Pandemic and Pregnancy: The Momployee

Genealogy is a weird profession. One that depends on the people who are wealthy enough to have the luxury of paying a professional researcher to discover more about their family history. I grew up in a small town, where – for most people – this luxury doesn’t exist.

When I was in college, telling people I was majoring in Family History and Genealogy was my favorite thing in the world, they were all like:

Which was always closely followed by,

“What are you going to do with that?”

My response was always the same.

Genealogy is a niche profession. I am one of a few people professionally qualified to do the kind of research I do. Because of this, I have a lot of flexibility and would be able to conduct a good portion of my work from home.

I chose genealogy because I wanted to be able to work from home and raise my children while still making a decent income for my family.

^Me, explaining my career choices to all the haters^

Once I graduated, the perfect job opened up that would require me to work outside of the home and because of my family’s situation at the time, I jumped at it. Turns out, I really loved it! I was able to find a balance with my young family and my work and it felt really nice.

^me enjoying my lunch break at work in the mother’s room in complete silence^

When COVID-19 hit and the Family History Library closed, transitioning all it’s employees to working from home, it was no biggie for me. I was actually kind of excited. Here was my chance to work from home and see if it was something I could sustain long term. After all, that was my original goal, right? This was my shot to see how it felt, and maybe it would be the push I needed to move in that direction.

Working from home was manageable at first. My son’s daycare was still open and when Stefan was at school we took our boy to daycare, just like normal. This allowed me to get my work time in and still have time to spend with the family.

When the daycare closed, our life went into chaos. I started watching our boy when Stefan was a school, but as a result, my work hours started at 5 in the morning and were spread sporadically throughout the day – sometimes ending at 11 or 12 at night.

My husband had a hard time with the idea that I was home but not available to help with our boy. The DS1 would start crying and he would barge into my “office” and ask me to take care of it while he made himself lunch.

I spent many meetings with my baby climbing all over me trying to get to the keys of my laptop. My son also really liked to eject me from meetings when I wasn’t able to keep him from the keys. I spent every waking moment either with my boy, working, making food, or trying to keep our little house clean. Most of the time, I was doing two or three of those things at once.

Stefan and I went from having a great balance of work and home life, to a place where we had no sense of balance or structure.

It was such a struggle for both of us, that I took my son and spent a week with my parents. During this time, my mom and brother watched my son during the day while I got my work done. I love my husband and I know he loves me, but I admit that we were both grateful for this break.

When I came back home with our son, we started to work out a system and got into a really good groove. Then, one day, while I was working, I got up and left the room to take a quick break. When I got back to the room five minutes later, my husband was lying on the bed, totally incoherent. DS1 was also on the bed climbing all over him. My husband couldn’t answer questions, and was super out of it, falling in and out of sleep, during his waking moments he was complaining about a pain in his foot.

I was worried about his head more than his foot. He couldn’t answer questions, he was having a hard time staying awake, and he couldn’t remember anything about how he injured his foot or what happened earlier that day. I called a babysitter, and as soon as she got to the house, I drove Stefan to an Instacare to be looked at. The Instacare doc sent us to the ER to have his head checked.

When we got to the ER, they were making patients go in alone. I made the case for why I should be able to go in with my husband (because he really couldn’t remember things or answer questions on his own) and I waited outside until someone approved me to come in. We spend the rest of the day in the ER, mostly waiting for doctors and getting different images and scans done. At the end fo the day, all they could tell us was that Stefan’s foot had a chip fracture, and they didn’t know what happened with Stefan’s head, but if it happened again, I should get him to the ER faster.

For the next six weeks, Stefan was supposed to be off his foot as much as possible. No weight bearing. This meant that on top of being the parent with the full time job, anytime my son needed anything involving being carried, I was the girl. I took him on all the walks, had to plan my work around his nap schedule so I could put him down for naps. I also had to do all the shopping, and a great deal of all the other household tasks.

to say I was overwhelmed would be a gross understatement. Some days were better than others. I ended up reaching out the the HR department at work and getting approved for emergency COVID relief hours which allowed me more sick time to take care of my son and husband while daycares were closed, and I had no other childcare alternative. On my most productive days, I made checklists for work and home and went through the lists, one task to the next, for the entire exhausting day. Other days, I perfected my depression napping skills by closing myself in the bedroom under the disguise of “work” and instead napped. (not super proud of that)

In those six weeks we ate a lot of freezer meals, mac-n-cheese, and cereal and I gained a LOT of stress weight on top of the baby weight. (I know it was stress weight because it came from totally unhealthy stress eating)

Twinkle Lights

I was there to help Ollie as he was teething

He started to come to me for comfort instead of Stefan

I got to watch him start dancing to music for the first time

I got to see him go from a wobbly walker, to a runner

I got to go on family walks with my 2 1/2 boys

I’m there for all of Ollie’s little phases and quirks.

I’m there to help put him to bed every night.

#mother #Pandemic #Pregnancy #faith #PersonalHistory #COVID19 #familyhistory