They say a baby changes your priorities. It makes sense, this new little person needs a lot of love, attention, food and diaper changes.

Before M was born, we were 95% sure I wasn’t going to go back to work full time. I had fully intended on asking if I could go to 20 hours a week about halfway through my leave. I didn’t want to bring it up before I had M because I didn’t know how I would feel once I became a parent–maybe I would want to stay home completely, or maybe I would absolutely hate being home all the time.

Well, I’m about halfway through my leave and things HAVE changed.

We decided that it would be best for us if I stayed home with M until the end of 2013. When she was about 2 weeks old, I had a feeling this is the decision we were going to come to. For us, the options were I work to pay for a nanny, or I stay home. My husband left it up to me and I chose to stay home.

I’m thankful that we are able to make this work financially and that my husband was fully supportive of whatever decision I made. So about 2 weeks ago, I quit my job.

But there’s more.

When I resigned, I offered to do some work from home remotely to help finish up some outstanding projects. I like my coworkers and didn’t want to leave them in a bind. My position requires a specialized type of experience/knowledge and since our company was bought out in October and many people have left, I’m the only one with that knowledge. I also decided to propose a completely ridiculous, very part time, mostly work from home option if they had any desire to keep me on in a long term capacity. I figured I might as well ASK—I had nothing to lose.

Well, much to my surprise, they went for it. Starting when M is 14 weeks, I’ll be working 8-12 hours a week from home. I’ll go into the office 2-3 times a month when we have a workshop (I work in compliance and I manage those trainings). I have family who live about 2 hours away who will come up and babysit her sometimes (they usually visit through the week, so their visits will be more scheduled for those days), and my husband may take a few days off here and there to watch her (he has a flexible schedule). I would like to find someone else who could watch her as a third option, but haven’t figured out who that could be yet—We may do a nanny service who provides care for mostly weddings and events since it would only be on unique occasions we needed someone.

I’m really happy with our decision and feel much less stressed about things. We are both thrilled that I’ll be able to spend this time with M. I know she’s happy too