When I got pregnant with my first child last year, I was under no illusion that I’d take a long maternity leave. As a full-time freelance writer who is truly passionate about the work I do, I didn’t want to risk the relationships I’ve spent years building with my clients by disappearing for too long… not to mention the fact that I’d need to find a way to make up for the lost income during my time off work.
Things only became more complicated when COVID-19 hit months before I was due to give birth, and the world felt scary. Every moment was clouded with a layer of new, all-encompassing stress, and this would come back to haunt me when I started working again.
My last day of work was one week before my due date
My husband and I both ended up hitting a wall around the time she was 8 weeks old
We were both mentally and physically exhausted from working and caring for a baby 24 hours a day without ever having the time to do anything else. Our dog wasn’t getting the walks she needed, our house was a disaster, and any free moment we had, we ended up collapsing on the couch. Was being a parent like this for everyone? Were we doing something wrong?
No, having a newborn is just hard. Having a newborn during a pandemic is even harder. But then, we discovered the key to making it all work: getting our baby on a schedule.
It took a lot of work and a few more sleepless nights, but finally, we had our girl napping and eating at the same time each day. Her bedtime routine helped ensure that she would fall asleep, giving us a full evening to eat dinner together and even go to bed early if we wanted. And soon, she was sleeping through the night, which was a game-changer on every level. I gave up pumping and went straight to a formula-only diet — this also came with some guilt, but it ended up being the right choice for us.
Going back to work so soon after birth just wouldn’t have been possible without my husband
He was able to take a longer leave than I was when she was born, so for the first month that I was back to work, he was home full-time, caring for our daughter while I worked. When he did go back to work, my mom would come over to be on baby duty, saving my sanity in the process. No matter how old you get, you never stop needing your mom.
I am so lucky to have my baby home with me — sending a 4-week-old baby to daycare in the middle of a pandemic would have been more than my mental state could have handled at the time, and I know not all moms get that choice.
Going back to work after having a baby is probably never an easy thing
The guilt that comes with being a working mom is something I never saw coming — I thought I’d be proud to show my daughter that she could have a family and pursue her dreams, but when the time came, I felt like I was failing at everything. I felt like half a mom, half a writer, half a wife. But now she’s four months old. She sleeps at least 10 solid hours each night, she smiles and laughs all day long, and I finally feel like myself again.
I plan to have more children, and when I do, allowing myself to take off more than four weeks will be a nonnegotiable, no matter what I have to do to make that happen. Maybe by then, we’ll have better parental leave in place in the US, but I don’t feel comfortable counting on that.
Four weeks of leave wasn’t ideal, but it was doable. I made it work — I just wish I didn’t have to. We all deserve to be able to take all the time we need to recover from birth, bond with our babies, and figure out new motherhood, and I hope to see a future when that’s something that’s afforded to all new moms out there.
