Wow. I am knackered. Completely and utterly shattered. It's not been a particularly busy week. Yes, there have been a few evening activities but they've pretty much finished in time for me to get back home and to bed at what is about our usual hour.
The difference has been work. Which leads me quite nicely to the update I have been promising you for a while now! Just what has changed since we got our infertility diagnosis last December? Quite a lot really, is the short answer to that.
Physically we had both checked out fine. Which was a relief and a frustration in equal measure. Great, nothing's wrong! Crap, what do we do now if nothing's wrong? The other thing the consultant had mentioned when we saw her was the amount of stress in our lives. This lead to hubby and I doing some soul-searching over the Christmas break - neither of us was overly happy with our lot. Don't get me wrong, we're both alive and in good health! We have fantastic family and friends, jobs and a roof over our head. So I don't wish to sound ungrateful, there are plenty with less, but we weren't happy.
I had disliked work for a considerable amount of time. Over two years by the time we were having these discussions last Christmas. The sticking point was the maternity policy, it was insanely good (12 months on varied amounts of pay, but essentially no time at all on no pay at all - pretty much unheard of) and so I had been sticking it out as I would have been mad to leave whilst we were trying. But the more I thought about it the less that actually made sense, especially now. Chances are I couldn't get pregnant, so why was I sticking around for a reason that probably wasn't going to happen?! Worse still, if by some miracle we did conceive I'd have to stick it out there until I went on maternity leave. Not only that I'd then have to go back afterwards (at least for a minimum of six months so as not to forfeit the maternity money). The thought of which did not appeal in the slightest. And yes, I would always have had to go back to work - hubby earns a lot less than I do so conversations about me giving up work to look after kids are pretty much redundant.
The more I thought about it the more I realised I'd pretty much given myself an escape clause - a 'get out of jail' card if you will. I no longer had any reason to stay at the big corporate conglomerate whom I had grown to dislike. The question was, what on earth could I do instead?! I'd been there seven years and was doing something completely different before that, which meant that in my mid-30s I'd be looking to completely change career and for the second time.
My mother was a secondary school teacher by profession and, although she has now retired, she still shows an interest and has many contacts in the education world. I can't remember whether she showed me or I showed her to be honest, but there was an advert in the local paper for an Admissions Registrar for a private school not far from where we live. It seemed to play to an awful lot of my strengths and not only that, there was the cliché of wanting to do something 'worthwhile' rather than just make money for fat cats and spout marketing bollocks. Which, quite frankly, I'd got more than a little sick of. So I had nothing to lose, I applied for it. I didn't get anywhere with that one but I thought I'd found what it was that I wanted to do.
So that's what I kept looking for, that and similar roles in schools. How much of a relief would it be to work somewhere that was people-focused rather than profit-focused? Just what I wanted to do :) And after a few months I got somewhere, March 2014 I had an interview for an Admissions job at a junior school on the other side of London to where we live. Still, the commute was manageable and I had nothing to lose so off I went.
To cut an incredibly long story short I didn't get that job (turned out that not only was it term time only but also that the salary was therefore pro-rated accordingly!) but as part of the interview process for it I met the Headmistress of the senior school and her PA - and there was another role going at the school that seemed to be perfect for me. They had appointed but their chosen candidate had pulled out after initially accepting the offer so they were in the process of deciding whether to go through all the old applications again or whether to re-advertise. It very much felt like fate :)
Two interviews and a weekend of waiting later and the job was mine! Such a huge relief. I started in April and have never looked back. We also moved house in July to something far more manageable for the two of us (we'd initially rented quite a large house thinking we wouldn't be just two for long....) and hubby has also spent the year job hunting and is now on the verge of a completely different career that would not only up his salary but also be so much more fulfilling for him too.
So there we go. No, I'm still not pregnant but so much has changed so far this year that we are both in such a better place. I genuinely don't think I realised just how unhappy I was until things changed and I found out how happy I could be. I might be knackered, being fuelled solely by caffeine and biscuits, but I have a smile on my face.
There is more I want to write, but this blog post is long enough for now! I shall write more later to try and split this into two digestible (ish...) portions. Hopefully!
Back later xx
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