn 35 weeks, the only people I've mentioned this all to are my boss and my peers.  No one involved in my projects are aware that I'll be taking time off.  That's partly because it's still a bit early, but partly because it's kind of an awkward conversation.  At 36 weeks pregnant with my son everyone knew that I'd be taking leave soon.  I had it all planned so that I'd take off at the end of the month and I was due the middle of the next month, which would give me a couple weeks off and to get ready.  I had him the Saturday night/Sunday morning after I stopped working - I was just 38 weeks that day.  So do we have 2 weeks left?  I don't know.  I'm not going to count on it but I'm going to try to prep. 

But as the days go I'm going to have to start having conversations.  I'm not worried about it - it's not a privacy issue for me - it's just more weird to have that conversation.  In a meeting with people who know me well I'm going to go ahead and say yeah, I'm going to be taking maternity leave soon.  Then they'll say really?  When?  And I'll say - the baby's due at the end of July.  I'm clearly not pregnant, especially not THAT pregnant.  Too funny.  Most people know I'm a foster parent, so hopefully it won't be too much of a surprise.