Hello again! I’ve taken a long-ish break from posting on my blog and it is good to finally be back. A lot has happened in the past month, which is why I took a break from blogging.
Number one, my beloved sister left on an 18 month religious mission to the Baltics. I will miss her so much and I am so glad we spent her last few months as exercise buddies. I know she will be the most incredible missionary.
Number two, I went back to work full time two weeks ago.
Why did I go back to work?
One minute I was so sure I was going to be a stay at home mom forever more, and the next, I was doing orientation for my new job. I had a lot of conversations with a lot of people about what a hard decision it was. I want to be present for my daughter’s life, but after a few months of being home with her, I started feeling a lack of motivation and accomplishment. That played a big role in my decision to return to work. It has been stressful and difficult in some ways, but so far I have not regretted my decision for one moment.
Have I mentioned what I do for work?
I am calling this my “new job” because I just switched companies, but actually I am returning to the same patient I was assigned to five months ago, before maternity leave. I am a home health nurse working in the school setting. Where I live, there isn’t one nurse per school. There is a district nurse who oversees the entire district. There is a medically trained office person to help with kids who get scrapes on the playground or have certain medical needs. Then there are contracted nurses assigned to students one on one because the student has more acute medical needs, such as seizure disorders, respiratory compromise or IV/picc line management.
I can meet at the patient’s home before school and ride the bus with him to school, or I can meet at the school if a parent drops him off. Throughout the day I carry out doctor’s orders for medications and assessments, but most of the teachers and staff prefer that the nurse not get overly involved with the education side of things. Which means that there is quite a bit of down time.
To all you nurses out there, this is a posh job! It pays less than other areas of nursing, but you only have one patient at a time, no driving from house to house, no 12 hour shifts, no requirement to wear scrubs (only if you want to), much less paperwork, no weekends or holidays, plenty of time for breaks, and sweet little angels for patients. I am so glad I found this line of work a couple years ago.
Coping with being away from my baby has been a MAJOR adjustment, and there were days I just cried at first, especially if I knew she might be having a rough time with the caregiver.
Finally getting back into the swing of things
I’m hoping to slowly reestablish a new routine for myself, one where I do housekeeping, make dinner, publish blog posts and exercise regularly. So far I have had to focus on adding just ONE of those things into my schedule per week, and even that has been a struggle. But it’s amazing that the busier you are, the more you get done! Overall I feel happy busy, not crazy busy, which was exactly what I wanted to accomplish by returning to work.
With luck, you’ll hear from me again soon!
