working mom

There's just a little over three weeks left of my maternity leave. Now that I'm in under the month mark, I'm not sure how to feel. When it was over a month, over two months, it was ambiguous enough an amount of time that I didn't really think about it. It just felt like, well, forever. But now, not so much.

Part of me is devastated to put the baby in daycare, part of me is ready to rejoin the ranks of adults. I'm nervous that I will have forgotten everything because I want to do well, and I'm disconcerted by how little I've actually thought about work in the last couple of weeks. (But I suppose I've been a little preoccupied, you know, raising a child.)

I don't know, I think I'm just overwhelmed at the thought of trying to do both motherhood and career. I know many women do, but it somehow feels different on this side of the fence. It's a lot to ask of women, I just didn't really know how much, before (and I haven't even gone back to work yet). I think no matter how far we go as a society, no matter how equal we say or pretend we are, there's something profoundly difficult about being a working mom, in particular. Maybe it's the crushing sense of responsibility that grows through pregnancy and then labor and sometimes breastfeeding. Maybe that sense of responsibility is so crushing because thousands of years ago it had to be, so we didn't leave our babies out in the rain to freeze to death or be eaten by sabertooth tigers. But we carry that responsibility into our jobs and our marriages, and then we have kids and it becomes a heavy load. Yes, men have an innate sense of responsibility too, but maybe because they were out hunting and protecting and warring for all those ancient years, they don't feel quite the burden on the homefront.

Or maybe it's the multitasking thing, maybe as women we take on the household stuff and the work stuff and the parenting stuff all at the same time because we can. Or at least, we think we can.

Like I said, I'm not sure exactly what to think. My modern brain fervidly wants to have a career and contribute to something bigger (and, truthfully, our finances require it). I need to socialize and learn new things and have adult conversations. I like to work and I (we) have earned that right. But another part of me, an older and deeper part, feels deeply guilty and heartbroken that my daughter will be cared for by others for the majority of her infanthood. And I'm not sure how to reconcile the two.