Tomorrow, tomorrow, mama goes back to work TOMORROW!
Today is the last day of my second and final maternity leave and I’m feeling … chaotic. Today, I’m having a hard time organizing my home office, organizing the rest of my house, organizing my kids’ schedules, organizing what my husband and I are going to eat this week, and most of all, organizing my BRAIN.
It’s a messy day. We returned from Idaho, where we spent Thanksgiving week, yesterday. As soon as we pulled into the garage, my body and brain immediately went into overdrive. Thank you, past self, for choosing to go back to work the Tuesday after Thanksgiving instead of Monday!
As we unpacked the car and I watched the bags pile up in the entryway, with Linnea crying for food and Miles trying quite unsuccessfully to pick them up and carry them upstairs with his 3-foot-tall frame, I felt my heart pound in anticipation of the week. And the thing is, I don’t even really know WHY. Everything is pretty much … fine. Yes, maternity leave is over and I’m going back to work. But everything is in order. I’m working from home, which makes the transition a whole lot less dramatic than it would be if I had to primp and pack up, leave my two babies behind and commute into the office, returning 10 long hours later. I like my job and my coworkers. Miles is in daycare. Linnea will be home with me for the first five weeks until she starts daycare after the new year — we never did find a nanny, but that’s a story for another day — but she’s a good baby, I’ll have a babysitter some days, my manager is OK with the arrangement, and honestly, it will be a comfort to have her with me as I ease into work.
But even with all that, even though I’m one of the lucky ones, even though I have the privilege of working from home and having help with my kids, I’m mourning the end of 18 weeks with my baby girl. Although difficult at times, it has truly been precious to spend my days getting to know Linnea as she morphs from the 7-pound newborn who was placed on my chest in July to a 4.5-month-old baby who can hold her head up with the best of them and has outgrown her bassinet. A few weeks ago, a friend was reminiscing with me about the maternity leave she had with her now-7-year-old son. She said that before having a baby, she thought maternity leave would involve lounging on the couch, drinking tea, cuddling her sweet little silent baby and reveling in the sweetness of having a newborn. For her, it was … not that. Her baby was fussy and had trouble sleeping, and she spent most of her days trying to get him to stop crying and go to sleep. But I actually kind of had her dream maternity leave. My first baby was a bit more challenging, but Linnea is a dream (now that I said that, I bet she’ll be awake all night #jinx). I’m lucky that she eats well, sleeps well, plays well and is generally a pleasure, and I’m never again going to have this kind of uninterrupted time with her.
In addition to mourning the end of my maternity leave era, I have it in my head that I need to get every little thing in order before I start work tomorrow. That’s where the chaos and the messiness come in. For some reason, I have this annoying feeling that I need to have a completely clean house, fully stocked for the end of the world, before I can go back to work. On a rational level, I realize I’m not heading out to sea for several months starting tomorrow morning. I won’t be working 24/7. I will have time to mop the floors, clean the bathroom, go to the grocery store, put Linnea’s old clothes in storage and all those other little tasks. And by the way, self, you could do 17 loads of laundry today, but you’ll also have to do it next week once the clothes get dirty again. But on an emotional level, I need to do it all TODAY.
To be clear, That doesn’t mean I AM doing it all today. In fact, I’m doing none of it. I’m sitting on the couch holding Linnea, eating string cheese and writing this while the floors go unmopped and the bathroom goes uncleaned.
It just means my mind is going a million miles per hour and my heart is pounding and I’m feeling anxious about the fact that starting tomorrow, I won’t have all the hours in the day to hold my baby and putz around the house and take care of things. I guess it’s also partly the unknown. I don’t know what it’ll be like or what it’ll feel like to be a working mother of TWO. I don’t know how often daycare is going to send one of my kids home because they have a cough. I don’t know whether I’ll feel guilty sending Linnea to daycare (I didn’t feel much guilt sending Miles to daycare, but every kid and every situation is different). I don’t know how tiring it will be to work all day and then do the so-called second shift after I pick up the kids. I don’t know if it’ll become even more difficult to motivate myself to clean the dang floors.
So please excuse me while I strap the baby into a front pack and try to get this house in order so I can pretend to have some peace of mind going into my first day back at work tomorrow. Wish me luck!