9 weeks today: officially more pregnant than evah.  Being 9w coincides with my first major panic attack about the future, well, officially the panicking started on Wednesday, but I’ll write about it today.

I got the form for uni daycare, and holy god, was it ever weird to fill out. I had to put "conceived" for ‘child’s name,’ and put my EDD in place of birth date, and then oh my fuck, I put my name next to "Mother’s name." WEIRD.  Next to "Father’s Name" I put the president of the university, thinking it might bump me up the list a bit. Okay, maybe not.

The only benefit for me as a uni student for this daycare is that I’m a higher priority on the list.  I’m below students using voucher programs, but above non-uni affiliated private-pay families.  I’m uni-affiliated, and private pay, and the price is what the standard rate is for infant day care around here: $125/week.

Now, I’m sure there are some people reading this and just WISHING they only had to pay 500/month for daycare, but that number freaks me right the fuck out. It was what I expected, I wasn’t shocked, it’s just so… oh my god, so tangible now.  And it led to my career/motherhood panic attack.

While we were laying in bed on Wednesday night, I started FREAKING OUT. I mean. that’s half our mortgage! What if I don’t get a job? But I’ll need income, because we can’t live on Dave alone! I even started problem soloving and told Dave "okay, you can work 7:30-4:30, and I’ll get a job at a call center or convenience store or something and work nights. I’ll do that."  Dave, ever the port in my storm, just sort of rolled his eyes and was all "GRETCHEN. You’re getting a master’s degree. You’re not going to have to work at Mainway."  But then, of course, when I’m LOOKING for a job I’ll be in the midst of losing my mucous plug, probably, or if I wait and do it immediately postpartum, god, what if go and break down into tears and shoot milk everywhere?  These are the things I worry about!  Dave is certain it will all work out, and I sure hope it does.

The next day (after being cornered into a conversation with a christian civic league member about how Maine should discriminate, who, oh, happens to maybe be an important person in my academic life, ahem) I spent in classrooms teaching undergrads about tech in the classroom.  I am always, always amazed at what people just don’t KNOW, or don’t GET about tech –people who think that tech is valuable for math, but that there’s really nothing out there for foreign languages or history. I swear to god, they say that. And these are people who’ve grown up in the age of the internet! I guess it’s job security to have such an amazing lack of knowledge, but good lord, really? You don’t think you could find a resource that would help you in a history class? Anyway, I made sure that they left with at least one resource for their content area.

My second presentation was to student teachers, and for Marilyn, my student teaching advisor, whom I adore.  I’ve been doing these for her for 2 years now, each semester, and her students always get something from it, so it’s cool. After the students left, I ended up talking to Marilyn about my pregnancy and paranoia, and she, like Dave, was sure it would all work out.  "Even if you wait til January to really look, you’ll have had a few months to spend at home, and maybe be more relaxed about everything" which is a good idea.  I will need income, but maybe I can figure something out, help with the school picture season for a few months while submitting resumes and such. Or maybe I’ll just get a kickass job before I’m even done with school, where they understand that I wouldn’t be able to start immediately because of my impending motherhood experience, and they’d be cool with it. It’s just so fucked up to be so uncertain of what’s going to happen after, when I don’t have a job to return to or a mat leave to take.

Today I spent a few hours on campus, met some friends for sushi (cooked and/or veggie, and totally delicious) and came home and fell into a mild coma for an hour or so.  I went and checked out the new craft store in town, and got a knitting kit that’s marketed to teenagers and has giant needles that remind me of the kindergarten fat pencils, but I figured it would give me something to do, to try to learn anyway.  I hung out with Andy for a while, picked up a pizza at the best place in town that we never go to, because it’s on the east side, and we aren’t, and came home to curl up with Dave for a while, more pregnant than I’ve ever been.

The prof whose class I talked to sent me the following email, which also made me chill a bit on the job situation, and worries about wondering if I did the right thing going to grad school. I mean, I know I did the right thing to go to grad school because I will a) always have this education and b)use it to make more money than if I didn’t, but being essentially unemployed and pregnant is weird, man.  Email behind the cut. It totally made me cry.

Gretchen,
I want to thank you for your presentation to the  *** in my section of *** on Maine’s Laptop Initiative and how to use technology in the public school classroom.  You showed a variety of websites and responded to all of their questions with enthusiasm and passion.
The following is a sample of their comments:
•I thought Gretchen gave an excellent presentation. 
The websites and resources she mentioned were interesting and I can see myself using these resources in the future.  www.landmark-project.com and www.portaportal.com seemed especially helpful.
•I think that she did a great job introducing tech in the classroom.  She showed me a lot of different ideas that apply to math and science, which I didn’t really understand how to do. 
I thought it was great that she was so passionate and focused on placing technology in every classroom.  I loved the geoboard idea!
•Gretchen’s presentation was very informative.  She showed how to find many resources on the Internet to help my future classroom.  Classroom technology has become more involved in many classrooms.  Because of this presentation, I feel more comfortable with incorporating technology in my future classroom.
•It was really nice to hear from someone who has been in the field recently, and has had the experience with the laptops in the middle schools.  Because this is such a controversy right now–
it was nice to hear from someone who is all for technology in the classroom.  I liked the Internet resources she showed us like porta-portal.com.  Athough she was working at the middle school level, and I’m secondary, it did get me thinking about integrating technology in the classroom.
•Excellent, very worthwhile!  I loved the websites she showed us and the classroom management ideas she shared.  I love learning from people who are actually in the field.
•She was so knowledgeable about technology in the classroom!  I was glad she showed us portaportal for our won future classrooms.  It’s a great way to organize what you want students to have access to.  I was also glad she showed us landmark-project.com because it had a lot of valuable resources.  I never thought about technology before, but she really made me consider how I would use it in my class.

I agree with their comments and really appreciate having you in as a guest speaker.  The listing of websites is terrific and I will share it with all of them on Thursday.
Thanks again for your fine presentation,
professor