On Maternity Leave

Maternity leave for staff and other non-faculty folks at my university is very straightforward:  6-8 weeks short term disability (assuming you've given birth) plus 6 weeks parental leave.  Maternity leave for faculty technically involves an identical time component...but obviously doesn't track with a semester system, which means there's all kinds of negotiations and variations that happen from department to department.  (I have to say, I really liked the policy at the SLAC where I taught when LG was born:  a full semester at 80% salary.)  Anyhoo...what's particularly odd in my situation is that I'm already on leave.  While it matters to the university--in terms of where my salary comes from, I think--if I'm on disability or not, it makes no difference to my department.  What that means in practical terms, though, is that my grant time sort of disappears (no one in HR or my department chair could make any sense of this).  If I'd actually been teaching this semester, I'm pretty sure my OB would have had me on disability weeks ago and someone else would have been teaching my classes; there's no way I could have been doing full time on campus things and being at her office as much as I am.  (I'm also guessing there would have been a high blood pressure issue, as every time I've gone from campus to her office it's insanely high for me)

The point of all this rambling is I'm not exactly sure (a) when to consider myself really on medical/maternity leave and (b) how much/what do I want to do during that time.  Case in point:  another student emailed me to ask for letters of rec for grad school.  That's a couple hours of my time and probably a trip to campus to pick up more letterhead.  If he had material to me today I'd get it done prior to Thursday and then forget about it.  But what happens if I deliver on Thursday/Friday and his material shows up, as it probably will, sometime next week?  Obviously I'll be writing a letter with a newborn attached to my breast or, hopefully, asleep in his crib.  But what if he's in the NICU?  (Yeah, okay, enough with the 'what if's' but you know what I mean.)  I was honest with him:  said I'm happy to write the letter but he should know I'm expecting a baby at any time now, so my ability to get it done on time is somewhat questionable.

When LG was born I was in my third year on the tenure track.  I felt guilty about not working.  I also felt--after the first 10 weeks, anyway--that I was going a bit nutty just staying home and being LG's mom.  (I suppose it didn't help that LG cried what seemed like nonstop.  Come to think of it, now she talks/sings nonstop...)  I met with thesis advisees (at my house) within a few weeks of her birth.  I brought her to a couple department meetings (it was a department of 7; I could even leave her with my dean).  I didn't worry about writing/research, but that wasn't the emphasis of the college in terms of tenure and promotion.

Now...I'm not quite sure what this post-baby time will look like.  Assuming I get that final bit of approval, I'll be tenured.  My major job responsibility here is writing/research, which I've planned, anyway, to put off until my leave is officially up (around March 1, depending on when I deliver) unless I get a revise-and-resubmit or a similar situation with an immediate external deadline.  My involvement with student organizations should be minimal, though I'm guessing there will be a lot of email triage.  My departmental service can be avoided altogether until after maternity leave (though who knows, I might be compelled to go to a meeting or a job talk or something).  I've thought about putting one of those "out of the office" auto-replies on my work email...but I'd rather those auto-replies didn't go to people like my colleagues or university presses and the like.  If they could be directed specifically to students wanting things, that would be awesome.

This post is getting long...but I guess I'm wondering, esp. from you academic readers out there, how you've handled situations like this.  I'd really like to be with Tiny Boy, and LG too, during leave, not mentally elsewhere.  But can I do that without the guilt?