Pregnancy Week 38: Rest Rest Rest!

For my fellow gorgeous ladies who are in their 38th week & still able to pull yourselves out of bed to brave through traffic and spend long hours at work or you're a stay-at-home mom who's expecting a baby but need to manage your other kids ... I salute you!

I'm pooped!

So I'm grateful that I listened to hubby to take leave from work earlier!

Woke up this morning (feeling half-awake) with pain in the ribs (both ribs!) and then I could actually see the shape Lil' Jr's feet! 

Jr was doing a split in the belly and when I felt my way around it, I found BOTH feet sticking out!

Of course, it was painful so I had to give it a slight push (go back in my tummy, feet!) and spoke to my belly, "Jr, mommy is in pain... I know it's a tight space for you in there but it's really painful. Why don't you come out earlier?" 

Honestly, I can't wait to see Jr do the split ... in the flesh! :D

When Jr finally slowed down the gymnastic act, I glanced over at the clock and saw that it was 8am, where I would normally still be on the road heading to work. 

My work starts from the moment I step into the office. 

My phone will be ringing first thing in the morning (I wonder if they have a CCTV somewhere to track when I reach the office?), I'll have to sort through like a gazillion emails and there will ALWAYS be some form of problem which I'll need to immediately manage ... if it's too late, it's always ME who'll need to do the damage control ... 

Under normal circumstances I won't vent about work but when I compare my workload with my peers, I am the ONLY person with a list of action items after EVERY meeting. 

I'm the ONLY female in the group ... maybe that's the reason why? Only God knows.

Though it's a collective effort where all of us need to achieve the same goals, my team and I have been appointed as the unofficial Damage Control Team who are answerable to any form of failures and we'll proceed with the service recovery, which takes a lot of time and effort.

However, when things go well or when the department displays stellar performance, acknowledgement is given to others.

I never seem to receive any positive feedback from my immediate manager (which is weird as I constantly receive acknowledgement from other people whom I don't report directly to and they seem to understand the vast portfolio I'm overseeing). 

My line manager never fails to make me feel inadequate, to the extent that I feel as if I'm underperforming, despite me being in her department for only 7 months.

I'm glued to my desk the whole day and people look for me at every single hour of the day, yup, even AFTER 7pm when others would have normally gone home!

When I compare myself to my peers, I just can't help but wonder, is it because I'm the only female in the team and they're dumping things on me? 

Despite my short tenure with the team, my learning curve is steep and the experience & knowledge gained does not reflect me being there for 7 months. 

Our counterparts and business partners come looking for me instead of my peers who are more senior. 

Not bragging but that's why I'm feeling overwhelmed (with the workload and the constant attention I need to give others) at the same time confused with my boss (who keeps telling me I'm not doing enough yet everyone else is telling me otherwise!). 

How can a girl NOT get confused in this predicament? 

The only consolation I have is when my team members would tell me how appreciative they are of me and that they learnt a lot from me.

The confessed that prior to me joining the team, there was NO structure so all of them were scrambling to complete tasks which weren't even theirs to begin with!

Thankfully, the structure had helped my team work efficiently and relieve some of the burden ... they're not too stressed out nowadays in comparison to before.

Oh yeah, they told me that I'm their 'shield' ... protect them against 'evil' ... against people who used to ask them to do all sorts of work.

THIS REPRESENTS MY TEAM'S BOND WITH EACH OTHER ... I LOVE MY TEAM!

You can imagine how worried I am not what I'm not going to be there for quite some time ... I just hope and pray that my team would be alright.

So in preparation of my maternity leave, I prepared a hand-over checklist to my replacement which I started over a month ago. 

He came in 2 weeks ago and started shadowing me around; attended meetings, conference calls, copied him in my email responses and ran through the oh-so-many reports which my team had to consolidate and produce. 

My team's portfolio is not THAT huge (sarcasm intended): 

handling complaints & service recovery

diairizing marketing campaigns

update manuals

send communication cascades to the entire department about anything & everything under the sun!

perform audits

complete systems testing & produce reports

manage staff members who failed audit or received customer complaints (despite them having their own reporting managers but my boss says she wants to CENTRALIZE everything under MY team since she believes that these managers aren't providing timely feedback nor taking appropriate action.)

and some other mumbo jumbo ... 

Anyway, back to my replacement, he told me that there were SOOOO many things to look at that he didn't know WHERE to start.  

Ok, fine ... I understand, it could be overwhelming ... it still is for me.

The best part, he feels lost as he is assuming that it would be difficult for him to organize & manage his work. 

I was like, "Ok, but that's what the checklist is for". 

I had even gone to the extent of detailing a DAILY checklist where all he needs to do is tick complete/pending. 

That's it!

I also linked ALL the relevant files to this checklist so it's in ONE view and he does not need to scramble around looking for the files in our department's shared drive (that has like a gazillion files in there!)

I was trying to make the transition as smooth as possible for this guy, I tell you!

*Sigh*

Work aside, I'm just enjoying the final weeks of pregnancy as I've read that you need all the energy possible to prepare you for labor ... they say it's HARD WORK.

Honestly, I can't wait to meet my bundle of joy! :)

It's awesome now that I get to sleep more and have proper meals at home (unlike when I'm in the office where I only munch on biscuits / buns and the non-pregnant clan seem to be more hungry than I am!!).

Best part is not thinking about work at all! 

So I'm enjoying this while it lasts...