Maternity leave is not a vacation

All the stories lately about Marissa Mayer, Yahoo’s new pregnant CEO, have left me thinking about the ways that decisions made by people in the public eye influence the lives of others.  Marissa has stated that she only plans to take a brief maternity leave and she for those few weeks that she is technically off of work, she will still actually be working from home.  Don’t get me wrong, I have known moms who have felt strongly that being at home just wasn’t “for them,” and it is easier to be back at work then taking care of their baby at home.  Staying at home, whether you are there for 3 months or permanently, is not a vacation.  In many ways, it can harder than a high-powered, full time job that you have training for and feel competent at.  None the less, it should be each individual mom’s choice to decide how spend one’s maternity leave, without the pressures that the image that someone like Marissa has created of the woman who “has it all.”  Shouldn’t everyone be able to just have a baby and not miss a beat of their professional lives?  By setting the standard for others that having a baby is not going to change your life in the slightest (other than having a few pesky pounds to shed), it adds undue pressure for the rest of us who either feel stress from external (their bosses) or internal (their own feelings of inadequacy) sources to return to “normal” as quickly as possible.

Before giving birth, many expectant moms think that the only difference pre and post baby is that there will now be a tiny human in their home that needs caring for.  Often they come to find out that becoming a mother changes you in ways that make who you were before no longer all that important.  Also, what strikes me is the illusion that maternity leave is a vacation or a time to check tasks off your list.  Since most, although not all, women are working before giving birth to their first child, the thought of being at home all day long without a job to go to may make it sound as though there is nothing to do other than accomplish all the household tasks and complete projects that you never had time to do while you were at work all day long.  This is not the point.  Instead, this is a time to figure things out like:  Who this person is who is now a permanent fixture in your life? How do you feed this person?  How do you help this person feel comforted and soothed when he is crabby?  How do you take care of yourself and your baby simultaneously?  How do you work together with your partner to learn how to co-parent?  All these questions take time to answer.  It’s okay to spend mindless days watching the entire Real Housewives series as you feed your baby.  Give yourself permission to not clean up the piles of mail that are mounting on the counter.  Resist, with all your strength, the urge to check your work email.  Now is the time to get to know your child.  Make other mommy friends.  Figure out how to move from being a couple to a family.  You deserve time to do these things.  Whether you take off three weeks, three months, a year or decide not to go back to work at all, your world will never be the same. Take a few moments to honor yourself, the hard work you did bringing your child into the world and the years of parenting ahead of you.  Everything else can wait.