working mom | the fear
** edit on this post: at the time of writing this (Aug 4th), I didn’t really fully understand the perfect storm of our adventure. So much clarity came to us months later, and even more now as I write this edit on May 5th, exactly 10 months later. Sometimes the clarity shocks me, other times it breaks me. I wish we knew so much more back then. I wish we knew about Anth’s PPD , among many other things., but you can’t change the past, you can just learn from it and try to be better for it each day moving forward.
Yesterday Oscar turned six weeks old and today is my first day back to work, officially. I’ve been working a bit this week, everyday where I can, here and there, but all at home, all at the computer; answering emails, planning, reviewing schedules, family shot lists, etc. But today is different, it’s back to the reality of my work.
My new normal, which I’m still getting used to, is about to change again. My new normal of ‘motherhood’ is going to meet face to face with my old life of ‘working woman’. But nothing is as it was, everything is new.
My hearts feeling all these things that I cannot describe as I try to focus on today, thinking about when I’ll pump in the incredibly full day of someone’s wedding where usually I don’t find time to even take a 3 minute pee break. I’ll need to pump for 20 mins & wash the parts too, and do this twice because of the length of the day, if I don’t I’m worried about affecting my milk supply or mastitis or just engorged uncomfortable breasts. Or, leaking. I leak ALL THE TIME. I need to pack another outfit just in case, or should I just wear two sets of pads in my bra?! I wonder if I fit into the normal outfit I wear to weddings in the summer and I wonder what it’s going to be like to carry all my equipment after it being almost 2.5months since I did it last, plus the fact that I’m still healing from my caesarean and today is officially the first day the doctors say I can be back on my feet carrying things.
New thoughts come to mind, unlike what I’m usually thinking about before a wedding. They are all surrounding this new little man in my life. It will be the first day away from my son. And it will be 15 hrs too.
Will Oscar be ok? Will he nap? Will he take the bottle? Will he cry all day? Will everything fall apart?
Earlier this week before Anthony left again, Anthony held Oscar, in the kitchen, while watching double check my bag as I packed it days before the wedding. I could feel his eyes on me. I was scared to look at him. I could feel the guilt. I could feel the rage. Anthony was back at work only 4 hrs after Oscar was born, but that never came up, because the focus was always when I was going back to work; and not just from him, but from everyone.
No one held back with the shock in their voice and on their face when my response to going back to work came up, or when people asked my sons age after hearing I was going back to work.
When I originally thought about going back to work, I had a totally different view of how it would all go down. I thought I would have had my son just around his due date, at home from a beautiful home birth. I imagined it to be all snuggles and cozy days as our family grew together. I imagined that when I went back to work, Anth could seamlessly step in to be with Oscar, or that our nanny would be there to provide all the baby snuggles and care taking. But, that wasn’t our story.
Ours was about waiting with anxiety as Oscar’s due date came and went, which would have been ok, but as the dates passed we got closer to Anth’s show which created these looming questions of “what if he cant be with me when the babe is born?”. Then Oscar arrived and his birth left both Anth & I dealing with many wounds (emotionally and otherwise). And we didn’t have that sleepy baby. We had the baby who cried most of the time, but wasn’t colic, who fought naps and fussed all day. We had the baby that didn’t want a pacifier and screamed his head off and fought us hard as we introduced the bottle. We had the experience where dad couldn’t be alone with our son. I questioned everything in my life as I felt deep ‘baby blues’. We had the experience that no one ever talked about. And, we didn’t have the support to help us through this new life that we had no idea how to navigate through. We both felt scared and alienated, and isolated. And we weren’t communicating.
So here we are, six weeks postpartum and feeling more confused about life than ever before.
And, I wonder. I wonder how it’s gonna be today. How is being back at work going to be?
Before Oscar was born I noticed that people treated me differently learning I was becoming a mom, opportunities went out the window and people told me to my face that they truly believed me being a mom meant I wouldn’t be fully invested in my job, and so they wanted to work with someone without kids.
And, I sit here, mad, guilty, sad and frustrated.
Can I be a good mom while being a good business owner and do my job as I have before? I believe so, at least I want to believe it. Will the guilt take over as I leave my son? What if these nay sayers are proven right? What if they are wrong though, does that mean I’m failing in the motherhood area?
Mom guilt is real. It feels my body. But work guilt does too. I’m so torn, but today is here and only time will tell.