My "Mom" Workweek

For those of you that know me well, you know that I have been working at Owensboro Medical Health System as a dietitian for going on 16 years now. I worked 5 days a week for the first 14 years of my career. Then I met Jason and we decided that we were going to add to our family. We started off trying to have a biological child but then we decided to try to be foster parents. So Jason and I went through several months of foster care training. At the end of this training in December of 2007 I was given the opportunity to go down to working 4 days per week. So I figured that would be a good idea if I was going to be working more at home with foster children. Then in February of 2008 we found out that we were expecting a child. We were so excited! We still thought that we would help out by being a respite home with foster care but every time we thought this was going to happen it never transpired. Eventually we decided that foster parenting wasn't Gods plan for us at this time.

So October 8, 2008 Riley Elizabeth Stephens was born. I stayed at home with her for 16 wonderful weeks. At the end of my maternity leave I was also given the chance to go down to working 7 days every 2 weeks. This was great, more time to spend with Riley. So from January 2009 until the end 2009 that is what I did. Then in January 2010 I was given the opportunity to work 3 days per week. Jason keeps teasing me that I am "weaning myself" from working. I guess you could say that, but I say that I just use Saturday until Tuesday as my "mom" workweek and then Wednesday until Friday is my "dietitian" workweek. I have really gotten into a great groove with it now and enjoy both aspects of my life. I get to spend a great amount of time with Riley and the other kids/dogs and still get to go to work. Jason says that if we have to move somewhere because of his job that maybe I should just stay at home all of the time. But for now I am happy with my current situation and would not have it any other way.