Pregnancy Meltdowns

As most reading this blog will know, I'm not a very emotional person. I think in the past five years I can count the number of times I've cried on one hand. Pregnancy has made me cry more (at the anatomy scan, with last week's tragedy, randomly), but I haven't had a meltdown. Until yesterday.

Justin and I recently moved. It was time for us to leave my parents' place and stop mooching off of them. He works part time as an intern with a firm that will hire him once he graduates, and I work full-time as a project assistant at Tulane. While we aren't destitute, we definitely aren't rolling in money. When we were first married we really wanted to start our family. We weren't entirely sure how we'd work it out, but thought we could do it. However, after meeting with several doctors we were told, "unless you have medical intervention, you will not be getting pregnant." It was sad, but we decided to continue with school and that I'd work while Justin was in school. We'd approach the baby topic again after Justin graduated and we were stable financially (one of the many blessings of marrying an engineer is that it isn't hard for him to find a good job after school). Three years later we were quite surprised when we found out that I was pregnant- without medical intervention (since the doctor's told me I couldn't get pregnant with help, I stopped my BC about 6 months after we got married).

Originally my plan was to return to work part-time (since that would be the least I could work to get benefits and we wouldn't necessarily need government assistance), but last week the dean I work for said, "we can't switch you to part-time anymore. You'll need to stay on fullt-time." I was sad but mostly frustrated since I'm less than three months away from delivering and hadn't planned on needing day care (the plan was that between Justin, my awesome SIL Ashley and I we were going to watch bébé Bush).

I immediately got started on the daycare search but most of the good places are way too expensive for our budget and even then, they have almost year-long waiting lists. I even checked out what was available on campus and the cheapest I found (with my discount) was almost $300 more than we could afford. So yesterday Justin and I started visiting the few that are closer to our budget (although still a bit pricey). They're pretty depressing, but I don't know what else to do. On our drive home last night he said, "I don't want to put out kid in daycare. I feel like it robs us of the chance to be parents. I mean, we could see if you can quit or find another part-time job so you can spend time to take care of the baby and I can adjust my schedule so I can have time to take care of the baby." The thing was, I wish it was true. As anyone who knows me well knows, I DON'T love my job (my direct boss is a royal jerk, but has tenure so while the dean and other program directors know how he is, they can't do anything about it). But I honestly don't see anyone wanting to hire a 7 months pregnant woman. Plus, I don't see how we could make everything work. I just feel trapped. I know lots of woman have had to make this decision, but it doesn't make it any less difficult...

On a happier note, our new place is amazing. It's a townhouse we rent for less than $700/month and while it appears it was built by a giant because the cabinets are so high and the mirrors in the bathrooms are too high for me to look into, it's great and cozy. Blessings with frustrations, right?