Vol. 29, No. 3 #7 (June 2006). From Negotiating Clients to Negotiating Toddlers.

• Author: By Susan Chapin Stubson

Wyoming Bar Journal

2006.

Vol. 29, No. 3 #7 (June 2006).

From Negotiating Clients to Negotiating Toddlers

WYOMING LAWYERJune 2006/Vol. 29, No. 3From Negotiating Clients to Negotiating ToddlersBy Susan Chapin Stubson

"He's throwing up and he has a temperature of a hundred and three." I'm sitting in a hotel room, seemingly thousands of miles from my flu-ridden-maybe-it's-westnile-virus-baby boy, listening carefully while the nanny calmly reports his stats.

"What did the pediatrician say?" I ask.

"Still waiting for him to call me back. The nurse said it sounded like RSV." Respiratory Syncytial Virus. A parent's worst fear.

"Where's grandma or grandpa?" I ask. They are our "back-ups" when we're out of town.

"I have a call out to both of them. When is Tim coming home?" My husband, an attorney at Brown, Drew and Massey, LLP, is stuck in another nameless town miles from our first-born and jammed up in depositions. Like me.

That's when it hit me: What's wrong with this picture? Why am I expending so much time and energy orchestrating child care via satellite with a cast of thousands -- none of which include me, by the way -- when I really should be at home with my baby? Permanently.

The decision to leave the law profession was, in some respects, the easiest decision I've ever made. In other respects, it was the most difficult. As a parent, even as a relatively new parent, I was struck by the immediacy of child-rearing. In the space of six short months of our little boy's life, I quickly understood that a child grows at lightning speed. I'd already missed Finn's first steps (alright, maybe I saw them later that evening, but I missed the first step); his first words (the nanny put the phone to his mouth, but all I heard was a lot of heavy breathing and what sounded like a Labrador licking the receiver).

I deeply felt that I needed to be home with my child, but I knew also that the transition from the practice of law to the practice of motherhood would be fraught with difficulties. First, there were the anticipated identity issues. Who am I now that I don't practice law? Do I still call myself a "lawyer"? A "non-practicing" lawyer? Tim and I shared a good laugh the first time I saw myself identified as a "Homemaker" on our tax returns. Not because Homemaker is not as noble a profession as the law is. But as it applied to me - one who hates...