My New Title is Mommy: The pay sucks but the benefits are great.
For Baby Girl's half-birthday (six months), I'm giving her the gift of time. My time. I'm leaving my full-time position to become a full-time mom. When I went back to work in December, I knew I wanted to work from home. It's a 90-minute commute to our office in Sarasota, and neither I nor Baby Girl liked that drive. Leaving her at home was out of the question for me. She had never learned to take a bottle, and I wasn't going to shock her into taking one by leaving her hungry for hours with a stranger. Working from home, part-time, with flexible hours, worked. My employer was awesome during my transition into maternity leave and equally awesome transitioning me back. I couldn't work and entertain Baby Girl, so I hired a nanny. Luckily, by that point she had started to cut teeth and was ready for her first foods. We supplemented my nursing schedule with the nanny feeding her cereal, which allowed me to leave the house for a few hours.