Back Home Again, in California...

Hoosiers will recognize the song reference. Maybe. Or people who have been to the Indy 500. Anyway, I am home on a "personal day" today, essentially because there isn't enough boobjuice in the fridge to get through even half the day of me being away from Robert. He's had a week (probably a growth spurt) of waking up anywhere from 11 p.m. to 4 a.m., hungry. The closer to 5 a.m. he nurses, the less likely I can pump anything meaningful at 5 when I get up. Wednesday or Thursday morning (can't remember now, it's a blur) he started making noises at 2:30 in the morning, so I leapt up to pump before I missed my shot. So of course he fell back asleep and didn't need to nurse until 6, which means I could have waited until 5 to pump and gotten a lot more. But there's no way to know that at 2:30 a.m.

You know, in a way, this is a lot like investing. You don't know what the markets are going to do in any one moment, so you have to go with your best guess, based on careful observation and being as objective as possible. And then, no matter what you did, sometimes you'll guess wrong, and in hindsight, see a dozen reasons why you should have done it the other way. Only in this case, there are no empirical models or research papers on "when is my kid going to wake up hungry, and when is he going to make it through the night." Plus guessing right, while satisfying, is less likely to be lucrative. Well, except that it would enable me to stay at work.

Which brings me to my major point for the day. I'm not sure this is worth it. I'm exhausted, and while I've improved a lot on this point, I spend a lot of time at work being anxious about providing enough breastmilk for Robert. I asked my boss for Wednesdays at home again (no answer back yet but he was clearly not enamored of the idea) but even with that one day, I don't know if it would be so much better - of the six or eight weeks that I have supposedly been full time in the office, most of them have involved some sort of exception, and I think I've only had two weeks where I really spent five days in the office. Then there's what goes on for these office days. Feeding times and commuting mean I can't really stay longer or get there earlier, and with all the pumping setup and cleanup, I'm lucky to get 7 real hours of work in, which includes eating while I work (uncivilized at best, gross and detrimental to my keyboard at worst). We can get rid of the commute in December when our lease is up, but I'm not sure moving to a fairly isolated, expensive (albeit lovely) village is really the best answer. And I think I would still have a hard time with it, if I was trying to be in the office every day. It would just be easier to run home or have Matt run Robert to the office if needed.

So given that we are an all-boobjuice family, I'm wondering - is me working full time really worth it? I mean, yeah, one of us has to. And I don't think I could give up work altogether and stay sane/nice. But I could go part time, in a more sales or consultant focused position, nights and weekends (not all of both obviously but I bet I could sneak in ten hours a week). What we're really talking about here, even if we have three kids, is a 5-6 year hiatus in my work life. I can avoid a hole on the resume (and, to some degree, in my brain) by working part time. And then we can keep the baby near the boobies. Progressive (and stubborn) though I may be, I have to acknowledge a certain, purely biological sense to that.

Well, kiddo is waking up from his (rather short) nap, so off I go.