Headed Back to Work

[alicia9178]

Such mixed feelings!!! I am excited after now 7 months of being home to be headed back to work...but nervous too. I found an AWSOME job. I will be working in a inner city ER in Cleveland. Lots of traumas (26% penetration wounds!!). It will be a great expereince. I will work Sat and Sun 12 hours each and get paid 8 hours extra pay per week as a weekend premium...so I will get paid for 8 hours per week that I do not even work. Good thing is they are 100% BFing friendly and I was told that there is no reason at all that I cannot maintain my breastfeeding relationship because there will be no reason I cannot leave the floor to pump whenever is necessary. So...I will continue our breastfeeding as long as she wants...it is still rough with her latch, but we have made great strides. I am excted to hoefully be able to successfully be a momma during the week full-time and then a nurse on the weekends
Alicia

[~Megan~]

I have a friend that has a schedule like this and she really likes it.

I hope it all works out well for all of you.

[not now]

Originally Posted by alicia9178

(26% penetration wounds!!).

Only an ER nurse would get excited about that. Good luck with the new job I hope you enjoy it.

I'm working part-time when I get back and I'll be doing 12 hour weekends (I do critical care). The man is taking a job as a mid-level at a clinic (doing pediatrics) run by the hospital so he'll be able to watch our son. On those few weekends he has to work his mom or my mom will take over. We have one room on the floor dedicated to the breastfeeding moms. So many of the staff has a baby or is pregnant they kinda just took it over. Our hospital is also doing a huge campaign promoting breastfeeding in the community, they have a facility dedicated to new mom's with LC's and tons of groups/classes.

[triana1326]

Glad to hear that you have a workplace that' Bfing friendly.

I'm headed back to work fulltime on the 31st. My workplace is also bfing friendly and even has a private room for pumping. I really don't want to go back to work, but unfortunately, we can't afford for me to stay home. But the good part is that my mom is going to be our daycare person, so we don't have to worry about that and can continue CDing, and BFing.

What are your biggest concerns about going back to work? Mine is that I just won't be able to emotionally handle it. I'm not sure I'll be able to make it through the full 8 hours (plus 1/2 hour commute each way). I'm also worried that Sara won't accept being bottlefed, even if it is mommy's milk in the bottle. We've tried giving her a bottle once each day and she fights it tooth and nail. Any suggestions on transitioning her to a bottle 2x a day?

[hyz]

Congratulations, Alicia!! That sounds like a wonderful arrangement!!

I went back to work on Oct. 20, one day short of Ivy being 11 weeks old. It was sooooo hard. I started grinding my teeth at night several days before the 20th, and got this huge horrible pit in my stomach every time I thought about it. When we actually dropped her off at daycare for the first time, I spent the whole morning crying like a baby. The next day was a little easier, but I still spent a good deal of time crying in my office all that first week. I just missed her so much. We're now halfway through week two, and I'm pleased to report that it does get easier. I know she's fine there--I'm still sad, but I haven't cried once this week. Lots and lots of women at my work have young kids, and they all say that it does keep getting easier.

Actually, Ivy has been fine since day 1 (I'm the one who had a hard time with it). She's at a wonderful daycare where she gets lots of good interaction and entertainment, and she smiles and coos all day long and charms the pants off of everyone. We had the hardest time getting her to take the bottle (we started trying when she was about 6 weeks), but luckily she got the hang of it just in time, about a week before my first day of work. We tried all different bottles, but the one that finally worked for us was Second Nature--it's new, and has multiple pores like a real nipple, and doesn't flow at all unless she's sucking on it. Once she got the hang of bottle feeding using that, we were able to switch her to any wide neck/slow flow bottle. She's still exclusively drinking breast milk--I pump 2 or 3 times a day at work, and that's plenty. I actually love pumping at work--it's the one time a day while I'm here that I get to put everything else aside and just be a mom. The daycare also uses our cloth diapers, so we haven't had any problem there.