In Canada, where I live, we have a year long parental leave. It was amazing to get to spend the majority of my time with my baby for their entire first year of life. This is the time we lay the groundwork for the bond we will have from then on.
Life took on a completely different pattern when I was on parental leave. It had a narrow focus that required me to develop a wide range of new skills. It felt like my ‘normal’ life was put on pause for a year while I did this new ‘caring for my baby’ thing. It was like stepping sideways onto a completely different track of my life. The weird part was not knowing how these two tracks would merge at the end of the year.
PARENTAL LEAVE IN A PANDEMIC
Parental leave can feel isolating – you are away from all your work related friends, spending most of your time at home caring the your new baby. The friends you used to hang out with may or may not be interested in hanging out with you and your baby. You may find those friends are no longer the type of support you need. Or you no longer seem to have much in common now that your focus has shifted. At times being on leave with a new baby did feel isolating. But, being an introvert, I think it didn’t bother me as much as it would some people.
My parental leave overlapped entirely with the global COVID-19 pandemic. This meant that everyone, not just me, was feeling isolated. As a result, I felt less alone in the experience. There was lots of media attention given to the emotional effects of isolation and the development of internet based communication systems. Many social groups were adapted to online platforms. This gave me access to support networks that I would not have had otherwise. Many of these were local groups in the US that I could now access over zoom.
So, overall, despite the general isolation of being at home with a baby, reinforced by the pandemic, I ended up feeling less isolated than I would have otherwise. But the contact I had was with a completely different set of people than those in my previous life. So when my leave finished and I went back to work, very few people had seen or heard from me in a year. And everyone wanted to know how my baby and I were doing.
REINTEGRATING WITH THE WORLD
The end of parental leave is like pushing our way out of our family cocoon (reinforced by the pandemic-induced isolation) and re-entering the world, now as a family of three. Or, to continue with the same metaphor as above, it feels like trying to merge two tracks that are wildly different. It feels vulnerable and shaky.
Some of this shakiness is logistical – we can no longer simply get ready for work and leave, come home and make dinner, hang out and go to bed. One of us has to get our kid ready for their day and feed them, drop our kid off at daycare, pick them up, and then do all the things in the evening we’ve been doing the past year. In this way, the tracks don’t so much merge as we shift back and forth between them throughout the day – the family/childcare track and the work track. These compenents are easy to predict and plan in advance, even if they feel a bit overwhelming at the start.
The parts that are more shaky are how our family is perceived and how to be as authentic as possible without spending more energy than we have. How to manage the impact of attending daycare (more on this below). How to stay focused on our non-baby related tasks when we’ve been so used to focusing the majority of our attention and time on our baby. These are the more nebulous emotional things that we will have to navigate or learn as we go.
Reintegrating with the world is also socially overwhelming. I went from having limited social contact, especially with the pandemic, to seeing all my work colleagues again. I was answering the same questions over and over. Inevitably, one of those questions was ‘remind me again, did you have a boy or a girl?’ I know it’s just small talk and people wanting to connect but it throws all the societal assumptions about gender that I’ve been happily avoiding this past year in my face.
I have to re-learn how to let the dysphoria enducing comments and situations roll of my back and leave the irritation from these situations at work as much as possible. Having a fun, cute baby to come home to definitely helps.
STARTING DAYCARE
After spending almost every day together, having my baby spend five of seven days at daycare feels like there will be monumental distance between us. I feel like I will miss important steps in their development. Or miss enough of the little incremental developments so that when they show a new skill or level of understanding, it will come as a surprise. It will feel sudden. I will feel like they are growing too fast for me to keep up.
Maybe this is true. But maybe, if I spend dedicated play time with them during the times we do spend together (early mornings, evenings, and weekends), it will be enough time to see these small shifts. It’s not like they’ll be at daycare 24/7 afterall.
So far, our daycare experience has gone well. We found a daycare we were comfortable with that had a spot available when we needed it. We did a couple two hour visits to get my child familiar with the environment and staff while still having me as a safety net. On the second visit I left for an hour which did not phase my child in the least.
In the first full days of daycare, we dropped them off as late in the morning as we could and picked them up as early as our work schedules would allow. Even with these shortened days, our baby was exhausted. They have been napping on the way to daycare and after coming home in addition to the midday nap they get at daycare. As long as we give them these times to sleep, they seem to be doing ok.
My baby is definitely aware of spending less time with us. They need a lot more time being held, especially in the morning and after naps. They dislike spending as much time as they used to in the stroller or carseat where they can’t see or interact with us (though this could also be related to their increasing independence). Since I also need more cuddle time with my baby, so far I am ok with this.
BALANCING RISK AND REWARD
When we first decided daycare was the best option, we weighed the pros and cons of each option available to us. But just because we settled on full time daycare doesn’t mean we don’t have to continue to be aware of the risks and rewards. Knowing the risks will help us mitigate them or adjust for them. Knowing the rewards will help us get the most benefit from it. So here are a few of the risks and rewards we are noticing:
Risks associated with daycare
- COVID exposure risk – no masks, lots of adults and kids in a small space (we wear masks any time we go in)
- Considerably less bonding time
- Less control over our child’s schedule to give them what they need (mostly in terms of sleep)
- Financial risk due to high cost
Rewards associated with daycare
- Exposure to more germs leads to a stronger immune system
- Socialization
- More guided activities and resources
- More personal freedom for work/school
How do our experiences reintegrating with the world and starting daycare compare to yours? I imagine if you are in a country that only has six weeks of paid parental leave and you had to return to work at that time your experiences would be wildly different. Please share in the comments below!
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