I never intended to be a stay-at-home mum. I went to one of the top universities in Canada. I have an honour’s degree in writing, another one in piano performance, a published book available on Amazon and a bunch of writing awards in my name. I’ve accumulated 10 years of work experience in the real world. My career path, while circuitous, promised to be fulfilling and financially rewarding. I was what I’d always wanted to be when I “grew up”: a career woman.
And then came Baby A. We bonded immediately; she didn’t seem to hold any resentment from the nine months of pregnancy when I referred to her as “The Alien”. nstead, she thrived in the adoration Mr T and I showered on her.
However, during my maternity leave (which I extended, once by adding a month of unpaid leave, then again on the eve of my return to work), when asked whether I’d consider staying at home with Her Dictatorship, I’d immediately scoff at the idea. “I could never not work,” I insisted. “I love my job. I need to work. She’ll be happier with a working mum.”
I was confident in my decision. A working mother can establish just as warm and secure a relationship with her child as a mother who does not work. I knew this because of my relationship with my own career-driven mother, who was always full-time in her parenting.
But I had no inkling of how it would feel to be apart from Baby A, not until I returned to work. During the five days a week that I spent away from her, the folds of my heart would curl up like dried paper, brittle from the ache of missing her. The pain never eased up. I waited for its intensity to alleviate, thinking I would get used to it. But it never did and after a few months of crying in the car every morning on my way to work, I owned up to the fact that I was, in fact, miserable. On paper, I had everything I wanted: a beautiful home in a fun and ambitious city, a steady income from a job I loved that came with colleagues who were also friends, a loving husband who was both considerate and appreciative, a gorgeous baby girl straight from the dreams I never knew I had. And yet, I was miserable.
This much love is painful. I know that sounds a little silly, a little over the top, a little barf-inducing sometimes, but how else to describe it when you consider the fact that when Baby A emitted her first laugh, that gentle gurgle of joy that seemed to come straight from her tiny belly, my heart felt like it was shattering into a million pieces and my first reaction was a combined laugh and sob that ended up snorting out of my nose?
Once I acknowledged how miserable I was, the idea of no longer relying on my own source of income did not sound like the end of my world anymore. Giving up my job so I could spend my days with Baby A was not, as I had first defined it, a “sacrifice”.
The perils of leaving the workforce full-time would be counterbalanced, for me, by the pleasures of being able to experience motherhood on my own terms. The decision was made. It was a scary one – it took me almost five months after making the decision to actually leave my job – but it was made. And so four days before Baby A’s first birthday, I wrapped up five years at a job I loved.
I had no idea what I was in for.
The writer is a freelance journalist in Abu Dhabi