Knocked Up : returning to work after having a baby

All the Live Long Day

knockedup — Tue, 29 Sep 2009 21:00:00 GMT

Once again, I have returned to the land of copy machines, cc'ing, and mysterious year-old science project yogurts stinking up the community fridge. Yes, I'm back at work, after 12 weeks of maternity leave, during which I (again) planned to do lots of ambitious, vitally important things, like get the dog groomed and finally get rid of all those literary theory books I have from grad school and organize our cupboards with all the dry goods in cunning glass canisters and make homemade Halloween costumes, and (again) got nothing done except occasional vaccuming. I didn't even get the oil changed in my car. So, I've got nothing to show for all those weeks except for this:

(Jonas, just before he again put his hand in his mouth and just after he gave me this very important message: ooooh aarrrrr yiiiii.)

(Axel, doing his biggest "Say Cheese" smile, and me riding the train at the zoo.)

I guess that's not nothing.

"How does it feel to be back?" people keep asking me.

"Ask me when I've been back longer than two hours," I say.

Mostly it feels...weird. In almost three months, not much has changed. I had hundreds of emails to delete about events that have already happened and now-resolved crises with the shared projector. Sure, some people got haircuts and some people quit smoking or took up smoking or lost weight or gained weight, and projects have been completed and work accomplished and papers filed. Money has come in the door and gone back out. But it is still, mostly, the same place, except now I need a special code for copying.

And I still am, mostly, the same, except that am no longer wearing maternity clothes and am now wearing my fat pants and things with a stretchy waist. I was gone. Now I'm back. I had one baby. Now I have a baby and a toddler. I was tired from end of pregnancy bloat and sleeplessness. Now I'm tired from nighttime nursing sessions (Jonas wants me to take back what I said about him being a good sleeper) and a toddler with a minor digestive issue that makes him poop a few times a night and gives him a big bad case of diaper rash (but no swine flu, hurrah!). It's sad, but it's an accomplishment that I've made it to work two days in a row, in a mostly presentable state, and then carried on coherent conversations.

I think that's it - I'm too overwhelmed to even realize I'm overwhelmed. There's no time to stop and think about how I feel. There's only time to get everyone up and dressed and clean out my inbox and decipher a spreadsheet and add something else to my to-do list and order more diapers and add a picture of Jonas to my bulletin board and think that I really should get on planning Axel's 2nd bithday party and try to remember to pump before my shirt gets stained with milk in the middle of a meeting.

So how does it feel? Ask me in a few weeks.

Working Nine to Five, Part Two

knockedup — Fri, 25 Jan 2008 17:04:00 GMT

Tuesday marked my return to work - and the land of my non-sweatpants-wearing, minimally-covered-in-spit-up, mostly groomed self. And it's been fabulous. No tears have been shed. I have loved almost every minute of it.

The work part has been pretty minimal so far - mostly going through thousands of emails and a stack of mail. The rest of my time has been spent showing people pictures of my boy, and hearing how great I look. (Note: I'm not bragging. I don't think I look so good but, in comparison to the last time most of these people saw me -- at nine and a half months pregnant, boated, irritated, waddling everywhere, grimacing from sciatica, with a belly the size of an ATV - - the still carrying some baby belly and slightly exhausted postpartum me looks not so bad. It's all about your reference point. Heidi Klum walking the runway in lacy underthings two months after giving birth I most certainly am not.) In terms of actual work and assignments, this is the honeymoon phase of being a working mama, before the full deluge of tasks hits my desk.

Here's what so fabulous about it: I get to go to the bathroom when I want to, instead of thinking, "I just got Axel to calm down and if I put him down in his pack and play he'll get all riled up so how long, exactly, can I hold it before I burst or cause some sort of damage to my bladder?" That's GREAT! And I can drink a cup of tea while it's still warm and eat my lunch all in one sitting. AMAZING! And having conversations with several adults in one day? It rocks.

Sure, I miss Axel a little. I miss him snuggling up against me in his sling, his gleeful and toothless smiles, and cheering him on as he swats and kicks the toys dangling above his floor gym. But I did not cry when I left - I was leaving him with his very capable and loving father. Maybe I'll cry when he's in daycare in a few months or when I'm away from Axel for more than a few days a week, but, for now, this transition is smooth like I Can't Believe It's Not Butter. Getting out the door is rather hectic, what with juggling feeding the baby and myself and the dog and cleaning up after all three of us and trying to make sure I have my pump and my purse, but I figure as long as I'm wearing shoes (and they match!), and have brushed my teeth, I'm good.

