MIA no longer!

Wow, it has been months since my last blog post! I really was hoping to keep up with this blog but I have been so busy (totally understandable, I have a 4 month old!). Blogging has been last on my list, or shall I say has fallen off my list, and when I finally do get some free time, I'd rather sleep! So it's past 2am now and I finally have some free time to blog.

Abigail still goes to bed sometime between midnight and 2am and about half the time does not sleep through the night. :( With Jim and I's opposite schedules though, it's hard to get her on a normal schedule. She takes about 2 naps during the day, and despite us trying to keep her awake so she will sleep longer at night, she is out cold when she naps. I know babies need their sleep, but why couldn't she just get that sleep at night? Although she has gotten better lately, still not enough to say I got a full night's rest. My sleep is cut up, which is hard. Also hard that I switch my sleep schedule every few days to accomodate work and sleep like a normal person on my days off.

Learning how to balance work and family time has been a major struggle of mine lately. Some days I just cry and cry and beg Jim to let me stay home with Abigail because I think it is just too hard to do both and give them 100% and just not worth what I'm missing at home. Other days, I am so thankful for my career, knowing I am contributing financially to my family which in turn is going to provide a better life for Abigail. I hate working every weekend, but at the same time, working the weekend is what works for my family right now and I'm really maximizing my pay that way (working nights I get a pay differtential and weekends is an extra pay differential). But I thought after a year+ of being a nurse I would've had this dig down by now, but no, learning new things everyday and wondering if I'll ever feel comfortable and confident in what I do. A good coworker of mine and also one of my nurse supervisors this past week mentioned that I seem like I'd be a good L&D/post partum nurse, which is funny because that is exactly where my heart is and where I eventually want to work as a nurse. I feel like I'd actually look forward to going to work and actually retain the information I learn if it was in that area I was passionate about. But I also know that getting that general nursing experience on a floor like mine is good. My plan is to stay on my floor working nights and every weekend until the end of the year. Then starting January, try to schedule it so I can work just every other weekend. But with that, it would also mean that Abigail would have to start going to day care a few days every other week at the minimum. :( Still weighing the pros and cons to that situation, but family time is important to me too, and I feel like I am missing a lot by not being able to go to family gathering or spending the whole day with my little family. Maybe I will look into switching floors next year (to L&D/post partum) but another option is becoming a chemo certified nurse on my floor. I've never had a passion to be a chemo nurse, but working on my floor (medical/oncology) it has started to interest me and I never know if I'll like it unless I try it, right? But with being a chemo nurse, there are a lot of risks. That's why if a nurse is pregnant or breastfeeding, she cannot give chemo. Since we want to have another baby eventually (God willing, could possibly be as soon as the end of next year) I don't know if that would be a good career choice for me at the moment. Just lots to think about... hopefully I will update this blog again sooner rather than later! Goodnight. :)