.jpg)
This post is behind schedule because I spent all day – literally 12 hours – printing and cutting out trading cards for my son’s school project. While I admit to being a huge control freak, the only reason I did not make him do all of this work himself is that he did, in fact, work on their design for two weeks only to end up losing it all to a corrupt computer file.
He was devastated. I had no choice but to help my freightpup. That’s what moms do.
My friends dubbed him “freightpup” while I was pregnant. I continued to fly the Learjet during the first 6 months of my term, and joked about how many flight hours he accrued during that time. I no longer helped load and unload the aircraft, except for my own increasingly unwieldy body. If you’ve ever had the opportunity to sit in the cockpit of a Learjet, you’ll understand what I mean by that. You don’t get in it, you put it on. It was a relief once my doctor excused my from work so that I did not have to climb over the center panel any longer to reach my seat.
Once my son was born, returning to work brought on a whole new set of difficulties. Working a 12 – 14 hour day, at least half of which is spent in the cockpit of an aircraft, is not exactly a lactation friendly environment. In addition, to save money, I would spend all day Monday with my son before working all that night. He would spend the next three days in day care near where my husband worked, and then I would spend all day Friday with him after working all night Thursday. That essentially meant I was up for approximately 28 hours straight twice a week. This proved to be too much for me and I had to find other work.
In my heart, my son will always be my freightpup – much to his eternal embarrassment. Of course, that’s what moms do, too. I think of it as a perk.
Unless you’re pregnant.