A New Mother’s Identity Crisis – When Your Maternity Leave Ends During a Pandemic
I’m sitting on a plush bed propped up on plush white pillows.
I’m eating microwave cheese dip and salsa with chips out of the bag. I’m washing it down with a beer. The grocery store brownie cookies are next on my list.
I’m eating all of this on the bed while watching Pitch Perfect 3 on TV.
I’m in the middle of the country, hundreds of miles away from my family, away from my 4-month-old daughter.
No, this isn’t a sequel to Eat, Pray, Love. I haven’t run away to seek freedom, love, or whatever else Julia Roberts was after.
I knew I had to go back to work before my daughter was born. Not working wasn’t an option and at the time, I was totally fine and eager to return to the workforce and ‘reclaim myself’ after maternity leave.
I don’t know what I thought reclaiming myself meant, but it was something along the lines of “I’m not just going to be a mom”.
Being a mom was never high on my to do list, and wasn’t even on the list for most of my life. The girls and women who dream of growing up and becoming Mom as if they’ve been called to become one their entire life was also foreign to me. Not that it was wrong or weird or dumb, I just didn’t get it. It wasn’t until I was 33 years old that I really starting wanting to become a mom.
For 32 years before that, I wanted hundreds of other things that didn’t involve surrendering my entire being for another person.
I’d had breakfast while I was pregnant with a friend who was a mother. She said some women are just driven to be Mom. They have their world revolve around being a mom and their kids are their world. Their identity is being a mom.
My friend is not one of those women.
I said I wasn’t going to be one of those women.
Not that anything is wrong with Mom moms. But at the same time, I didn’t want to be constrained by a single identity – I felt like I was much more complicated than any one identity (hello Enneagram 4).
I have a career as a nurse practitioner and my own copywriting business. I love to travel, I love to fitness with my friends, I love to hang out with my husband and family. And I constantly combat the patriarchal gender roles.
Then my daughter was born.
Then I thought about leaving her to go back to work.
And I cried and cried and cried some more. I couldn’t fathom ever leaving her for a second.
So I didn’t. We spent all day and all night together (sleep be damned).
Then certain things happened, mostly not related to my daughter, which led me to quit my current job halfway through maternity leave.
Yea, I quit that nurse practitioner job (layer one removed of self-identity).
I then secured a new job that would start a few months later (layer lying over there...waiting to put back on at some later date).
Then COVID-19 happened and any glimpse of ‘returning to normal living’ went out the front door, never to return. We were together, attached at the hip and tit, day and night, quarantined and socially distanced at home.
Every day. Every morning, afternoon, evening, and night. We were together.
I didn’t encounter anyone other than my daughter, husband, and the grocery store self-checkout kiosk robot for six weeks. And I didn’t go anywhere or see anyone other than my daughter’s grandparents for two months after that.
Every day. Every morning, afternoon, evening, and night. Every feeding. Every nap. Every smile, cry, giggle, and milestone I witnessed.
I’m now going from a four hour stretch of time (when I got my hair done in February) to more than 120 hours.
I’m going from every moment together to “I’ll see you in six days!”
I’m going from my face being the first thing she sees every morning and the last one she sees every night to wondering if she will still remember my face.
I knew I had to go back to work. I knew I had to have time away from her eventually. But to make the change to my descriptor from Stay At Home Mom to Working Mom and having that mean:
Fly during a global pandemic
Stay in a hotel for 5 nights in the middle of the country during this pandemic
Follow local curfew due to rioting upon arriving to the new city
Start training for a new job – one drastically different from my previous role
Return to society after 3 months of relative seclusion (hello public bathroom stagefright)
So many new things.
I haven’t left our home for more than a few hours let alone our state. I haven’t driven more than 5 miles a week as we limit our grocery store trips to 1-2 times a week, let alone obtain a rental car and remember how Google Maps works.
