Last week we had a few rougher nights due to sickness in our family. One night in particular, Marin woke up around 1:30am coughing and crying. I went in and gave her some medicine. Luckily, she went straight back to sleep after that instead of trying to fight staying up. I on the other tried to go back to bed but proceeded to toss and turn for hours upon hours. My brain didn't want to slow down, shut off, and just rest. Instead, it mulled a million miles per hour and anxiety began to bend and sway within me. I'm not even totally sure how long I was awake for but it was bad enough that I was considering just getting up and working on stuff, at 3am in the morning. That's when you know it's bad.
Laying there, I was just so anxious. For so many things. The biggest was regarding my job. I have discovered that I have this fear of going on maternity leave and everything either completely falls apart or they realize that they can do it all without me. This anxiety begins to well up hugely inside of me at 3am in the morning and causes me to be so torn. I want to be able to have our son and focus on him for as many weeks as I can before we have to dive back into reality again. No deadlines, agendas, emails, or projects. Just us. Just family.
There's this thing in our society that tends to torment me. I think it's completely destructive and detrimental to mothers and fathers everywhere. You have to still do EVERYTHING, as you did before. Don't rest. If you rest, you job and life will move swiftly on without you. You must be at the top of your game at all times. No gaps in your career or resume. You want a career right? Blah, blah, blah.
These are things that keep me up at night, that and pregnancy insomnia. Mom guilt is a real thing. I want nothing more than to take 6 weeks of our lives to figure out how to be a family of four and bring our new son into the world. This may very well be the last time we ever get this opportunity. I don't want to feel guilty about using my rights and benefits to spend time with our growing family. No more guilt. I know I can prep and plan. I know I can put things in place to help make this transition safe and secure. I know that my job is super awesome, as are our maternity benefits and I need to not worry about these sort of things.
With my leave with Marin, I took twelve weeks but was still so very consumed by my job. I never fully embraced all of the new experiences of motherhood and those first few weeks are a total blur to me. Those first few weeks were so hard. I can never get them back. I was too worried about calendars, payroll, and getting my job done even though I was supposed to be on leave.
My plan is take 12 weeks with our son. The first six...I don't even want to think about work. The last six, I'll work part time from home. The transition to having two kids is a big one for me. I am anxious and have no idea how to navigate life. As long as I don't try to everything all of the time, I'm sure we will be fine.
This is what keeps me up at night.
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