I’ll never forget the morning I awoke to find my partner holding onto one of my breasts and my daughter the other. It was the perfect metaphor for my life: everyone wanted a piece of me. My life, my mind and my body were no longer my own.Welcome to motherhood!
When I returned to work just eight weeks after my first daughter was born, I had no idea the physical and emotional toll I would pay. Financially the decision made perfect sense. But within months I was mourning the loss of my breastmilk and what felt like my complete loss of self.
I had fallen pregnant just a few months into my work contract. It was a well paid and interesting gig. But with it came weekend hours and a level of responsibility I grew to resent. Several times during the working day I’d sneak my breastpump into the bathrooms and sing nursery rhymes to my sleep deprived breasts. I laughed at my pathetic clandestine pumping but when long work days and frequent night feeds finally took their toll, my milk supply and sense of humour dried up. I wept for days, mourning the loss of the only daytime connection I had with my beautiful baby girl.
I’d studied my arse off in high school and worked like a dog in university for a qualification that earned me a big fat paypacket and a work gig that was now keeping me from my baby. For all my efforts and those of my mother’s generation, I felt completely ripped off! And, although Lily was at home with Robert - rather than in daycare – it still just felt wrong to me. The separation felt like too higher price to pay...
My own mother had earned herself the right to a career too and spent much more time encouraging other people’s kids than her own five. I know she doesn’t regret having a career but I’m sure not all her decisions were easy. Her absence ingrained in me a deep desperation to be able to find some way to both work and be at home when my kids came home from school.
In January 2004 when my work was at its peak, my 15 year old step son moved in. I returned home from work each day to find a stressed out stay-at-home dad, a disillusioned 15 year old and a baby longing for her mother. Being so desperately needed at the end of the day was far from flattering. It was suffocating.
And, although I longed to hold my beautiful daughter in my arms and hear about all the funny, crazy and clever things she’d done that day, what I also ached for was some of the simple freedoms I took for granted in my life BC (before children): ocean swims, regular exercise, trips to the movies, peeing alone. What used to be my favourite time of the day was now the ‘witching hour’.
Some days as I rode the bus home I daydreamed of riding all the way to Bronte Beach for a quick dip in the ocean pool before returning to the onslaught of family. But guilt kept me from it .When I did come home it took all my strength not to ask Robert what the hell he’d been doing all day. (In hindsight he did an incredible job and spending the first two years at home with Lily deepened their special relationship. For that I am truly grateful). Back then I was simply exhausted and jealous.
I was too busy and too tired to eat well at work - asian stirfrys and, chocolate and soft drinks – and, with two men at home I was consuming more meat in a fortnight than I’d usually eat in a year. The yoga, good eating and meditation that was once daily routine was long gone and replaced with booze (no longer breastfeeding), take-away and TV.
I knew life would be hard. I knew there’d be sleepless nights and more fights and less time for me. What I didn’t know, what no-one had told me, was that every little bit of me-time and space and all the little things that together helped keep me sane would be stripped away. I didn’t expect to feel completely torn between a desperate need for me-time, a corporate paypacket and a deep longing to be a stay-at-home mum...
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