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
I hoped that I’d go into labor that weekend so I could have the most time off with my baby as possible. That didn’t happen, though — my daughter stayed put until two days after my due date, leaving me with just four weeks to recover from my c-section and adjust to life as a mom for the very first time.
Maternity leave was a dream come true. It was the most time I’d taken off of work since I graduated from college, and I spent my days cuddling my daughter, watching shows like Gossip Girl, and taking naps when I could. After a difficult pregnancy, I slid into the role of mom easily now that I was free to drink my favorite wine and sleep on my stomach again. With the pregnancy hormones leaving my body, I suddenly felt much lighter. The deep depression and anxiety I had felt while pregnant faded away, even the darkness that seemed to follow me around since the start of the pandemic.
I didn't feel ready to go back to work when my leave ended
But since I’ve always worked from home, I knew it would be an easier adjustment than many moms have — especially since my baby would be staying home with me all day. The first couple of weeks, I eased back in, only taking on about half of my usual workload before ramping things back up to full speed. At first, I felt capable, but then, all the negative feelings set in.
It wasn’t long before I was overtaken by guilt. Even though the bills needed to be paid and the diapers needed to be bought, I felt terrible for working when I should be with my baby and wondered if this was going to affect her relationship with me in the long run. And as anyone who’s ever spent five minutes around a newborn already knows, it’s not like new parents are getting an abundance of sleep or time to themselves.
My downtime after work wasn’t downtime if I was caring for an infant or running to the grocery store in a face mask while trying to avoid touching my face and constantly using hand sanitizer… not to mention the fact that I was still wearing an adult diaper and healing from major surgery.
Thanks to the pandemic, the only people we were seeing were my parents and sister, which meant that I couldn’t ask any friends for extra help, either, and being isolated like that as a new mom is more difficult than I ever could have planned.
More often than not, my days ended in tears. On more than one occasion, I ended my day by rocking my baby in her room, both of us crying. I had to figure out how to make this work — and fast.
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.