Stay tuned for part three of working nine to five: take your baby to work day. My employer has a policy in which you can bring a "quiet baby" to the office with you for up to three months after maternity leave. With meetings and whatnot, I can't do this everyday, but I'm going to try to swing it for a day a week or so which, combined with the option of working from home, means I'll be able to stay with Axel for two or three weekdays every week for a few months. (Three cheers for family friendly employers!) Next Tuesday will be the test to see if Axel fits the "quiet" criteria. Anyone know where I can get a baby muzzle? Just kidding. Maybe I'll just play some Mozart really loudly to drown out any squawks, under the guise of building his synapses and whatnot.

Working 9 to 5

knockedup — Sun, 13 Jan 2008 17:03:00 GMT

I'm about to re-join Dolly Parton and her shoulder-pad-wearing friends in the workforce. In a week and a half, I'll be going back to work. On November 1st, 12 weeks of maternity leave sounded like an eternity. I had plans - sure, I'd take care of Axel, and, while he was sleeping, I'd re-organize our house after the (mostly finished) remodel, clean it several times from top to bottom, create a snazzy filing system with pretty blue file folders, babyproof every room, and lose all the baby weight plus a few more pounds. Well, I've got a week and a half left, and my list of things to do isn't really that much shorter than it was at first. The house is still messy, according to my admittedly neurotic clean-freak standards, the files are still a jumble, and the baby-created jelly belly is still very much around my middle.

What have I done the last ten and a half weeks? Countless hours of nursing, rocking, butt wiping, doing laundry, talking to Axel about his ears and fingers and nose, with a little bit of post-remodeling unpacking and cleaning here and there. I've got ten days to get my life and house in order before I go back to work - and I know that's not going to happen. I'll be going back with a partially-organized house and life, with stacks of bills and catalogs on the desk and pacifiers scattered in random drawers and cleaning supplies under the kitchen sink in an unlocked cabinet. Some days, I don't find time to sit down and eat with two hands and a set of utensils, so why I think that I should have found time to organize the clothes in my closet by color and sleeve length, I don't know. Since I've been failing at getting much done around the house, I'm wondering how I'll be able to get things done at work - and how I'll actually get myself ready and to work on time - when I go back in just a few days.

I knew it would be hard to return to work and leave Axel - even though I'll be leaving him, at least for the first few weeks, in the very capable hands of his dad or his grandparents, or working from home with him next to me. (Note picture with my man, taken when Axel was a day old, below. Sorry it's a little old - I snap photos of my boy all day long. Sean just doesn't have the photo-worthy range of expressions that Axel does.).

What I didn't really think about, other than having some fuzzy memories of Michael Keaton in Mr. Mom covered in flour and wrestling with the vacuum cleaner, was how I would do all the stuff I'm doing now and be a mostly awake, functioning worker bee wearing something other than spit-up covered sweatpants.

Besides my slight clean-freak tendencies and desire to clean the floors on my hands and knees weekly, I'm relatively low maintenance - I don't iron; I rarely wear makeup besides mascara and lip gloss; I've never been one of those girls who shaved her legs every day; I don't care if my clothes or Axel's are covered in spit up. I guess I'll have to be even more low-maintenance if I want to hang on to more than four hours of sleep a night. Should I just resign myself to showering every three days and invest in a nice wig so I don't have to do my hair every morning? I'm a multi-tasking fiend, which used to mean reading the New Yorker and eating oatmeal while I blow dried my hair but now means folding laundry while sitting on the floor and playing with Axel and trying to eat lunch without dropping any food on Axel's head or the clean laundry. Maybe now's the time to enroll myself in some freaky scientific study and grow a third arm.

Once again, I'm turning to you, dear readers, for advice. (On a side note, how did our parents do all this without the Internet? The comments and advice I get from Babble readers, and insights from reading other blogs, have helped keep me mostly sane through this brand new mama phase.) How do you juggle babies and housework and eating and showering and work outside (or inside) of the home?