Travail

Right before I found out I miscarried, two people reached out to me about potential new jobs. A new job? I love my team, and I have a great boss. I came to my current company through an acquisition three years ago. Over these three years, I have been given tremendous growth opportunities that I would not have had in another environment. The first two years I felt like I was drinking from a fire hose, making it up as we went along, my learning curve as steep as I wanted it to be. It was fun. The last year has been more incremental, even though I have taken on and enjoyed new challenges like managing a development team.

So it seemed like a good time to get pregnant. With my job being in more of a steady state, I could take some time off. My previous pregnancy had turned out to be well timed - I would have given birth at the end of November, right before the holidays. So, my maternity leave would have been easy to manage with work.

But a new job. Hm. Could I do it? My husband encouraged me. He and I have had a shared attitude about work: prioritizing our career, and always pushing to learn more, do more. To him, staying in a job that was only "incremental" would not be fulfilling. I would have agreed a couple years ago, but now I was torn. I was concerned that while pregnant I wouldn't be able to perform in a new job to my expectation level, and then only for six months before I went on maternity leave. Not a great way to start, from my perspective. Also, I was still learning in my current role, and a couple of large initiatives were going to kick off over the summer.

In the end, my miscarriage decided for me. I didn't want to make a radical change for now.

But how will I feel in the future? What if I don't get pregnant again or soon: when do I make the decision to turn my focus from pregnancy back to finding that heady level of learning and excitement in my career?

It's a strange thing, not being in control, feeling like I don't have all the facts to make an informed decision. I don't even know why I miscarried. Most first trimester miscarriages are due to genetic issues, but there could be other issues including fibroids, collagen vascular disease (lupus), hormonal problems, and diabetes (http://www.medicinenet.com/miscarriage/page5.htm). During my D&C, they found a fibroid that they said was too small to impact a pregnancy, but who knows?

What I do know is that I will have to turn my focus away from pregnancy, and back to driving my career. For now, I'll give myself six months, and schedule a check-in for December.