It’s official! I
submitted my letter of resignation a month ago, and I received confirmation
of receipt from the school district.
Getting to this point has been an interesting process and one I thought
I’d share with y’all…at least a little bit. This whole past year has been kind of a trial run and a huge
learning experience in many ways.
When I was around 20 weeks pregnant, I seriously began
thinking about how in the world I would continue working at the pace I was and have
a baby at home to care for. I knew my
priorities would shift once the baby arrived, but my anxiety kicked into high
gear. I struggled with the thought that
I wouldn’t be able to be the teacher I wanted to be because I would be the
mother I needed to be. I started talking to J about taking more than 6-8 weeks
of maternity leave. He wasn’t too keen
on this idea, but eventually I convinced him (with the help of my mother in law
and her sister) to let me take the rest of the school year off. It took a little longer to convince him that
I should take a year leave of absence, but once Genevieve arrived, there was no
question we had made the right decision.
I am so thankful to have had the time to learn how to be a
mother, though I’m also thankful that it seemed to happen more naturally than I
expected. I have learned a lot about
cooking and cleaning, and I take pride in having time to do both of those
things now. Some days though, I feel like I am not cut out for staying
home. My house is a mess, and dinner isn’t
always ready when J gets home from work.
In fact, some days I have to call him and tell him to pick something
up. I’ve had to learn that that’s just
part of life with an infant/toddler. I’ve
had to learn to be gracious with myself, but still the doubt creeps in. I wonder if someone else would teach G more
than I can – someone who knows more about baby development. On the flip side of that is the fact that no
one knows my daughter as well as I do, so who better to teach her?
I have worried a lot about not contributing
financially. I’ve worked since I was 16,
so it was strange to not be making any money.
J assured me that my job was to tend to the needs of our daughter, and
if there was time in my day, then I could tend to the needs of our
household. He told me that I had the
harder of our two jobs. (Did I mention
that I love this guy?) When Genevieve
was around eight months old, J said, “How in the world are you going to go back
to teaching?!” I assured him that lots
of women do it, and they make it work.
I still wasn’t sure if staying at home was right for our family, though
I felt it was where I needed to be.
Some time in January, J told me that the decision to stay
home or go back to work was up to me. At
that point I knew I wanted to stay home, so I told him so. He said, “Well, let’s wait until after G’s
allergy testing.” Oooooookay. Now I felt like he was wanting me to go back
to work. To make a long story short, we
had a lovely talk on our date night on March 1st. J
informed me that he felt as though I wanted to go back to work as to not “waste
my degrees” and because he knew how much I love being a teacher. I told him that if we can make it work, that
I would prefer to stay home, especially since Genevieve has so many food
allergies. I only made it seem like I
was okay with going back because I thought that’s what J wanted. It’s a good thing we were finally given time
to talk! We agreed that I would continue
staying home for as long as I wanted and for as long as it makes sense for our
family. I do see myself teaching again
one day in some capacity (other than teaching my own children), but I am so
thankful for this time with my daughter.
Teaching will always be there.
