Q: What do you get when two pregnant, breadwinning coworkers are on the train home together?
A: Slightly snarky (okay, envious) conversation about another colleague who's living an Insta-perfect life on maternity leave with her baby, a husband who makes all the money AND does the cooking (score!).
But look, we all have our own problems (like a fairly horrendous pregnancy in that person's case and I'm sure there are others) - it was just nice to vent honestly to each other knowing we're in the same boat and not going to judge each other for our feelings. That it would be nice to have the option to stay home for however long we wanted. To not be the one responsible for incubating our children AND bearing the financial load to boot. Options, I'm all about options.
And I know we're not alone. Just check out Google's suggested related searches for the phrase 'female breadwinner':
All of that, I think, gets exacerbated in pregnancy. I had a fairly easy one. And I was still SO DONE by 8 months. Even taking it a day at a time was slightly torturous. No, pregnancy is not a disability ... but I was definitely nowhere near 100%. And thanks to my extra lame immune system, I just kept getting sick what seemed like every month.
Don't get me wrong; I was thankful to have made it that far and that healthy. I mean, nobody wants to experience pregnancy complications, but when your income is what keeps the household afloat, being put on early rest is going to be a huge financial blow (unless perhaps you shorten your maternity leave by the same amount of time, and get less time with the baby post-birth. Yay.)
I had to book in my leave plans at the 6 month mark, which was a bit tough. On the one hand, I had no idea how I would physically feel in those final weeks. People kept telling me how hard it was going to get and how I wouldn't want to work up to 38 or 39 weeks, to which I clenched my teeth and smiled and nodded.
Because on the other hand, I didn't want to fritter away my leave days. Simply put, every week I'm off pre-delivery means a week less post-birth to spend with baby. It's a gamble - baby might come early, robbing you of that precious downtime at the end. But then again, baby might be late and leave you sitting around waiting! There's just no telling. I'd rather err on the side of not wasting too much precious leave beforehand.
So in the end, I was planning to work up until 38 weeks and hoping to get a couple of lazy weeks in at home. (I was counting on the fact that first-time mothers are usually late ... but then I read that Asian women often give birth early?!) And that seems to be quite late by usual standards around here, it seems more common to finish up a month before you're due or sometimes even earlier. And I totally get it, pregnancy gets so more uncomfortable in the third trimester! The fatigue, the fogginess, and holy shit the reflux.
Of course, that was all a moot point when I went into labour at 36 weeks. September was always meant to be our month to get things properly ready ahead of Spud's arrival, but that did not happen at all. His arrival in early (instead of late) October meant a mad scramble to take care of stuff - thank goodness for family chipping in to help a little bit, bringing food, helping clean up the house, going out to look for baby clothes in preemie sizes. I had no time off at all to myself and never got to wrap things up at work in the way I'd planned.
I'm over halfway through my maternity leave now, which is crazy. Financially, it's been way more stressful than expected (a long story for another post, another time). I'd be lying if I said I wasn't battling a lot of resentment, given I'd done my part with planning and budgeting and carried all that out. It's definitely put a bit of a damper on things.
That said, I've enjoyed being able to stay home and watch Spud grow. It's also really fucking hard work sometimes, and I'm looking forward to sending him to daycare - I think he's going to thrive on the stimulation. While, as I've said before, it'd be really nice to have the option to take a year off ... personally, I don't think I'd be cut out for it anyway. Lucky, that!