The moment my husband and I decided to officially try for baby, everything in life seemed to become a series of countdowns. The first was the giddy countdown to my next ovulation, followed by the more nerve-wracking countdown to when to test for pregnancy. There was the countdown to when we would reach the “safe window” of being at least 12 weeks along and could share the news with friends and family, the countdown to each subsequent OB appointment, and then, the most anticipated of them all: The countdown to when our baby would arrive.
Our daughter was born at the end of 2016, two days after her Christmas due date. And almost immediately, another countdown started in my head: The number of weeks I had to spend with this delicious nugget of mine until I would have to return to work.
I had 14 weeks until that day, and I knew I would blink and it would go by. I was lucky to have paid leave the entire time, so I tried to heed the advice of well-meaning friends who told me to focus on enjoying my new baby and only on that. But knowing that my time at home had an eventual endpoint made that difficult. I couldn’t think about my time off without thinking about going back. At a few days post-partum, incapacitated after an unexpected C-section and struggling to get the whole breastfeeding thing down, my mind could not compute how I would ever get out of bed, let alone go back to work.
I tried my hardest to think of my leave in terms of “number of weeks since the birth,” but I could only think of “number of weeks left.” At 12 weeks left, I held my daughter and stared at her for hours without feeling even a drop of fatigue, anesthetized by the adrenaline of being a new parent. I held her entire tiny hands in just my fingers, nuzzled my face into the nape of her neck, and laughed at her snoring and grunting as she slept. As for me, the swelling had finally disappeared, but the pregnancy and delivery had left other permanent changes to my body. When I could actually muster up the courage to look at my new self in the mirror, I did so in short, almost furtive glances, uncomfortable with what I thought I saw.
At 10 weeks left, we had settled into the basic routine of eating, sleeping, and diaper changes. Our girl was a beautiful sleeper and gave us lots of smiles early on. My husband and I high-fived each other and marveled at how smoothly this whole parenting thing was going. We figured we had won the baby lottery with our blissfully easy newborn. Meanwhile, I embraced the role of mother and stay-at-home mom for the time being. It felt natural and even fun to be doing laundry and cooking dinner every day, knowing I was taking care of our house and family.
As any experienced parent would have told us, however, the only thing consistent about babies is change. At eight weeks left, our baby decided to show off to us how loudly she could scream, and her middle-of-the-night performance was not to be missed. She’d cry whether we put her down, held her in our arms, bounced her while sitting on a yoga ball, rocked her while walking around the room and tried to avoid banging into furniture in the dark. Breastfeeding still felt awkward and was extremely painful for me, adding to my despair and the mounting evidence that I was not doing motherhood right.
I couldn’t stop thinking about going back to work. Before having my own, I could lend a sympathetic ear to moms who, out of necessity, fling themselves back into working before they have a chance to heal. After having my daughter though, the total absurdity of that reality that too many mothers in the U.S. have to live transformed that sympathy into total rage. Repeatedly, I cried to my husband about not knowing how in the world I would go back to work if it continued to be like this. How could I function in front of clients and coworkers when I could barely stand? And more importantly, who would hold our baby for her naps for hours at a time because it was the only way she would sleep?
And then almost as soon as she turned away from us, she turned back again. At six weeks left, she began sleeping for longer stretches. Her smiles were unquestionably sincere by now, and she added cooing to her repertoire of noises. She discovered her hands and munched on them delightedly, and stared right into our eyes, as if truly seeing us for the first time. I ate it all up gladly and a bit desperately, knowing it wouldn’t last forever. I still felt sucker-punched every time I thought about going back to work in 6 weeks, this time because I knew I’d be missing moments like this and you only have one first child and what if she wondered where I was and what if something terrible happened while I was at work and was the money really all that important…
But at four weeks left, I was hit with another curveball, this one perhaps the most surprising of them all. After two-and-a-half months of spending every moment with my baby, I started to crave working again. I missed the structure of getting up every day and heading to the office at the same time. Selfishly, I also missed the thrill of being recognized for a job well done and I realized how much of my identity and self-confidence came from building my career. I began to envy my husband as he left for work each day and interacted with other adults. And doing the chores had long ago lost its novelty on me. I was no longer charmed by the Sisyphean task of washing and folding her laundry, no matter how tiny and cute her clothes were.
Currently, at 2 weeks left, people ask if I am excited about returning to work or if I am sad, and the best explanation I can give is that I am neither and both at the same time. What I can say is that I’m ready to give it a shot. I have all the right pieces to help make this work: Reliable and trustworthy childcare, a partner who is supportive and always shares the load, an employer that has recognized the needs of new parents and the fact that offering paid parental leave makes employees more likely to return to work. If I had had to return to work much earlier like so many women in our country are forced to do, I’m certain that my stance would have been completely different.
Right now, my choice is to go back to work and give the scary a try. It could be great, or it could be a disaster, but more likely it’ll be something in between, depending on the time of day or the fullness of the moon. The hard truth is that I will miss moments of my daughter’s life by being away from her during the day. Perhaps some of these moments will be major milestones, even. My excitement at hearing about these will certainly be tinged with a little bit of heartache to have missed them. But that will make the countdown to the end of the day when I can come home, gather up her tiny body in my arms, and kiss her squishy cheeks even sweeter.