Hi,
warning - this might be long - sorry.
When I came back from my first maternity leave I LOVED my job. Gradually that love declined as I had a crap boss. dd2 came along and I had one of the best years of my life looking after both my girls and trying to set up a new business doing up houses. I had to come back to work (because of money issues) but came back to a terrible time. My job had been given permanently to someone else and my old boss (now head of department) actively tried to bully me into resigning. It was awful. I fought back (i.e. give me a good redundancy package or give me my job back) and got my old job back. The position had been seriously demonted during my maternity leave and I had to report to a nasty little man. I've worked bloody hard for the last year and the teams I lead are now recognised by the business as extremely successful. But I've hated being here. The work is dull and boring and nothing challenges me. To counter this my dh and I planned a new life. Its taken a year, he's had to change jobs and start contracting to make up for my lack of money. We've sold our house and moved into rented accomodation in preparation for moving 100 miles away to a new town. We've seen a couple of opportunities in this town for setting up our own businesses. I'm 5.5 months pregnant with (fingers crossed) our third child. All things are go for me to go on maternity leave but really be leaving work.
A few months ago (when I was 8 weeks pregnant) a boss elsewhere in the company who I respect a lot offered me a spectacular position with him. I was truthful and told him I was pregnant. I then didn't hear from him until the other day (I'm 23 weeks now). At the same time I've just been given an appauling appraisal by my current nasty little horrible boss. I decided that enough was enough and stomped into HR who agreed that I had a good case for raising a grievance against him. The thing is I could very very easily scream sex discrimination. I dont' think that the new job disappeared because he found out I was pregnant. I think he genuinely wants me to come to his team and would sit out my maternity leave. However at this point in time I could easily say no and put in a grievance against my current boss and then give them a get out of jail free card by saying why don't you give me a decent redundancy package and I'll go away.
But the job seems soooo fantastic. Its the kind of dream job that doesn't come up that often. But my kids are growing up and they only do that once. But will I really cope being home full time with them round the clock? Oh I'm soooo confused as to what to do.