A recent Wall Street Journal article talks about how many companies are cutting back on maternity-leave pay and time off, compared with 10 years ago. This made me realize how lucky I was to be able to maximize my leave to be at home full time with my baby for the first 5 months of her life. And my circumstances actually gave me a tiny bit more time with her, because at the end of my leave I quit my job and didn’t get another one till a month later. Through a combination of longevity on my old job, which meant lots of vacation time and eligibility for maximum benefits, plus a little bit of money put away, I was fortunate enough to plan to be home with my baby for as long as I could, as a working mother.
However, I know not all mothers have the same options I did. When I hear of women who had to go back to work after 6 or 8 weeks, I can’t imagine what it was like for them to have to leave their babies at such a young age. I mean, when my daughter was 6 weeks old, she was so tiny and fragile, and we had some concerns about her weight. Plus — and this is a big plus — she hadn’t begun to sleep through the night. So not only would I have been worried about leaving her so helpless and frail, I probably would’ve been a zombie at work. (And I can get pretty grumpy when I’m sleep-deprived. Ask my husband.) I probably would’ve gotten fired if I had gone back to work that soon.
I’d be interested to hear how other mothers coped if you had to return to work sooner than you would have liked. How did you deal with it? Did you feel like your relationships at work and at home suffered?
