Telling my boss

I hope everyone had a wonderful, wonderful holiday. Mama Jai and I were up in Connecticut visiting her family. We came home with an entire suitcase full of baby books, little baby clothes, bibs, stuffed animals, a blanket, and one of those towel things with a tiny little hood. Also, our dog Oliver received a doggie snuggie.

Apparently he would have gotten doggie socks/booties too, if Mama Jai’s mom had been able to find them. (For some odd reason, they don’t really make those.)

Anyway, I will let Mama Jai go into detail about the family drama aspects of the weekend if she wants to, but suffice it to say that we were very happy to be back home. Funny that—we were excited to be leaving a state where our marriage is legal and coming back here.

This morning, I told my boss about the pregnancy. I was getting nervous that I am starting to show a little, and I wanted to make sure that I told her before it became glaringly obvious. Initially I was hoping to wait until after our OB appointment in early January, but it just started feeling wrong to me. Plus I am 12 weeks, so it’s getting to the point where we’re confident enough that the chances of miscarriage are small enough that it should be okay (knock wood).

I had typed up a list of things to discuss with her and read all the various books’ advice about how/when/where to break the news, so I was prepared, but I was still nervous. She was LOVELY. When I told her, she teared up and jumped up from her desk to hug me, and then I teared up, and she was just so full of congratulations and happiness for us and excitement and it was just fantastic. We talked about how long I would try to work, and how long of a maternity leave I hope to take, and the possibilities of doing things like working from home a couple of days a week after the baby is born, and/or bringing the baby in a half day or full day a week, and/or working 3-4 days a week and taking 1-2 days unpaid under FMLA. She was more than amenable to these ideas, and was incredibly flexible and positive about all of the options. She said she would try to do a little bit of unspecific digging about what the working-from-home policies of the local government I work for are, and made noises about figuring out how to do it even if the policy is NO WAY. She said that as long as the health of the organization is not compromised, I can do pretty much whatever. I can bring the baby in to work with me, and if it’s distracting to other people, I can bring the baby into another room and work. She was open to all of the ideas I suggested, and told me that she is flexible on any and all of them, and we can play it all by ear to make sure it’s working for me and for my museum.

HOORAY! and PHEW! and YAY! and I’m so thrilled that I work for such a forward-thinking, family-oriented, flexible boss!

I am feeling great, especially since I got a really good night’s sleep last night. The previous two nights were kind of rough–I woke up in the middle of the night and couldn’t get back to sleep for hours. Except for a really terrible and turbulent plane ride on the way home, my nausea is pretty much nonexistent now and I have very few food aversions. My pants are becoming a little tight, and most of my tops and sweaters are a little too short for me to wear with a belly band to hold the pants up. Dressing myself is getting to be somewhat of a challenge, since I’m not ready for maternity wear yet but a lot of my pre-pregnancy winter clothes don’t really work. Exacerbating matters, our clothes dryer has been on the fritz for like 2 months now, with no end in sight. I’m hoping to find time to go look for some stuff on sale in a size or two larger than what I usually wear to carry me through the next month or so of cold weather and non-maternity-clothes-ness. We are also taking advantage of the fact that our friends are out of town for new year’s to do laundry at their house. Par-TAY.