by Brandi Riley posted in Pregnancy

I had big plans for my maternity leave. I was going to catch up with friends over lunch, finally finish that decluttering project I'd started, and walk the lake a few times a week. The last time I had a baby, I was able to do all of that and more. In fact, I look back at that maternity leave eight years ago and remember it feeling a bit like a vacation.
Fast-forward almost a decade...
First of all, I'm eight years older. I got pregnant with my first child at 29, and I was pretty fit at the time. I worked with kids, so I was constantly on the move, and lived in Philadelphia where I walked just about everywhere. With this pregnancy, I was starting off with a work-from-home/freelancer body that was used to sitting on the couch and typing on the computer for hours at a time. It was my second c-section, and this baby was nearly two pounds bigger than my first.
All that is to say: This maternity leave ain't been no picnic.
I've been dealing with pain from my abdomen to my wrist, and it's slowed me down a little bit. Then, my son is not quite as predictable a baby as my daughter was. It seems like he senses when I'm trying to get somewhere at a particular time, eat, or get something done because those are the exact moments that he needs to be nursed or has to be changed.
For the first couple of weeks of his life, I was trying to push through and go about life as usual. My thought was that I could do things just as I had done, with a few minor...