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How I'm Feeling on the Eve of My Return to Work

Posted on June 20, 2021June 20, 2021 by Billable Baby

"I'm in the hospital and will be offline for the coming weeks. My water broke this morning (two months early). The doctors are monitoring me and trying to figure out if the baby wants to come out."

It feels like a lifetime ago when I sent this abrupt out-of-office message from the triage room of the hospital. As I look back on the past few months of parental leave, I marvel at how time seemed to have simultaneously crawled forward in seconds and flew by in weeks ("The days are long, but the years are short," goes the common refrain).

Right now, I am feeling the familiar wave of jitters that typically mark a major life milestone, like moving to a new country, graduating from college and law school, taking the bar exam, or starting a new job.

I want to capture this particularly moment in time--the night before I go back to work--so I can look back on it later. Perhaps someone else out there who has similar feelings will be comforted by the fact that they are not alone. Along that vein, I want to dedicate this post to all the lawyer-moms (and dads) out there who are helping me navigate this transition.

So how am I feeling? Trepidation. Worry. Nervous excitement. I am not weeping (for now), so maybe that is a temporary win.

My biggest concern is that I will regret not managing my time better during my parental leave. My husband will be the first to tell you that I do not do well with idle time. Early in my leave, I wrote--and checked off--lengthy to-do lists every day (I'm sorry! I can't help it!). I read books about parenting; researched and bought baby products; tried different activities with Billable Baby; tackled endless chores; and dedicated time to various non-work, non-family commitments). It was important to me to feel productive, even during the unstructured, unpredictable days of new parenthood.

Over time, as we settled into more of a routine, I added one more item to the to-do lists: enjoy my baby. This was an incredibly useful piece of advice my husband and I received. Sometimes, the best use of time as a parent is to just be 100% present with our kids. At the same time, I felt that my entire identity and my whole day did not need to only revolve around my kid (says the person with a blog called "Billable Baby," ha!). During my leave, I found it fairly easy to allocate what I thought was enough time to my family, my personal relationships, my hobbies, and my non-work commitments. But once you add a full-time job into the mix, achieving the optimal allocation necessarily becomes more challenging. I did not want to end my parental leave with the regret that I did not spend enough quality time with Billable Baby. To be clear, I don't regret anything right now, but I think it will be interesting to re-evaluate in a few months' time.

Another dominant emotion at the moment is relief. Specifically, I feel relieved that I got to spend 23 weeks at home with Billable Baby. I cobbled together my six-months of paid leave with sick leave and short-term disability (while I was in the hospital), generous primary-care leave offered by my job, and vacation days. I originally wanted to downplay how long I had been away from work. The thinking was that I could sneak away, have a baby, and slip back into the office rhythm before anyone even noticed I was gone. But I realized it was more important to me to normalize long leaves by talking about it.

I thought I had a long leave until I spoke to friends in other countries. Almost all of my mom friends in Canada are planning to take at least a year of parental leave, most of which will be paid (full or reduced salary). In Europe, I hear it is not unusual to take 6-18 months off. Here in the U.S., I see mothers going back to work after three or four weeks. That is mind-boggling, considering the standard postpartum OB appointment is not even until six weeks after the birth. Come on America, do better!

One more thought on this point, perhaps geared toward dual-corporate-career couples: we should further normalize fathers taking primary caregiver leave. This is already an increasingly common occurrence. I was thrilled to hear that several male colleagues and friends recently took the full primary leave, instead of rushing back to work after two or four short weeks (they mentioned that other parents are particularly supportive of their decision). My husband did not take primary leave, and that has been a source of regret for both us, even though he did manage to take on a significant portion of the childcare responsibilities while working from home. Should we ever have a younger sibling for Billable Baby, we fully plan on having my husband take primary leave, or even stack it on top of my primary leave, if possible.

Speaking of my husband, he wanted to end this post with a guest post (more like a blurb, you blog-luddite). Here it is:

I want to first note how incredibly proud I am of the grit that my wife has displayed through these past six months. This includes the strength with which she dealt with unexpected adversity and also the dedication with which she threw herself into the day-to-day of parenting. This initial phase of parenting has been a wild ride, bringing challenges that neither of us type-A, plan-everything-in-spreadsheets gunners were prepared for, and she has handled them wonderfully.

As we enter a month of significant transitions, I feel excited to see how we will take on new opportunities at work. Coupled with that excitement is anxiety: our new schedules, our new child care arrangement (much more on that in a future post!), but most of all, our ability to strike a balance between career and family. The last half-year has redefined our relationships with our parents, with each other, and with this new member of our nuclear family. I am hopeful that even as we return to full-time (150% allocation) jobs, we will set aside time to nurture the bonds that have been growing.

2 thoughts on “How I'm Feeling on the Eve of My Return to Work”

  1. Pingback: Reflections on the First 200 Billable Hours After Parental Leave - Billable Baby
  2. Tricia says:
    October 12, 2021 at 11:45 pm

    Reading this on the eve of my return to work and so much resonates! So grateful to be on this journey with you!

    Reply

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Billable Baby Blog
This blog chronicles the adventures of two Washington D.C.-based lawyers and their baby daughter ("Billable Baby"). Read more about us here.

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  • Parenting Performance Evaluations (4 Months)
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  • Fire, Flood, and a Month-Long Hospitalization: Making Sense of Billable Baby's Birth Story
  • Everything I Learned about PPROM (Preterm Premature Rupture of the Membranes)

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https://billablebaby.com/archives/reflections-on-the-first-200-billable-hours-after-parental-leave/
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Here are the questions we answered:
1. Things my partner is really good at.
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3. Areas of improvement that might bring my partner greater happiness.
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I initially started writing about the circumstances of Billable Baby’s birth as a coping mechanism, with no intention of posting it publicly.  I wrote in fits and starts over several months, in between her naps, after middle of the night feeds, and during endless pump sessions.  I truly believe in the healing power of words, and in this case, every word I typed lifted a little bit of weight off of me.  Since I have greatly benefited from many of your honest, frank, and often hilarious posts on parenthood, I thought I would share my story, in the hopes that it might help someone else out there. Link in bio.

For those of you who have experienced recent life upheavals with circumstances outside of your control, how did you cope? How are you doing today?
I initially thought that my experience feeding Bil I initially thought that my experience feeding Billable Baby was, to put it mildly, a HOT MESS. As a NICU baby and a preemie, Billable Baby was formula-fed in the beginning. After she came home, she drank formula and expressed milk. After my milk came in fully, she breastfed during the day and at times drank pumped milk from bottles at night. Then, she had nursing strikes and we switched to bottles during the day and nursing at night (if she latches). Having basically experienced every method of feeding a baby on any given day (exclusively formula, exclusively breastfeed, exclusively pumping, combo feeding, triple feeding, quadruple feeding—JK that’s not a thing), I realized that the grass is not always greener on the other side and that there are trade-offs and hidden costs for every method. It took four months, but I finally recognized that my breastfeeding/pumping journey is not a “hot mess”. Rather, it was a blessing for me to have experienced EVERYTHING. I have no idea what next week brings. For this week at least, I’m proud of the 700 minutes I pumped and the chubby little nugget that Billable Baby has become. #breastfeeding #breastfeedingmom #breastfeedingjourney #pumpingmom #exclusivepumping #newborn #breastpump #newmom #lawyermom #lawyermomlife #newparents #triplefeed #pumpingmama #pumpingmilk #combofeeding #triplefeed
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