5 Challenges I Faced After I Gave Birth
Motherhood is wild.
After 40 weeks of absolute fear of what I couldn't control happening inside my body, I had a kid! They LET ME LEAVE the hospital with a kid?! Terrifying.
On top of that, I had a career hanging in the balance - waiting for me to decide if I wanted to return to it. While I wanted to be the best mom I could be and give my child all the time in the world, I was hurting. New motherhood had me drowning in my own inadequacies.
Work was the one thing that I KNEW I could do well - because motherhood was not coming as natural to me as promised. This kid deserved better than I was giving - but heading back to work recentered me and I am now becoming a better mom because I did not lose myself in this new role.
How Do you Know How Much Time You Need To Take Off?
This question was really something you have to discuss with you and your partner/support before the baby comes along for logistical purposes but it will really come down to 2 things: finances and how you feel once the kiddo arrives.
Financially, pre-baby, I knew I could take about a month off, without much of a hiccup. I contacted all my clients with that timeframe about 3 months before my due date so that we would get all the urgent stuff complete before I took off.
At this time, I did not have an employee, so we had to plan for each of those client to either get NO design work for an entire month or hire someone else while I was out.
Post-baby, with ALL the feels and ALL the baby-centric tasks to do, you may feel like you need more time than initially planned. This will depend on how much support you have - AND WE ALL NEED HELP! Fortunately, my husband got a month of paternity leave, so we knew we had a solid 30 days to figure out some kind of routine with the little one.
I actually didn't take the full 30 days. I was learning to be a mother of one while hating myself that I wasn't a mother of two (and taking out that anger on my husband and my child). I needed to go to back to work - otherwise resentment would have continued to fuel all the post partum anger and anxiety I was experiencing.
So whatever you need to do to be the mom you want to be - kind, patient, loving - do it! For me that meant going back to work so that I could get a break from all the baby stress. I had carried her for 9 months - it was someone else's turn and my husband was more than happy to relieve me so that I could go talk to other adults, make some art and feel like myself again.
DO NOT SUBMIT to anyone else's timeline concerning YOUR motherhood. That is the quickest way to hate every minute of it.
Post Partum Anxiety
This one isn't specifically about being a freelancer mom, but I am sure you've heard of post-partum depression - (commonly includes mood swings, crying spells, anxiety and difficulty sleeping. "Baby blues" typically begin within the first two to three days after delivery, and may last for up to two weeks) but have you heard of Post Partum Anxiety and Post Partum Panic Attacks?
Post Partum Anxiety can rear it's head in lots of ways... In my instance, I experienced waves of being extremely over protective and ANGRY! Even though only one of my children survived and I never learned why, I had this consuming feeling that I and ONLY I knew what my baby needed so everyone else could fuck off. The even slightest insinuation that I didn't know what my baby needed or that I needed help would send me into a blind rage that could have ended my marriage, for real.
I wasn't depressed, I didn't have the baby blues. I was terrified that my child was going to die and there was nothing I could do to save her, because I had already lost one of them.
I was not in therapy at the time (Thankfully, I have been for the last 8 months) but I felt so alone in my panic attacks. My husband was as understanding has one could be but has told me that he'll never fully feel the loss of Elisa the way I feel it. So that is why I am writing these emails - I don't want any person who is ANGRY about being a parent, despite desperately wanting their child(ren), to feel alone.
What Kind of Hustle Can You Maintain With a Baby in the House?
Mommy Brain goes into full effect once you are home with your little one and there aren't nurses around to help. For me, this meant I could never really focus on my work. For the first 6 months of my child's life I had ZERO capacity to grow the business - I had just grown a human being. I needed a fucking break - a much larger break than the one month of maternity leave I gave myself. The original plan was to keep Oli home for 6 months with a nanny helping me (mostly because after you hit the 6 month mark, your child is less likely to die from SIDS, and I was convinced that if she left my sight at all in those 6 months, she would die...again...I needed to be in grief therapy.)
So we hired an in-house nanny once my husband had to go back to work. I had my own office, with a door, so I could at least try to shut out all the baby noises. I thought I had set myself up for success. Can you guess how that worked out? I tried my best to let the nanny take care of things but my brain literally felt like it was on fire when she cried. So I intervened, a lot. Since the nanny wasn't fluent in English (remember, I gave birth in Ecuador) I just took over sometimes and left all the emailed unanswered until my husband could take over. I am sure the nanny hated me because of it.
We got lucky and found a really awesome daycare that took 3 month olds, so off she went at 3 months, after 2 more months of her being at home and my brain burning. Leaving her at daycare terrified me, but it really became our only solution. I needed her out of the house if my career, marriage and sanity were going to stay in tact.
It turned out to be a win-win. I got loads of work done and Olivia got socialized really quickly, plus she loves her professors so much. They are much better at activities and giving her new hairstyles every day.
I should add that in Ecuador, daycare is EXTREMELY affordable. I am not sure whether my freelancer gigs would have covered as good of a daycare in the States....
Desktop Pumping
For about the first month of Olivia's life, I tried breast feeding. For many reasons, it was not working and I couldn't rest. So I promised her that I would pump, all day if I had to, so that she would get all the milk I could muster.
That, too, became a chore, especially because by 2.5 months, I was drying up. I never had a boatload of milk to begin with but after sitting at my desk working for 6 straight hours every day....and pumping for the exact same amount of time only to stare down at a few ounces in both pumps, I gave up.*
(*Do not pump this long! After I told my midwife friend, Rebeca, my breastfeeding troubles - she looked at me in shock....."oh baby, no, you should have never have subjected yourself to THAT MUCH pumping!)
But I had been promised by multiple healthcare professionals that my milk would come in, don't worry! Screw all of them. They could have ALSO prepared me for if it didn't. I felt like an utter failure. One kid down, and then the one who had survived, I wasn't creating enough milk for her to live on.
So the darkness of motherhood continued...until by 6 months, the last 3 months of being purely formula fed, we had a baby in the highest percentile of height, perfect weight, perfect cognitive development. I could finally take a breath. I felt like I was finally doing something right.
Coping With This New
Body AND Brain
Amazingly, I was also never prepared for how both my body AND brain would function differently after becoming a parent.
I think we are all warned about mom bods and we can never hold our pee in anymore, do those kegel exercises, baby fat is the hardest to work off, etc etc, but ya'll, my brain is different, too.
A study published in Nature Neuroscience reveals that during pregnancy women undergo significant brain remodeling that persists for at least two years after birth.
Researchers found that the new mothers experienced gray matter reductions that last for at least two years after birth. The gray matter reductions occurred in brain regions that involve social cognition, particularly in the network dedicated to theory of mind, which helps us think about what is going on in someone else’s mind. Gray matter loss was not seen in new fathers or nonparents.
So while I am dealing with a basically total loss of pelvic floor control, and being oddly lactose intolerant for a good 6 months after giving birth, my BRAIN HAS ALSO BEEN REMODELED.
It makes sense, you are now responsible for a life, so priorities change, and the connection between Mom and baby is so strong, it totally makes sense that my brain has been rewired to adapt to HER needs, just as much as I my own. Shit is wild.
In business-owner terms, becoming a parent has shifted my daily work-life priorities as well. My brain definitely hits a wall sooner than it ever did before - and after being a mom for 3 years, I know I need a little down time after my work is done and before I pick up the kiddo. Time to decompress. So the rewiring of my brain has made me slow down siginficantly....in the BEST way.