a full time job...and then there's work

I am an attorney.  I consider myself to be honest, nice, and loyal, but I am an attorney nonetheless.  When A and I first began trying, I was a young litigation associate at a large law firm.  Translation: I worked countless hours, including most nights and weekends, in search of the billable hour.  Granted, I was well compensated, but I was more than overworked.  Before our baby-dancing commenced, I was already a bit disillusioned with my job...I often spent my days trying to save large, wealthy companies a few extra dollars.  But soon into our reproductive journey, I realized that being an associate and becoming a mom were simply incompatible for me.  A and I knew that we might need expensive treatments in the future, something that my lucrative salary would help support, but we also knew that having to schedule sex between document review sessions was probably not helping our efforts.  So we took a leap and I took a new job.

I am now the first ever General Counsel (actually first ever attorney on staff) at a non-profit in our city.  This organization serves the disabled and disadvantaged in our community, and I was lucky to find a position in an organization with such a remarkable mission.  The hours are great, the people seem nice, but being the first at anything is never easy.  The responsibility of shaping this position into something useful to the organization falls solely to me.  I am usually the first to volunteer for a challenge, but lately I feel completely spent.  I want so badly to be a good new employee, to create a position that will endure beyond me, but my heart and energy are elsewhere.

I have heard from many women that their job is an escape from the TTC journey, somewhere they can get lost in something other than baby-making.  For me, however, it feels like the tests, monitoring, appointments, hope and heartbreak are literally a full-time job.  I cannot find the capacity to commit to both fertility treatments and lawyering.  Taking a break from work is not a real option for me right now, so I am trying to take work one day at a time and be as committed as possible under the circumstances.  Hopefully between google searches about "ways to increase the success rate of iui," I can produce enough legal mumbo jumbo to appear useful for now.