I haven’t flown in almost a year. I will say the smell of alcohol-based hand sanitizer smells better than farts and body odor on flights these days. I didn’t miss not getting a Diet Coke and pretzels on the flight. I didn’t even really mind wearing the mask and being socially distant. Wearing a mask essentially encourages you not to talk to other people because you can’t hear shit and it’s annoying to have this thing moving on your face with every expression.
Am I smiling? Am I frowning? Am I yawning? Do I have something in my teeth? Nobody knows.
To me it was baby steps back into society after the majority of my conversations are with my 4-month-old, who doesn’t care what I say, and my husband, who is getting better and better at reading my mind.
Baby steps into society and into a new identity. But who was I now, exactly?
My identity was Aspen’s mom because that’s all I could really be. I wasn’t working. I couldn’t socialize or see anyone else because of COVID quarantine.
Even if I had a trusted babysitter, where would we go? Breweries and restaurants are all closed. Parks and the Blue Ridge Parkway were closed until recently.
So by all accounts, I was forced into mom solitude. As were many mothers born during COVID. We didn’t get the chance to attend postpartum yoga classes. We didn’t get to go to Mommy & Me coffee/workouts/bitchfests.
Would I have gone to any of those? Probably not. But I would’ve liked the option to connect in a way that didn’t involve Zoom.
Have you ever Zoomed with an infant in your lap? The back strain to focus on the screen and prop them up. The distraction of them puking on you or getting hungry and crying. The guilt of exposing them to screen time you swore you wouldn’t dare do until they were two years old.
Even when we had socially distant hangs outs – drinks on the front porch or bring your own dinner ‘round the fire – no one could hold her but me and my husband. No one could snuggle her or squeeze her cheeks.
Not only were friends and family isolated and distant, so were many other resources.
I had a telehealth physical therapy visit to address nagging pelvic pain postpartum.
When I developed an infection in my breast due to clogged milk ducts, I had to have telehealth visits with my OB to discuss my symptoms and plan. I developed severe anxiety around the concern of not being able to get antibiotics fast enough and potentially having to go into the hospital during COVID. I’d have to go alone, away from my daughter, if that happened.
I had anxiety over the fear of developing an infection the day after our once a week grocery trip as we were trying our best to stay at home.
I had anxiety over the fevers I would get and would cross my fingers and toes it was just another infection and not COVID. In fact, I woke up with a fever the day I would have returned to my previous job. Although I knew it was from mastitis, they probably wouldn’t have let me work because they were checking everyone’s temperature prior to starting work.
I had another OB telehealth visit. This time about my anxiety, not mastitis. I felt the shame and guilt of weaning wearing me down and anxiety and fear around COVID keeping me down. My coping mechanisms were not safe and thankfully I could talk to someone through my MacBook on the couch.
Telehealth progress may be the second greatest silver lining of COVID.
The first being uninterrupted closeness and time with my new baby. However, the double-edged sword of being a quarantine mom was constantly being forged by the uncertainty surrounding COVID. The forced closeness was something I’ll always cherish, but it was a baptism by fire into motherhood.
My husband and I were responsible for it all. And I know a lot of families operate like this willingly – I get that. But to have this routine interjected into our lives without asking if we cared, made it hard and at times resentful.
I hated not getting a small break. I hated that my friends and family weren’t able to enjoy my new baby with us. I hated myself for hating not having a break. I hated myself for feeling sorry for myself for all the time I had with her.
And now I am far away from her, talking to her through Facebook messenger. Now I am pumping breast milk in the morning and at night and pouring it down the drain.
I went from doing ALL the mom things to doing NONE of the mom things.
I can’t feed her. I can’t hold her. I can’t comfort her. I can’t get her dressed or pick out her PJs.
But I know she’s in good hands. Hands and hearts that love her and know her.
* * * *
Fast forward 13 days.
Here I am, at the end of my second trip away from my daughter, husband, and home. I am finished with training for my new job and feel ready and confident to move forward.
