How to hold down a full-time career, get a graduate degree, participate in a social/charity group, and grow a fetus in your uterus all at the same time. The working woman's guide to pregnancy.

Friday, December 1, 2006

Scheduling Around the Unknown

How do you plan around something major that could happen any time during a four-week-plus span? It's like if you were planning a wedding that could happen on the 15th...but it might also be on the 1st or 27th, just wait and see.

For the pregnant woman who also juggles graduate school and multiple work projects, this whole planning thing is a real challenge. Take school, for example. The new semester starts in January and ends the last week of April. I'm due April 16, so if this holds, I'd only miss the final class or two of the semester. But it's best to be prepared if things change. So I've spent about a month talking to professors and an academic advisor, trying to figure out plans and contingency plans. Just when I think it's been sorted out, one of the courses I picked is now already full.

Work is a whole other issue, one that I haven't even begun to really think through yet.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Let me start with a quote we are all familiar with : “The only thing we have to fear is fear itself.” It appears, and understandably so, that many of your blog entries are dealing with this... fear of the unknown..as evidenced in your “Scheduling Around the Unknown”. In your other entries there are traces of the unknown in how will you balance the many roles you have…professional, student, wife, and unique individual that you are…along with the future role of “mother”. In your “Passing the Test” the two roles of student and future mother are going head to head. This unknown factor, that is, being a new mother, is a different element and a little hard to get used to. But you have plenty of time to sort through these things…that’s why the process takes 9 months…not just 2 or 3…it gives everyone time to get ready. That little one growing in you is right now, warm and cozy in a quiet environment, shielded from light. He or she will also have quite an adjustment to make upon entering the world with bright lights and loud noises and chilly air around. Everyone needs a little time to adjust to the changes coming up.
Some things are in your control…like choosing to have a baby…and some things are out of your control…like when that baby finally arrives…and believe me, anytime 2 weeks before your due date to 2 weeks after your due date…you will wish for that arrival more than anything…even if it means finishing up a class at a later date…or even taking the class over…it will be worth it!
As far as your classes in the spring..do the best you can to plan and then plan on things getting fairly scrambled…I’m sure this would not be the first time your professors had to deal with a “change of plan”. Once you’ve accepted the fact that things will happen when they are ready to happen, then sit back and relax and don’t worry. Everything will work out. You not only will still be a superb student, a very savvy professional, a wonderful wife, a creative and unique person, but also an excellent mother who is caring and loving…this I know for sure.
From another Earth Goddess…remember Desiderata?
“You are a child of the universe…..and whether or not it is clear to you, no doubt the universe if unfolding as it should.”