Short-term Employment Decisions

Unlike my first pregnancy, when I had been working a more traditional job for several years and had maternity coverage, I'm already home with 15-month old James. I do work part-time from home, grading standardized tests from my home office, but not many hours and it's not nearly the same socially as when I worked at the downtown campus of a large community college in the city teaching immigrants and refugees.

After being home, I'm already getting a bit stir crazy and am strongly weighing the pros and cons of teaching my class again next fall. It runs three mornings a week, but involves additional hours lesson planning and grading. As much as I love working with the refugee population, it also involves a lot of extra personal time helping with other issues that students are facing outside of class.

Since class begins just six or seven weeks after our Baby Girl is expected, I'm not sure if I'd be able to leave her that soon, even if it is just for a few hours. Last semester, I paid for 3 days of daycare a week, so I had plenty of time to correct, lesson plan etc, but with two babies, I would only be able to afford to pay a sitter hourly during the part of the day I'd be at the college.

The other thing that concerns me would be that the semester runs a couple weeks longer than my husband's contract and a bit more longer than our lease. My family would like to enjoy a few weeks off between the end of this employment and our next when we don't need to worry about vacation days, etc, so I would hate to keep us here longer just for my teaching job that doesn't necessarily gross us much more income. It could end up being costly to extend our lease on the apartment.

All-in-all , it doesn't seem to be worth the extra work and stress for the bit of income I'd earn after daycare. Plus, it would be nice to be available to organize our move while trying to keep the house in order with the two babies and not have to worry about the job/students' issues, but I know I'd also miss it greatly if I did have time to keep my ducks in a row at home.