Money

I spent the morning with two girlfriends, both of whom are mothers. We had early morning massages followed by brunch; it was a very relaxing morning. At brunch the topic of money came up in reference to working. One friend, is a stay-at-home mother by choice (she feels this is financially better for her) and the other is in the process of settling a maternity/back to work suit (her boss is changing the terms of her employment, very illegal) and I have recently given notice that I will be looking for a new school in September. We all have money issues right now.

I want to focus on the second friend. Her son is now thirteen months old and she is off maternity leave and is now unemployed. She is undecided about what her next move will be career wise. She would like to find full time employment so that she can hire a nanny (it should be noted that this friend lives in a million dollar house and her husband is very successful in his job). Her option right now, is a one-year contract which would be four days a week. Not exactly full-time, but more than enough to get childcare. I also informed her that it be enough for her to rack up more hours to take another maternity leave for when she becomes pregnant again. She then went on and on and on about how she needs money and that we can't always plan on when we get pregnant (REALLY? That is definitely news to me!) and so she can't rely on that.

A. and I had a financial plan before getting pregnant too. We wanted to have enough money saved to cover the loss we would take with maternity leave and be able to cover the new expenses as well. Infertility treatments did not factor into this plan. I'll admit that we are so fortunate that we have been given help from our families as we are entirely out of pocket, but we still spend a lot of this. We are no where near where we wanted or thought we would be, and we don't care. All we want is a healthy baby and we will figure out the rest. We want this so much, that I actually quit my job (before finding a new one) because I was so stressed at work and we thought it was not good for me. I have doubts all the time about money and how we will be able to survive, but we will. Of course we will, we will readjust what are priorities are, just like we did to pay for our many treatments. Why can't my friend do the same?

This morning at brunch I realized that I am lucky in some ways. I have been given clarity about what is really important and it is definitely not how much money you have.

-R.