My Story about Paid Leave and Motherhood in the United States
I had just finished bleeding 4 weeks after birth.
My stitches just recently healed. My baby still learning to breastfeed. My breasts still fluctuating between painful engorgement and too empty to satisfy a distraught newborn.
My husband was back to work just two weeks into our new baby’s life.
No paid leave, no promise of being able to return to his job, no accommodations from work while I adjusted to bringing a new human being into our home.
It’s the business bottom line, always the bottom line that matters — over human hearts, bodies, and minds.
Why do we live like this?
12 hours a day of loneliness — sometimes more.
I sat in the rocking chair, holding my baby, dehydrated, hungry, and needing to pee, but too scared to put him down to take care of my own needs in case he’d wake up again and start screaming.
I tried all the tips and tricks: “keep granola bars near you,” “have a big bottle of water so you never run out!,” “sleep train him,” etc. etc.
No amount of books, methods, or tips were a substitute for what I really needed — human help and support.
Depression, anxiety, irrational fears, and difficulty sleeping invaded my mind and body.
“Your hormones are adjusting,” they said. It was always the hormones.
What about not sleeping through the night for 11 months? Could that have been affecting me?
What about struggling to meet my own basic needs for a year? Could that have been affecting me?
What about being alone day in and day out because everyone in your support system has to show up at work, and can’t afford to take a partially paid leave with no job protection? Maybe that could’ve been affecting me....
1 in 4 women in the U.S. are back to work within 2 weeks of giving birth (source).
I didn’t have to do that. I was one of the “lucky ones.” Why wasn’t I grateful? Why wasn’t I enjoying this baby I risked my life to carry and birth?
The grief, the guilt — so heavy.
Why do we live like this?
It’s taken years to climb out of the hole that swallowed me after I became a mother in the United States.
I now know that the pain I went through was not my fault.
It wasn’t because I didn’t read enough books or take enough classes.
It wasn’t because I didn’t time my pregnancy right.
It wasn’t me.
I stopped carrying the guilt and shame of that time because it’s not mine to carry.
I have worked and contributed to a country that does not care about me.
A country that claims they care about families.
A country that claims they’re the best in the world.
Grief? I still feel grief, and I think that’s okay. I think that’s a normal emotion to have after barely surviving that time.
The emotions, pain, transition, and struggle that new moms face during postpartum is other-worldly.
I don’t think we were ever meant to shoulder it on our own.
