Back to Work

I promised myself I wouldn’t start writing this entry until more time had passed, preferably another week or more, but I then realized that part of the purpose of having this blog is to document moments as they come, rather than in hindsight. To be really accurate, I should have started writing this last Tuesday or Wednesday, but I was not in a state to write. And if I had been, this entry might have been entitled “I can’t do my job anymore.”

So in all honesty, I underestimated how hard it would be to go back to work. I sort of hung my hat on the news that for many moms, the anticipation anxiety is worse than the actual return, and therefore, I would be fine, since I was decently nervous. In some ways, I suppose that was okay, because I really did enjoy the last few days of my maternity leave, without too much angst. Tuesday morning finally arrived, and things started out smoothly enough, me with my multiple bags packed, showered, dressed, and fed before I woke up G. But then.... I woke her up, nursed her and got her dressed, and as we were playing on her activity mat the reality started to rumble its way through me. G doesn’t know that maternity leave is over, that she’s starting school. She’s happily playing with mommy, but in 15 minutes I have to put her in her car seat, drop her off with at a safe but new place with well-meaning but new people. And the tears came, and basically didn’t stop for three days.

So everything I’ve been experiencing is undoubtedly shared by the millions of working moms out there, but oh my gosh this is powerful stuff. The three months we had together, apart for maybe as much as 2 hours, and only a handful of times, was now over. And it flew by! Before that, we were literally symbiotically attached, for 38 weeks. So being away for her, for eight hours a day, 4-5 days of week seems powerfully unfair and cruel. Everything I had said to myself, about how I had worked so hard, and how much I loved my job, and how good daycare would be for her (the stimulation, the socialization), seemed like little lies I had told myself to justify the position I now found myself in. It doesn’t help that she hates being strapped into her car seat, or that it’s winter, either.

So that’s where I was at for most of the week; I seemed to be okay at work (after I wiped my eyes dry from the daycare dropoff) to about 1/1:30 in the afternoon... so, if I were working part time, I would be golden. Except I don’t have the kind of career track that can really go part time. What’s interesting, though, is that Friday I worked at home, with a great sitter we hired to ease my transition back, and I had a fabulous and productive day. I worked downstairs in our basement office, able to focus on my job without the separation anxiety or distractions of meetings or working in a shared office that had plagued me the three days prior.

So I’m faced with a series of choices, with choices embedded within those choices. Given the demands of my job and my position as a trainee, I need to be strategic and careful about what I request, but I also need to be assertive about possible changes that could help enable to me as an individual to do my job, and do it well. I have decided that I should make no final decisions based on my first week back to work, but that I should keep note of small things which will help M, G, and I survive and thrive. Setting the coffee pot the night before, cooking for leftovers on the weekend, and ordering off of Amazon Prime are some of those things, but so too may be asking for another work at home day. The latter will only be possible, however, if we can get more sitter coverage and bargain with daycare to charge us part time rates.

In the mean time, I offer my respect, solace, and gratitude to all working moms out there. I offer you a warm hug, a shoulder rub, whole-hearted reassurance that you’re doing the right thing, but most of all, if I could, I’d offer you minutes upon minutes, as I now understand how precious each one is with your beautiful, beautiful children.