On my work trip I enjoyed many meals in bed or on the hotel room couch, binge-watching Amazon and Netflix. I also enjoyed seeing my daughter laugh and wiggle like crazy when she recognized me on FaceTime. I loved the updates from my husband about the fun they were happening and also tried my best to help any way I could.
Nothing says ‘working mom’ more than walking down the steps of a plane onto the airfield while talking to your husband on the phone about what to do when your baby just won’t. stop. crying.
She was teething like crazy and he finally was able to help her calm down. And he did so with grace – even providing proof with a photo of a sleeping baby from the baby monitor.
I’ve had a lot of time and moments on airplanes, in airports, in hotels by myself to think about the last 5 months (she turned 5 months old last week!). What life has become since my daughter was born. What I have become.
Being a mom is hard. Being a mom has radically changed my life, body, and spirit. I left the hospital in January as a new person. And trying to figure out who that new person is has been a challenge on its own.
Forget the whole ‘keep a human alive’ part – trying to redefine me as a person and woman has been a lot to unpack. I still don’t know who that person fully is, and I have a feeling I will constantly evolve and change who that person is as life goes on.
But one thing I know I will have to do, whatever I define me as, is to know no matter what, I am enough.
This new Stephanie, she is good enough. Whatever I’m trying to do – I am enough.
And being a mom makes that sentence really hard to say. You simultaneously feel like you’re failing as a mom and no one else can do it but you.
It’s like thinking “I suck at this...but everyone else probably sucks more so I shouldn’t bother them and I better just continue to do everything…really badly”. That sort of thinking really wears you down. This duality of feeling I’m not good enough but not feeling comfortable asking anyone else for help.
It’s like being an island sinking into quicksand, one breath away from being consumed by the sea.
My bonus grandmother recently told me of a quote Oprah once said:
Women can do anything but we can’t do it all at the same time.
It’s a saying I wanted to buy into but a phrase I couldn’t really embrace until this work trip. Trust me, I wanted to continue ignoring it even when they told me I had to go Nebraska – I looked up KOA campgrounds so we could bring the camper and stay together on my trips.
But then reality set in and making my husband stay in quarantine in a camper with an infant while I was at work wasn’t the best idea.
So I had to come to grips with the fact I would have to leave my baby for not just an hour or a day or ever one night. I had to leave her for 6 days and 5 nights.
Yes I cried for about an hour once I got the news and then I did what I do best during a challenge – I started planning. Making lists, ordering extra bottles, and organizing schedules. I tried to make it as easy as possible to take care of her, but also not wanting to be a crazy helicopter mom.
Not sure if I succeeded, but no one complained about my lists to my face lol.
And guess what? My babygirl thrived! Ate well, slept well, learned to roll over even better than she was before, and laughed countless times. She was able to bond with her grandparents and daddy in ways that weren’t previously possible because I was there doing the lioness’s share of work.
It wasn’t just that I wanted to do all the things, but it was also the easiest thing.
You ever have someone try to show you how to do something and then they’re like “never mind, it’s just faster if I do it”.
It was like that, but add postpartum anxiety flair to it.
It’s easy to say it was pride, or doubt in others, as to what kept me from asking for help, but it was mostly the stress of trying to explain how to do something that I actually had no idea how to do well (or at least, thought I didn’t know how to well).
Asking for help and explaining what worked for me was opening to door to questions and potential criticism to what I was doing. Explaining what I did opened the gates of doubt of someone realizing I didn’t know what the hell I was doing.
But, guess what? I did explain it. I did know how to keep her alive and happy. And so did they.
They did that while I traveled across the country, during a pandemic, during a civil rights crisis, to train for a brand new job.
And now we are all back together again. Navigating our new normal. Navigating childcare schedules. Navigating big career moves. Navigating my daughter trying fruits and veggies for the first time.
Learning what life is as a mom, wife, business owner, nurse practitioner, and woman. Learning how to ask for help. Learning I don’t have to do everything. I know I can anything, but I can’t do everything at the same time. And I know I am enough.
xoxo,
Steph
