Going on maternity leave

tl;dr summary #

I'm heading out on maternity leave a little earlier than planned. I'm not sure where the last eight and a half months have gone but here we are! It's a very weird feeling to be prepping and handing off projects. All of my co-workers have been so lovely and supportive, and were especially supportive when I said I needed to start my leave earlier. These final weeks have been so emotionally and physically challenging. I'm looking forward to hunkering down and resting and doing whatever final prep I can before our little girl is here.

My pregnancy journey #

Being hyper-independent and being pregnant do not go hand in hand. The last eight and a half months of my life have been emotional, introspective, and physically painful. By medical standards I have had a pretty easy pregnancy, despite the screeching narrative that if you are a woman over 35 and you get pregnant, you are inherently high risk and will have a terrible time and you will have everything that could go wrong with your pregnancy, go wrong.

I haven't had high blood pressure, no risk for gestational diabetes or anything that would indicate I need to be worried about pre-eclampsia. My placenta was low at the 20 week scan, and they ordered an extra scan at 32 weeks to make sure it had moved. It did. One midwife thought baby was breech but if she was, she righted herself before the 32 week scan and has been in the right place at following midwife appointments.

Again, a pretty "easy" pregnancy if you ignore all the other normal symptoms.

From around week 5 or 6 to week 19 and 20, the food aversions and nausea were debilitating. Craving a certain kind of food to taking a bite of it and wanting to throw up is a confusing experience.

During this same time period, I could not get through a full day of work and had to break my work day up. If my job was not remote, I don't know what I would have done, and I could only think of the soon-to-be mamas who had to go into their place of work for 8 hours dealing with symptoms similar to mine or worse. I read stories of women who had quit their job because the first trimester was so debilitating.

I was a fairly active person before this, walking into town, taking the dog on multiple walks a week, barre and pilates classes. The fatigue, exhaustion and nausea was too much until around week 22. Then there was a period of about 10 weeks where I was able to return to my barre yoga classes, which slowly morphed into slow yoga classes and then I gave up around 34 weeks. Walks became excruciating, even early on, and I had to hire a dog walker. The routes I take now are barely a half mile, though sometimes I manage just under a mile when Jhey comes along. This reduction in activity has taken such a toll on my mental health that I've tried to find new things to do at home to keep me active. These things have manifested in the form of knitting, baking and cooking.

Tailbone pain has been a constant battle that has sent me into more than one emotional breakdown because the pain has been so debilitating. Baths and paracetamol have been staples and essential (and frequent). If I do too much around the house, the tailbone pain hits. If I go for too long of a walk, if I stand for too long in the kitchen, it is there and it is excruciating.

In these final few weeks, I've had constant heartburn, restless legs and shortness of breath. Walking up the stairs leaves me breathless. The restless legs sometimes give me anxiety and are their own special kind of hell.

I'm exhausted, unable to sit comfortably, brain fog and forgetfulness are at an unprecedented level even by my standards. I don't know whether it's related or not but a crown on a back molar cracked and fell off. No one warns you about the havoc pregnancy can wreck on your teeth.

At moments I feel like I'm hanging on by a thread. The whole experience has been isolating, especially because I am not close to friends or family (they're all mostly across the pond). Then throw your normal life admin on top of this experience, it's been difficult.

My dog has a secondary skin infection that's gotten worse over the last few weeks so I'm off to the vet again for the 4th time in 4 months and having to be cautious and mindful about petting her hasn't made anything about these final few weeks of pregnancy better.

I thought I would be able to work up until the time I had planned but I can't. It felt like admitting defeat when in reality it's just deeply rooted American work values brainwashing. "You should be working when you're sick or ill or physically in pain."

This whole experience has made me more staunchly pro-choice. Maternity leave benefits should be increased or made into law (looking at you America), because you cannot expect women to endure pregnancy and postpartum, be back to work 4 weeks later and have a healthy functioning society.

I have had all the support and flexibility possible to get through these 9 months, and it has still been the most challenging and debilitating experience of my life. What are we doing for the women who don't have that support and flexibility? You can't blame women for not having babies when we live in a society where the cost of living is so astronomically high that both parents need to be working. If you don't offer support or relief or a feasible path forward, you cannot blame women.

So here I am, approaching my due date. Tired and radicalized. Very over being pregnant but very ready to meet our baby girl.

Now I get to grapple with the deep feelings of unease that come with prepping for maternity leave, again a byproduct of America's work culture and not the culture of the company I work at. I've been working in design and tech for the last 16 years, so some uncomfortable feelings of stepping away for a few months have bubbled up. I imagine that's probably normal.

I've spent this week working half days and wrapping up some remaining tasks at work. I wanted to be present for our final company meetings of the year so today I'll attend the second half of those meetings and then log off until May.

And that's all folks. What a very long year it's been.