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Maternity leave: time for introspection and self-fulfillment, or of isolation and painful urination" I am lucky to have had a full year?s leave when I had my daughter, was lucky to have a unionized job that paid a top-off and held my position for me. Considering that women in the US and beyond don?t have this same advantage, it?s not something I take for granted. Maternity leave, like early parenthood, looks different for different women. Some manage to travel and attend to tasks they couldn?t have while working outside of the home. But more often than not, mothers report feeling completely exhausted and mildly surprised that they didn?t have as much time to themselves as they hoped they might.
Central to my own maternity leave was an ongoing outpouring of fluids: leaky boobs, 15 weeks of postpartum bleeding, tears (hers and mine), waiting for my baby?s legs to get fat enough that she didn?t pee through the leg holes of newborn-size diapers. There was a lot of laundry, many nursing pad purchases and a healthy diet of granola bars and granola bars (which are easy to eat one-handed but do not taste very good). Three months after my baby was born, I went to the corner store on my own to buy cranberry juice while she stayed with my friends. That?s what ?me? time looked like. In her new book, Meternity, author Meghann Foye presents the idea that women who are not parents should get to take a leave of their own??me?-ternity leave. The novel?s main charac...