My Last Week of Freedom

So this week is my last week of freedom....my last week of maternity leave. I never thought 12 weeks would go by as fast as it did! I do have to say that taking that long off was the best thing I could have done. If you're contemplating taking the extra time off of work, do it! I feel like I really got to bond with Avery and get to know her. When 6 weeks came (a normal maternity leave), I couldn't imagine having to leave her. She still seemed so tiny and helpless. And at 8 weeks (a C-section leave which would have been what I took) I felt the same way and physically I felt very good, but still couldn't imagine working. But now that Avery is 11 weeks old and we have one week left to go, I feel like she's big enough to leave. Not that I want to leave her, but she's not the tiny little thing she was 6 weeks ago.

I didn't much accomplished over my leave (believe me, I thought I would have all the time in the world to get stuff done), but I did spend as much time as I could with my little girl. So that right there is my accomplishment-I bonded with my baby for 12 solid weeks and I can be happy knowing that.

I'm looking forward to work for some adult interaction (the baby and the cat don't carry on a conversation very well). It'll be great seeing everyone again and seeing the patients. But it will be very, very hard to leave my pumpkin too. And I think I'm dreading changing my routine more than I'm dreading leaving her....nah, I'm dreading leaving her more ;) Yeah it's great sleeping in every morning and doing what I want to do everyday. So getting up early will be hard, but even harder will be doing my usual "work" routine and adding a baby into the mix. I have no clue how that's going to work out at all! No idea how much time it's going to take, etc. It'll be a trial and error next week that's for sure!

So what are our big plans for our last week together? Well, today we're meeting up with an old coworker of mine who just had twins in May. Tomorrow, Wednesday and Friday we don't have much going on. Thursday I think I'm going to hit the mall with Avery and do some shopping. I'm sure we'll go on a few walks if the weather is nice. So we'll just be hanging out and enjoying each other for one last week before the chaos begins!