I accomplished nothing on mat leave
I realize now just how deluded I was.
In those last sweaty months of my pregnancy, when I was wobbling into the office and enduring yet another meeting while my baby flutter-kicked my bladder, I would fantasize about my ?year off? in the same way that I now fantasize about checking into a hotel alone: obsessively, longingly, wistfully.
Learning French, travelling, writing a memoir: On mat leave, I was going to do it all.
Oh, the things I would accomplish! I?d be so fit from my daily jogs with my baby. My house would be so organized from all the DIY projects I?d master while he peacefully napped. I?d return to the workforce more skilled and savvy from all the articles and books I?d immerse myself in after he fell asleep blissfully early each evening. Even as the months of my maternity leave slipped by in a haze of spit-up and sleeplessness, I tenaciously clung to these dreams ? that is, until two weeks before my son?s first birthday. I woke up and realized that I was still wearing maternity leggings (not necessarily by choice), I?d read nothing except mommy blogs in a year (occasionally, an actual news article would find its way into my newsfeed, but I assumed it was satire: ?Look, baby, someone wrote another funny article about that angry orange man!?), and the most ?memoir writing? I?d done was in my son?s one-line-a-day journal, which I?d quit abruptly when he was three weeks old. (?You sure cried a lot today, baby! I wonder if it?s colic.? Spoiler: It was colic.)
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COMPETITION: Win a 5-star Family Holiday in Limassol, Cyprus
27-04-2024 08:05 - (
moms )