Last Updated on April 18, 2015 by melissanreynolds
I have written about my fears of starting work and how that will impact my energy levels, pain levels and my job as a mama. After one week, I can’t say much.
I worked four hours on three days. The desk isn’t ergonomically set up, there’s not even a proper chair yet. So that didn’t help anything. I also caught a bad cold.
On day two I was fighting steel blinds that were my eyelids, they wanted to come down!
Luckily, on day three the fatigue had reduced from 8/10 to 6-7/10.
It’s been hard doing three shifts (baby 530/6am-9, work 930-130, baby 2-630/7).
So I was in bed at 830 most nights, the tradeoff of not staying up for a dream feed is that baby’s been waking between 530/6am and not going back to sleep. It’s been awful. Too many hours before work even starts!
I have managed to get him to sleep til 6am, but he gets disrupted when his father gets up for early shift at 540 (so do I and it’s super hard to get back to sleep at that time) or we get woken when his father comes home about the same time when he’s on nightshift. So we can’t win on that one!
The job itself seems like it will be good. I think it’s a good move, strategically, to set me up for school hours office management work. I feel like the take home pay, once I’ve given the childcare payment away isn’t a fair exchange of my precious energy. At least it is for a job that will feed a better next one and fits with baby’s childcare hours. I don’t want him with someone who’s not his mama for too much of the time.
So the outcome of week one is that I don’t know how it will work out in the long run due to the cold. But it wasn’t too bad! I just hope I don’t let myself get dragged too far down before I realise (if) it’s not going to work. Because I am very good at just getting on with it!
